During the production of Shred Index, It was luckily found by One of the team memebers at Tenton Gravity Research.
He had a few questions for me before posting it publicly.
Here there are:
Hopefully it answers a few questions for you and gives you an idea about what this is all about.
Who is involved in Shred Index?
Shred Index is a self funded project designed and run by me (Tom Hansen)
Another close friend of mine may become part of Shred Index in the future. Time will tell if it grows bigger.
Shred Index is built with the intention to involve the global ski and snowboard community with relevant crowd-sourced information provided by the public. In other words, what people think is best. The more people involved, the better it will be!
What inspired you to put together a website like this?
Good question. I was living in Whistler, Canada at the time and was having a hard time with housing and financials, along with many others. Whistler is a great place, but it has quite a few issues for people arriving. There is a huge housing shortage, and fewer companies offer staff accommodation than at other resorts. So accommodation prices are hugely inflated and a lot of people end up leaving before the season even starts, because they were unaware of how bad the situation was before arriving.
This wasn’t new to me. I have done a few ski seasons in different places of the world and each time found it difficult to get a good idea in advance of what the resort is like to live in. Not to mention, find all the ‘hidden gems’ some of the locals know of. There are many ski websites out there that provide huge amounts of information, but they aren’t easy to navigate, nor are they tailored towards people working and living throughout the winter season.
With this being the situation, I wanted to find the next best ski resort that had heaps of powder, cheap cost of living, and a huge amount of terrain to explore. After talking with a few others, I realised people come to the mountains for different reasons. Some come to shred, others come to party, some come with family, and some come for the outdoor lifestyle. I realized the community needed a directory that people could filter on using their own criteria and priorities. The idea came to me whilst listening to Courtland Alan’s Indie Hackers podcast with fellow drum and bass music producer and entrepreneur Pieter Levels, who made a directory of locations for digital nomads.
Hopefully Shred Index can help people see what they are getting themselves into before arriving into a new ski resort and show other possible clear alternatives they may not be aware of.
Who do you hope will use Shred Index?
I hope seasonal shredders as well as tourists can use Shred Index to find the information they want, and help others in the industry find what they want.
Anybody can help by adding in their own thoughts of ‘whats best’ in the resorts they have been to.
Would you please run through the basic information someone who's looking to work in the ski industry can glean from Shred Index?
For someone who is looking to work and live in the ski industry, they should be able to:
Find in the resort:
- Job postings
- Job availability status
- Housing links
- Housing availability status
- Basic Information on getting setup in the resort town… for example ‘Best Phone Service’
Sort from the highest rated resort for:
- Working
- Living
- Shredding.
What sort of community are you hoping to build around Shred Index?
This is a really important question because the community will determine the success of how useful Shred Index will be. The more people that use it, the more information will be available and the more accurate it will be.
It’s likely the community will start out with seasonal workers and local shredders with the possibility to progress in to tourists and daily commuters.
Important Notes
Shred Index is still in production stage and will be constantly evolving. It is made for the community and what the community wants. Please give feedback on what you want as it will help the development of it. Some things to think about are, how you use the website and what are the most critical points of information you would like to find. Feel free to message me privately as I would love to help in any way possible.
