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The team: Playak People

About Playak, its people and some friends.

About Playak

Playak is an independent initiative by the nonprofit club 'Verein Playak' with the goal to be the worldwide paddling portal, in order to promote the growth of all paddling sports. It was started by the club's chairman Jeroen Houttuin: "Back in 1996 I had just started my personal homepage. Since I had huge difficulties finding all the cool kayaking spots people were talking about and I knew that others were having similar problems, I decided to share my hard-earned route descriptions in a special kayaking corner on my homepage, code-named Great Kayak Surfing Waves. People found out about it and soon started sending my descriptions from spots around the world. In 1998 it was time to turn the whole thing into an independent web site, and the name playak.com was born."

Core Team

Who Name and Location Function
Jeroen Houttuin (Verein Playak Chairman), Zurich, Switzerland A.k.a. Mr. Playak :-)

"I work on Playak full-time. I quit my cool management position at Switzerland's largest ISP in 2002 because I could no longer combine it with Playak. 

I mainly work on programming new services for the paddling community, marketing the site, managing partnerships and of course writing, collecting and editing content.

I am always happy to receive feedback of any sort, so feel free to get in touch with me by clicking here.

Personal paddling preference: I consider myself a 'passionate softcore playboater'. I am also an ACA Certified Whitewater SUP Instructor, and spend a lot of my real summer life getting new Zurich locals into the paddling sports, mosty by organizing free paddling clinics."

Extended Team

The extended team are the people that occasionaly do voluntary editorial or admin work for Playak .

Who Name and Location Function
Adrian Tregoning, South Africa

Adrian is a very active contributor/editor as well as an admin for many Playak services.

"Whilst obtaining my degree in mechanical engineering I was involved in a little car accident. I hurt my neck in the process and the third party insurance claim that I received a while later was enough for me to start kayaking. So in April 2004 I took to the water. I really wish I had started earlier. River running, creeking and multi-day trips are my favorite types of boating. However you’ll still find me in my play boat or surf kayak any other time. As long as I am in the water, or around a body of water, I am happy.

When not kayaking you will find me either windsurfing, fly fishing, reading, hiking, working on my website, photographing, camping or possibly even working!"

Chris Joosse, Seattle

Chris is Playak's specialist for reviewing hardcore creeking products.

"I'm more a creeker than anything else, but I'm an all-around boater. Playboating and squirt boating are fun, but given the choice, I'll take a good creek every time. I started paddling in 1998, and wish I'd started earlier.

Fun facts: I brew excellent beer, am married, write software for a living, and always seem to have a side project in the works. Some of them include:
http://www.PaddleForYourLife.org
http://www.chrisj.winisp.net
"

David Weber, Salt Lake City

David Weber joined Playak in 2004 by integrating the content of his former website boaterinformation.com into Playak.

"David Weber is an over-educated jack-of-all trades (master of none). He likes slow walks on the beach, turtleneck sweaters and bananas. David Weber at various times has been (or still is) to varying degrees the Supreme Overlord of Boaterinformation.com, administrator for BoaterTalk.com, Contributing Editor for Kayak Magazine and a freelance writer for Paddler Magazine. He began paddling in 1984, whitewater kayaking in 1993 and was fully house trained by 1996."

 

Most content on Playak is submitted to us by our readers, but the bottom line is of course that we are always looking for people to join the team. It does requires a bit more than just copy-pasting content. We work with MS Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc to do spell checking, image retouching and HTML editing. Of course we can't offer any money, but we can get you world-famous :-) Just contact Jeroen if you would like to join the team.

The following people are not currently on the team, but they were at one point or another:

JP Renaud, New Zealand
Oliver Castle, England
Tim (tao) Fullwood, Ireland
Mark Burton, Norway

Tim Sadler, England

Perri Rothemich, USA

David Arnaud, France
Beat Rüttimann, Switzerland
Paul Klarenberg, Switzerland

Special thanks go to Corran Addison, Hannah Paul and Ieske Godwaldt for their great support during the early years.

Surfrider Foundation
See the AUP for our Acceptable Use Policy and a Privacy Statement. Verein Playak is responsible for all editorial content on this site (including all graphics). No part of this site may be duplicated in any way without explicit permission from Verein Playak. Verein Playak takes great care to only publish original content, but since part of the content is user generated, we cannot always guarantee this 100%. If you notice any copyright violations, please let the editors know through the contact form and they will take appropriate action immediately. As a news and information platform, we republish small text snippets and thumbnail images, but always link to original content on other sites, and thus aim to adhere to a 'Fair Use' policy. If you believe we violate this policy in any particular case, please contact us directly and we'll take appropriate action immediately.