Playak Newsflash started the same year I sold my first Jackson Kayaks, in 2004. Jeoren Houttuin from Austria created this service and did some awesome things with it. First off, instead of the New York Times every morning, I got the Playak Newsflash, which was a collated list of web articles and blogs that were relevant to whitewater kayaking. My website, jacksonkayak.com was my personal blogspot from 2001-2003, and when we created World Kayak as a community-building online location for paddlers we had two websites that fed the Playak News Flash on a regular basis. Jeroen had a great concept and it really provided a lot of value to both the everyday paddler and to people in the paddling business. A service that Playak offered was to see your rankings as a business for online presence and the rankings of your team members. I am a competitor and also recognize that if you want to sell something you need to be seen and with Jackson Kayak (and World Kayak) I chose to sell my kayaks by having paddlers in my boats that could not only show them off personally, but if I gave them a voice online, that they would write blogs with photos and videos to showcase our kayaks in action. While I got a lot of grief from my competitors for having a very large team at JK, I had a large number of awesome paddlers writing about their exploits and the kayaks and Playak shared their blogs on the Playak Newsflash for thousands to see.
2010 is the oldest ones I still have in my inbox… Still pretty cool to see – Jason Craig, World Kayak blogs, etc.
As an individual team member I like to lead by example and do my best to work hard and produce valuable information for paddlers, or fodder for recreational reading, at least. I don’t like getting out worked by my own team, but hope they all try as it creates a ton of great content from many voices with different perspectives. I check the rankings of my team, of which I am on the team, of course, every month at a minimum. It was a game for me, one that I will miss!
In the early years Jeroen and I would have some great conversations at Paddlesports Expo in Europe, or at Outdoor Retailer in the USA about the industry, media, his service, etc. and he constantly improved it. Unfortunately, social media became prominent and less and less paddlers go to websites to get their content. I am still writing blogs at Apex Watercraft because I enjoy it, but admittedly less than I used to. This format for writing is more fun for me than Facebook and it lasts longer and is easier to find when I look for it. I will continue to write blogs and create videos, etc. and provide value in that way when i have valuable stuff to share, like this year’s Jessie Stone kids camp recap, etc..
Below are screenshots of every year since 2011 of the annual rankings by athlete. Jeroen had to manually add paddlers to this list and SUP athletes/influencers were added in there at some point as well. In the early years paddlers like Tao Berman, Steve Fisher, Anthony Yap, etc were prominent. My kids were already getting popular by the 2010’s. I wish the archives were available from 2004, as there would be more old school paddlers shown. Click on each one to see familiar names you may have forgotten.
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- Fun to see each year shown here… Each year Jeroen tweaked the way points were scored for presence in media so the annual numbers are not necessarily comparable.
Pretty cool to see the 2008 listing… Jesse Coombs (no big names), Tao, etc.
I will miss Playak Newsflash. Perhaps Jeroen will find a new technology to bring to Kayaking soon that we can enjoy!
Meanwhile- last night KC got a SUP lesson from the man, myth, legend, Eric Stiller of Manhattan Kayak and SUP. Eric has created some of the most innovated an effective training techniques in the world to engage the entire body and learn proper strokes. KC was lucky to get a lesson while we had a cookout on the Hudson in Manhattan.
Stiller teaching KC as only he can do