Snowgo

Passage: Snowserve

It was with a tinge of sadness that I deleted www.snowserve.co.uk from my links yesterday.

The site was set up in 1999 as a companion to the "snow" list, an email list created in 1996 by Will Macdonald to connect UK snowboarders. Although it had a relatively small number of subscribers (100-150 I think) the list in those days was an excellent resource for UK riders and as a community it thrived, spawning several meet ups, snowboarding trips and friendships.

In the heady days of 1999 expanding the list to a web site seemed the obvious next move and Snowserve was born one September evening in Costa Coffee in Soho Square. My small contribution to the initial brainstorming session was to suggest the name; the site itself was developed by Will and Chris Berry.

Despite a burst of initial enthusiasm from a core of eager contributors, the web site never really took off to the extent we had all hoped, though it did continue to serve as a portal and archive for the mailing list.

In the last season or two even the mailing list has gone quiet as more and more people gravitate away from email lists and towards web forums. Last week Will and Chris decided to pull the plug on the Snowserve web site and call it a day (the list will continue).

It is sad to see it go but I hope that as the Web changes some of the old contributors may turn to blogs to share their snowboard know-how and when they do I will be the first to link to them.