NOLS at the Outdoor Retailer Show

The NOLS Bus and NOLS marketing staff are at the Outdoor Retailer Summer Show in Salt Lake City, Utah. The show is the outdoor industry”s meeting place and NOLS has a large presence at the show with NOLS grads everywhere.

A few grads I’ve run into–Jimmy Chin was signing autographs at the Outside magazine booth. Jimmy will be featured in their upcoming issue on top 20 people in the outdoors. I ran into Andrew Davison, who runs a multi-media marketing firm called texturemedia. Eric and Laura Poole are here working for Backpacker Magazine. Kate Williams is here as the executive director of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail Initiative. Phil Powers, the executive director of the American Alpine Club is also here at the show.

Yesterday, NOLS had a great day at the show. At the Outdoor Industry Association breakfast NOLS was featured as a case study for the work we do introducing young people to the outdoors. At noon NOLS instructors took on NOLS grads in a cook-off sponsored by Jetboil stoves. The instructors won, but it was close (I was on the NOLS grad team!). At the same time Anthony Schweizer of BzzAgent, was doing a presentation on word of mouth marketing and he talked a bit about NOLS success relying almost entirely on our graduates recruiting for us. NOLS new book, Wilderness Navigation also made its debut yesterday.

NOLS marketing staff have also spent time meeting with current partners, Patagonia, Outdoor Research, Backpacker magazine and Stackpole Publishing, while taking time to investigate other relationships with some of the top brands in the outdoor industry. Tomorrow will be filled with more of the same.

All the while, Big Blue, the NOLS Bus is parked at the south entrance to the Salt Palace convention center greeting the show attendees on their way in.

More tomorrow!

Bruce Palmer, NOLS marketing director