Intergirlactik countdown diary part 2

Julie

In the second of her diaries for powderroom.net, Julie Vergez – organiser of the European all-girl snowboard contest Intergirlactik – gives an insight into the challenges of pulling together the event due to be held from April 6 to 8 2007.

Click here to check out the first installment from November 2006.

Things are pretty stressful right now. We still don't have enough snow coverage and at the moment we can't organise Intergirlactik. So we are waiting for the next snow falls and we will take the decision before March 10 on whether to hold the contest.

But we are burning snowboards each night - cold weather is comin, hopefully snow with it!

But we are still focussing on on-site organisation and logistics for the event - working closely with the resort and the shapers.

We will soon launch the major part of our communication plan too, but we are quite reluctant as we are still not sure that we will be able to have Intergirlactik this year.
We opened the inscriptions this week – and we had received rider registrations before that.

When girls apply for the competition, most of the time they come because they like Intergirlactik and its atmosphere.

During past editions, almost all the riders whom registered came. Of course, there are always several elements for riders that can influence whether they come – such as other comps, sponsors' obligations etc

We organise accommodation for the riders who take part. We want them to come without any stress, just focused on riding. We provide them with a full package including accommodation, meals, skipass and party!

We will lodge everyone in apartments so we manage the booking with an agency. For meals, we will supply a breakfast pack, for lunch meals are organised at the snowpark, and at night we have different alternatives according to program.

The Soul Gang Tour is the European AM Female Snowboard Tour we launched this year, gathering, under the same banner, girls events from everywhere in Europe : Girls Gone Wild in Switzerland, Jee Vice Snowboard Session in Austria, Jam On in Spain, Chiquitas Jam in Czech Rep, Sista Session in France and Pinky Jam in Italy.

The goal is to help these small events to get a real structure with rankings, to help them with an overall communication plan, to get better involvement from riders by offering them wildcard for TTR events and so on. We want them to be a better window to show women's snowboarding in Europe to the public.

It is really easy for riders to come to these events whether they are sponsored or not, if they are young or older, if they are international competitors or regional ones.

We want to organise events aimed to amateurs and where European riders come to get the chance to be qualified to a TTR event. And it is working well!

At the Girls Gone Wild, we got around 20 riders, with really good snowboarders including Gilly Seagrave (UK), Jo Chastney (UK), Laura Hein (DEN), Ana?Øs Cettou (SUI) among Swiss riders and younger ones who are beginning competitions. It was a really good session, great level, a lot of motivation and such a good atmosphere.

I think it's really interesting to make connections between events, and have smaller contests as a springboard to go to bigger ones.

This helps to create a more dynamic energy around women's snowboarding.