Last night at Casselman's in Denver, Westword announced the winners of their WebAwards. EpicMix was honored in the category of "Best Locally Built SmartPhone App of the Year". The EpicMix team was away in California getting ready to launch EpicMix photo at Northstar and Heavenly, so Beaver Creek's stellar SnowSquadder Kirsten Lindholm and I got to represent the crew at the award show.
After a morning of classes, I spent my afternoon at Keystone with Halley O'Brien (pictured below), SnowSquad's intrepid videographer, racking up a couple vertical miles and trying out a pole-mount for my camera (I'll be posting some gadget reviews soon). I even randomly bumped into a friend from high school back in Milwaukee on top of Dercum Mountain. After a terrific few hours, I rolled back down to Denver for the big event.
Our category was the last to be announced, so we got to settle in for some tongue-in-cheek commentary on the winners and a few electro-dance interludes from a trio of Kraftwerk lookalikes. Finally at the end of the night, our big moment had arrived. I think they summed it up perfectly:
"For skiers, snowboarders and people who generally enjoy the mountains and snow, EpicMix is the ideal application... Basically, it's Foursquare, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all compressed into one easy-to-use application. The only drawback is that it only includes Vail Resorts affiliated slopes, so you Mary-Janers and Aspen adventurers are S.O.L. (Snow Outta Luck).
--Britt Chester, Westword"
A compliment of the highest order.
Though I was thrilled to accept the award (for which we received the gigantic sunglasses pictured above), the best part of the night for me was getting to interact with a lot of really innovative application developers, social media gurus, and businesses from every corner of the city. After meeting all of these great folks, a common theme emerged throughout the night: EpicMix is a bona fide hit. Countless people throughout the night pulled out their phones and showed me EpicMix sitting proudly on their home screens. Things even got heated between two friends who each claimed to have clocked more vertical feet than the other. Thankfully it only took them a few clicks to settle that bet.
As the night wound down, I had a lingering thought. This award was based entirely on last year's original version of EpicMix. With the all-new photo sharing component, and the visual and interactive improvements for this season, I've got a feeling that EpicMix could be a strong contender for a repeat performance.
If you haven't signed up for EpicMix yet this season, you can do so by going to EpicMix.com to register, then download the application from the iPhone or Android marketplaces.
--Mac Jaehnert