The Global Paddling Community

More than 100 people participated in the PLAYAK History Contest and the 5 winners have been chosen. They all picked an item from the new PLAYAK Collection and will receive it this week. For all the correct answers, see the rest of this article.

Question 1: "When did we start publishing paddling information on the Internet?"
Answer: The information appeared first in 1996. Not under the name PLAYAK.COM yet. It was a sub-site of Joempie's peronal homepage at that time.

Question 2: "How many people work on PLAYAK.COM almost daily?"
Answer: At the moment 3 volunteers (Joempie, JP and Tim) work on this online hobby on an almost daily basis. These are the people that read the 'editors' mailbox. And then there are some people who helped a lot a lot in the past and still help out every now and then: Oliver Castle (C1), Pascal Danell (Waterfalls), Perri Rothemich, Pierre Villecourt, David Arnaud and others.

Question 3: "Who is paying for all this?"
Answer: The editors mostly. It does cost quite a bit (web hosting, domains, online time, event sponsoring etc), but when we call ourselves independent, we mean Independent. We do have a little income from banners, but this doesn't cover the costs. The largest part of the cost is paid by the editors.

Question 4: "What was PLAYAK's name in the very beginning?"
Answer: Great Kayak Surfing Waves.

Question 5: "When did the PLAYAK agenda first appear?"
Answer: It was early 1999. It was the largest playboating agenda worldwide right from the start, written by hand in html. By now, the PLAYAK agenda can be maintained by the event organizers themselves and can incorporate clinics, festivals, slalom competitions etc etc. It can also be 'syndicated' by other websites, which means they can show (part) of our event entries live on their site (e.g. click 'Termine' on the German site kanurodeo.de).

Question 6: "When did PLAYAK start publishing its info under the name PLAYAK.COM?"
Answer: The name PLAYAK.COM was first used in December 1997. By now you can reach us under many other domains as well: playak.net, playak.biz, playak.info, playalp.com, playak.de, ww-kayak.com etc etc.