An Introduction and an Invitation to Collaborate

Hello, everyone! My name is John Moore, and I started as the new Head of Product back in April. I thought that it was about time that I introduced myself. I also want to share how the product team hopes to engage with all of you, the most passionate Carv skiers, more deeply in the development process. Together, we can make the experience better for everyone in the community.

Background About Me

The most important bit about me is that I was a fanatic Carv skier for two seasons before joining the team. I started skiing one season before that when my son (2 years old at the time) first hit the snow. The realization hit me quickly that I needed to get better fast, or he was going to be embarrassed to ski with me in a few years. I found Carv and fell in love.

I have been working in tech-enabled coaching for the past 15 years in the domain of health & wellness (Twine Health, Fitbit, Google), and I joined Carv for bigger reasons than just the love of skiing. I was blown away by the talent of the team and the sophistication of the technology stack. Carv is already an amazing ski coach, but, with the application of innovative new coaching techniques and the latest AI advances, we can make it truly incredible. In fact, I believe that we are on a path for it to be the best technology-driven coaching tool in the world, and that we can inspire other fields (sport, health & wellness, education, productivity, etc.) to more effectively empower people to reach their goals… and to help them have fun doing it!

Involving You in Product Development

So let’s talk about how we can work together to make Carv an even more awesome ski coach.

First of all, I hope that you all enjoyed the blog about Ski:IQ Nevado and that it gave you insight about all of the latest changes in the app. Sorry that it was a day late 🙂. And to all of you who saw a drop in your Ski:IQ, I feel your pain. I was closing in on 140, and now I am down to 132. But we have put a lot of careful thought into this decision, and there is no other way forward if we all want Carv to be a great coach. Great coaches learn new methods every season, and they push you to new heights... even if that means they have to admit that they had a few details wrong in the past. Also, we will be giving you new tools to track your progress on different snow surfaces, with different pitch, and with different turn types. It is essential to have the same measuring system for historical data and new data for this to work. While we knew that the change would be a challenge, we were thrilled that this move allowed us to give you more details for all of your historical data, including snow surface, turn visuals, and more features to come.

Going forward, we aim to make changes less of a surprise by involving all of you along the way. We will do this through our First Tracks program and through the Carv Skiers’ Community on Facebook.

First Tracks Program

First Tracks is our version of a trusted tester program, where we collaborate with users in the development of features before general availability. They get early access in exchange for providing critique and ideas.

We actually launched First Tracks back in June. We had over one hundred Carv skiers, including some of our biggest power users and most active Southern Hemisphere season skiers, contributing ideas and feedback on Ski:IQ Nevado every week. Features landed with greater impact because of their involvement, and some features went back to the drawing board because they didn’t meet the bar. I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has participated in the program so far. It has been a ton of fun, and we have learned so much from you.

Now we are opening up a First Tracks group for those of you who have already started skiing this season or who will this November. We want to work with you swiftly to address issues, including the lack of adequate impact of pitch on Ski:IQ discussed in the Ski:IQ Nevado blog, before the Northern Hemisphere season kicks into full gear. Please complete this survey to join.

In December, we will open up the program to a broader group of you skiing in the Northern Hemisphere season. We have invested in infrastructure to remotely control features without the need for a special version of the app, and we use WhatsApp communities to streamline the communications. There will be a mission every two weeks to try something out in the app followed by a survey to provide feedback. Most testers find it fun to discuss and debate in the WhatsApp community. To stay a part of the program, you simply need to complete a minimum number of missions each season. We will keep you posted on when this launches.

Carv Skiers’ Community on Facebook

We will share the findings of our work in First Tracks, give summaries of coming app changes, and send out surveys in the Carv Skiers’ Community. We understand that many of you won’t be interested in participating in First Tracks but will still want insight about app changes and will still want to provide feedback. This effort is for you.

The first survey is focused on getting your feedback about the recent app release and Ski:IQ Nevado. Please share your reflections here.

Onward and Upward

We feel that the recent work on Ski:IQ and the latest version of the app not only enhances the experience today but also creates the foundation for incredibly exciting things to come. Snow surface identification creates the opportunity to track progress by terrain, ski path visualizations identify asymmetries and specific phases of the turn that need work, the unified Real-time Audio experience centralizes the coaching brain and sets us up for new types of feedback and more advanced coaching, etc. I can’t wait to leverage all of this progress and continue building an even better Carv with all of you.