MSAA Activities

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Gogebic College has a new Ski Lift Mainteance Technology Program

read about it here

MSAA Member Update

The MSAA Board of Directors met in August after the Summer Meetings. Directors converged from all over the Midwest to make plans for MSAA's future and review past activities. They elected Fred Seymour, Hyland Ski and Snowboard Area, MN as chair of MSAA and Amy Reents, Afton Alps Ski Area, MN as vice chair. Among the topics covered were:

Public Relations
Proposals for MSAA's Public Relations efforts were reviewed and one was accepted. A major new thrust will be efforts to target weather people on Midwest media outlets. Deadline Communications of Minneapolis, headed by former SKI Magazine and Vail Daily editor Reade Bailey, was hired to:

-Update MSAA's media contact list. Develop 1000-plus contacts in the regional and national media which MSAA will target for our Media campaign beginning in November.

-Develop a new media kit for MSAA and put it on-line for media contacts and members to review. This will be available in early November on the media portion of our website. A seperate section will be developed for weather people of the Midwest.

-Coordinate target mailings to the new media list beginning with a 11x17 mailer introducing the program to the media and followed by eight postcards sent to them every other week during the season. Each postcard will highlight a specific timely topic that would make a great story idea for the media and will direct them to information and a sample story in our on-line media kit.

Member ski areas will receive the mailings.

This is one of the ways MSAA uses the information you send us. We still need good photos that we can share with the media. We need to know the things you are especially proud of at your area. Send us the details so we can help tell the world.

Rental and Accessory Buying Group

The new regional associations cooperative Ski Area Rental and accessories Buying Program has been created from MSAA's Rental and accessory Buying Group. Informaiton on the new program can be found at www.sarabp.com.

MSAA members can log into the special member offers page using the

user name: MSAA and the password: snowplaces.

Snow Trails, OH and Afton Alps, MN will be this year's test areas. Suppliers are being asked to send shorter adult and kids equipment to these three areas for our season-long testing. MSAA members will receive the results late next winter. Thank you to all three areas and to the rental suppliers. If you need MSAA to develop a Buying Group relationship with a company we have not worked with in the past, please call MSAA at 651-484-1818.

MSAA again needs to know your buying intentions for next spring's buy. What is your Open To Buy? Letting us know the general scale of your buy helps us plan our work with the suppliers. We can either share the information with reps or not--depending on your request. If you want us to share the information, we can see that you get plenty of test equipment to help you decide which products you most want to purchase.

The money MSAA receives from the Buying Group suppliers is being used to fund the media relations work mentioned above. Our goal is to use this effort to grow the sport and your business.