What the heck is happening to surfski.info?  What about the World Series?  What’s going on???

Surfski.info – Upgrade

It’s been a challenging month.

We had to upgrade the back-end software on which surfski.info runs.  For one thing we were on version 1.0 of Joomla.  Version 1.0 ceased to be maintained in July 2009 so we had no choice but to upgrade. 

For another, version 1.5 promised great things in terms of speed and functionality.

But…  migrating a database and over 1000 articles and photos and the functionality that we had in the version 1 system proved to be something of a nightmare.  Some of the functionality ceased to work and, worst of all, what did work did so MUCH slower than before – to the extent that the entire site was unusable.

However, as you can see, we’re making progress on the speed issue and the site is once more reasonably fast.  We still have too much stuff on the home page and we’re working on a new design that should speed things up further – and will make it easier to navigate the site and get to the great content that we’ve built up over the last five years.  I’m thinking specifically about all the “getting started” and training articles that are still relevant.

Some of the menu links are not working at the moment, but we’ll get that right in the next few days.

If you have any comments or suggestions, we’d love to hear them.

And I need to apologize to three understandably angry and disappointed customers who have not received their stuff from the surfski.info shop.  We’ll be sorting them out in the coming week.  We have taken the shop down altogether until the site is fully functional again.

World Series

Our World Series has been in an interesting situation.  Last year Surfski.info’s administration of the series left something to be desired – we didn’t have enough updates through the year and the rules appeared to be too complicated for many of the paddlers! 

Apart from that, it’s grown too big for us to administer as a one-man, after-hours operation!

Aside from that a further complication arose – the possibility of ICF getting involved with the World Series.

ICF

We had an indication last year that ICF was interested in supporting surfski and indeed, at an ICF meeting in London, the decision was taken by ICF to start a surfski World Cup Series.  As readers of this website know however, paddlers, and particularly surfski paddlers have a wide variety of opinions on whether ICF involvement is a positive or negative thing in a sport.

Specifically there are concerns around:

• How the sport of surfski would be represented at ICF
• What the consequences would be in terms of cost and procedures which could be onerous for volunteer race organizers
• The costs to paddlers
• The issue of media rights – the sport clearly needs to own its own media rights if it is to attract sponsors.

It became clear that it was necessary for a body to be set up to represent surfski in order to facilitate communication with ICF.

International Surfski Paddling Association

Race organizers and paddlers from around the world agreed that an independent association should be set up – and the International Surfski Paddling Association has been formed.  A separate press release will contain the details.

Among other things the association will represent the sport of surfski and will facilitate communication between the sport and other parties such as the ICF.  In addition, the association will take over the administration of the World Series.

International Events Calendar

I’ve been receiving a number of emails from people requesting dates of international races around the world.

As noted above, the decision on which races will form part of the 2010 World Series is now a matter for the ISPA to confirm.  This information will be published in the near future.

But here are the dates that I have been given by the race organizers concerned.  We’ll be putting up links to the races asap.