ThinkTank 2010

Wisconsin Waterski Convention & Expo 2010

Hosted by the

When: Feb 26 - Feb 28, 2010 Where: Chula Vista Resort, The Dells, WI

Every year in early March, the Wisconsin Waterski Federation hosts a waterski convention, which has been known as ThinkTank. This year, they decided to change the name to The Wisconsin Waterski Expo & Convention. The name has changed, but the purpose of the event has stayed the same. It's a convention that is set up to attract water skiers from around the country to get together to share ideas, plan out the coming season, and get instruction from top pros that are invited to the convention to conduct classes ranging from how to build pyramids, barefoot waterski, wakeboard and hydrofoil. It's the show that gets everyone pumped and ready for the upcoming season.

Since Chris Copeland has taken over the Expo, he's made some fairly drastic changes to how the event is run to try to attract more skiers to the Expo and make it more fun for all involved. In 2009, he eliminated the doubles dry land competition prior to the Friday evening fashion show and replaced it with the "Waterskiers Got Talent" contest. He also put a 10 minute limit on how long a fashion show participant had to show their line. This was to give all vendors equal time. This year, he eliminated the fashion show all together. The result of the change was the large Friday evening crowd waiting around as talent show organizers frantically asked skiers to enter the talent show. They finally wrangled three contestants into the competition. It was entertaining, but seemed a bit thrown together. The sound system was cutting out, and the announcer became frustrated that the crowd (a room full of people that had been drinking since arriving) would not quiet down. But the show went and and we all had a few laughs and a few gasps. We recorded the acts so you can watch for yourself.

*Water Skiers Got Talent - Click Here*

We hope that the organizers look for new ways to spice up the Friday evening gathering. It's such a great opportunity to get everyone excited about the weekend. We'd suggest doing something like a team dodge-ball tournament. Or if the talent contest is something they want to keep, make it a Karaoke contest. More people may be willing to do karaoke. My vote would go towards dodge-ball or a series of sport challenges. You could have individual high score and team high scores.

Some other changes included a Friday evening Club Presidents networking dinner. We didn't attend this event. We were busy setting up our booth in the convention center during this time. A lot of people check into the hotel later in the evening, so we're unsure of how many people attended this dinner. We were glad to see the organizers allowed skiers to browse through the convention area on Friday evening. It gave skiers something to do while waiting for the gathering in the Grand Ballroom.

Most of the day on Saturday was spent in the BarefootCentral.com and Eagle Sports booth. We had all the BFC Freestyle videos playing throughout the day. They were a big hit as always. It's so cool to watch the reactions of people as they watch them for the first time. Mouths drop to the floor, "WOW!" is heard a lot, then they return multiple times with friends they've told about the videos that didn't believe what they were telling them. If you having seen the Freestyle Videos or any of the BFC videos we've shot over the last 10 years, you need to check them out. Just click on the links below:


Nothing beats trying on a new barefoot suit	The Expo Center. Mike Seipel was on hand as always hocking BI defective suits for $100. Seems he has an unlimited supply of factory defects. LOL! Eagle put up a sign to let everyone know they can fix the cheap suits for you when they come apart. If you have a suit you'd like to get fixed (any brand), give Eagle Sports a call and they'll do what they can to fix you up. 1-800-862-4424

During the day on Saturday, the skiers that attend break out into classes to learn everything from barefoot waterskiing, to how to build a pyramid, to team management, fund raising, etc... This year, I was asked to fill in for Paul Macdonald to conduct a class on Freestyle Barefoot. Paul had some last minute conflicts that prevented him from joining Ron at the Expo. I also conducted a class on How to Shoot and Edit a Good Waterski Video. Ron Scarpa and Dan Baumgartner conducted several classes on barefoot waterskiing ranging from beginning to tournament level skiing. Ron demonstrated the basics of using your core muscles for balance, toe holds, backwards, and even showed that he could still easily do a dry land toe-up. During the Freestyle class, we talked about dolphin starts, the basics of side slides, jumping in and out of the boat, rope lengths, and the scissor slide.

Each year, after a long day at the Expo, we invite the Eagle Factory Team, as well as key people that help out at events throughout the year, to join us in a nice dinner. It's a time to relax, catch up with each other, and enjoy some great food together. We had an amazing dinner at McCormick's Steakhouse, located in the resort. Some of the biggest crap legs I've ever seen and steaks way too big to each. We had a great time.

One of my highlights of the show was getting an opportunity to interview both Ron Scarpa and Mike Siepel together. They talked about the sport today and then shared memories of how they got into the sport. Check out the video below:

Click Here for Interview with Ron and Mike

We made some announcements during the weekend that you may want to make note of. There's a lot of rumors going around that aren't necessarily true, so we thought we'd give you some facts here:

Announcement #1 - BFC will not be attending Footstock 2010. The organizers of Footstock contacted us a couple weeks ago and informed us that they'd like to change things up and open the sponsorship up to multiple vendors. For the last 5 years, BFC has been the sole sponsor providing all the equipment sold on site, pre-promotion of the event on the website, prizes for contests such as the costume contest, various raffles, wine booth, bringing skiers in from other countries, and post production of videos on the web. It's a large task and one we enjoyed doing. When you add up what we spend each year for Footstock, (over $10,000) to get there and back from Texas each year, sponsorship dollars for prize money and giveaways, etc... and compare that to the average $1-2K in sales profits, we loose an average of $7500 sponsoring Footstock. We've always been willing to write it off since we were given the opportunity to promote the event and try new things. Our goal was to help build the event back up to the premier Figure-8 event of the year. I think we've accomplished what we set out to do and we've enjoyed every minute of it. We hope to be back some day!

Announcement #2 - We will be at Wisconsin States this year July 15-18 in Wisconsin Rapids. Expect to see an Eagle Sports & BFC tent with all the latest gear.

Announcement #3 - We'll be attending the Pro Waterski Tour stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Aug 6-7 to showcase Barefoot Freestyle. Expect to see some high flying crazy barefoot stunts. We'll have equipment on-site at the H2Osmosis.com booth. This will be a HUGE event. For more information on this event, check out the following websites:

http://ballofspray.com

www.theproskitour.com

For information on where BFC or Eagle Sports will be this year
click here

Announcement #4 - Last year, we introduced the Showski Challenge video contest and that we would announce the winners of the 2009 contest at ThinkTank (Expo) this year. Unfortunately, the teams didn't participate this year. We needed at least 8 entries and we had only two. We don't know why the teams chose not to submit, but it's $2000 worth of prizes that went unclaimed. Do to lack of interest, we've decided to cancel the program. We'll get creative and find some other uses for that money.

Thanks to everyone that helped make our trip to the Wisconsin Waterski Expo & Convention a success. Special thanks to Scott & Karen Reed, Ron Scarpa, Mike Seipel, Gino Yauchler, Lucky Lowe, Dan Baumgartner, and Chris Copeland for making our stay an enjoyable one.