Pulling back the wool

We have all been in the position, we have all had that friend. You know the one, the guy who ends up in that relationship. The girl is easy on the eyes and seems relatively cool at first. Then things start to change and your friend's convictions and ideals start shifting. Your gut feel is to confront him and let him know this relationship is killing him, but you don't because it is not worth risking your friendship over. Inevitably you end up drifting apart until virtually no friendship remains. NOTE: I have been informed that the same crisis exists for women in the form of the 'bad boyfriend'.

Welcome to my and many others relationship with snowboarding. In this analogy, snowboarding is the friend but the bad girlfriend is difficult to define as there are many pieces working to influence the direction of the sport. This analogy doesn't necessarily mean that you give up riding, because at its core snowboarding is fun, regardless of the industry that seeks to benefit from its mass appeal.

Over the past few months this analogy has become painfully obvious and the outcome looks far too forgone. Through a series of conversations with industry friends, a common theme has developed, a general dissatisfaction with the current state and direction of the industry. Unfortunately, these feelings have been segregated to the chairlift and bar conversations as people fear the repercussions on their ties. In an odd piece of irony, an industry with deep roots in rebellious individuality now is crippled by forced complacency. The result is a public facade that the Iraqi communications minister would be proud of, "nothing to see here, things are great, did you see that Olympic exposure, how about that triple cork.".

The problem is that while complacency protects one's short term connections, it threatens the long term sustainability of the industry those connections are based on. It is imperative that those that really care speak their mind and discuss constructively the industry. To aid in this discussion 7YW will be presenting an industry review. While our established contemporaries are releasing their product review brochures, we will be moderating a round table discussion looking at where we have come from, the challenges at hand, and where we are going. This discussion will feature original content from our users, special guest op-eds, and interviews with key members of the community. As always the discussions that result will be private and protected by our enhanced terms of use.