Lake Placid Conference Center – September 21-23

Below are seminars that will be at the show and we have more coming soon in all areas. Please note subject to change.

KEYNOTE by Kelly Brush of the Kelly Brush Foundation

Kelly will kick off the EXPO giving a talk about her life and her foundation and all should attend. This is not to be missed!

Operations Sessions

NSAA Lift Safety Boot Camp – Mike Lane, Director of Technical Services, NSAA

Lift operations teams face constant pressure to balance guest safety, operational efficiency, and staff readiness, often with limited time to test new approaches before the season starts. This session equips participants with practical, field-tested strategies to strengthen every stage of lift operations, from maze and ramp design to root cause analysis after an incident. Attendees will examine ANSI-compliant unseated passenger plans, explore techniques for clear guest communication and education, and review current best practices shaping lift operations across the industry, drawing on lessons learned at resorts of varying size and terrain. Through interactive discussions, real-world scenarios, and collaborative problem-solving with peers facing similar operational challenges, participants will work through common lift operations hurdles together and build a stronger foundation for their teams. You will leave with actionable tools and frameworks to strengthen lift operations, reduce risk, and elevate the guest experience at your resort.

Takeaways:

Improve maze and ramp design for safer guest flow
Tools and strategies for developing and updating unseated passenger plans
Use root cause analysis to reduce repeat incidents
Build clearer, more effective guest communication practices

This session is for lift operations and other ski area personnel involved with lift riding safety and response.

Advanced Ski Lift Math, designing a lift w/ Mike – Mike Lane – NSAA

No calculator needed – overview and design understanding. The class contains a brief refresher on simple lift calculations such as capacity, speed, intervals, then moves to understand why certain Lift configurations are more costly, then expanding to what actually happens in the design process based on ski area input. The 201 and 301 Class for Lift Math.- an overview w/ enough detail to get you thinking.

NSAA’s Incidents & Component Failure Database – Mike Lane – NSAA

NSAA has created a lift related incident and critical component failure database. The database and submittals to it will help in notifying the ropeway maintenance crews of trends, and expand educational opportunities to address potential issues. Mike will discuss the process of submitting the form electronically and further discuss what should and shouldn’t be submitted.

Takeaways:

Understanding of the purpose of the database, the data’s security, and personal protected information.
Understanding of the submittal process.
Understanding of what and what should not be reported.

Why and How to Write a Quality Assurance Program for Your Lift Maintenance Program – Mike Lane – NSAA

A strong quality assurance (QA) program keeps lifts reliable, teams aligned, and documentation audit ready. This session explains why QA is essential to safety, uptime, and guest trust, and outlines how to build a right-sized system for any ski area.

Takeaways: Reference LMRG – ANSI B77.1 Quality Assurance and Documentation

Understand the core components of QA: standards, verification steps, documentation tools, and corrective-action cycles.
Map your maintenance workflow and identify critical controls and verification steps.
Create simple, consistent documentation—checklists, sign-offs, variance logs, and corrective-action tracking.
Establish a sustainable QA cycle with internal audits, supervisor ride-alongs, metrics, and structured follow-up.
Apply manufacturer guidance and current best practices to reduce rework and standardize procedures.
Use practical templates and processes to strengthen recordkeeping and demonstrate due diligence.

This session will be especially beneficial to lift maintenance leaders, operations managers, and teams responsible for reliability, documentation, and compliance.

Leveraging AI in Mountain Operations – Earl Saline, Director of Education, NSAA

Operations teams are being asked to do more with tight staffing, shifting conditions, and constant pressure to keep work safe, efficient, and consistent. This session will dive into how ski areas can use accessible AI tools to support everyday operational work across mountain operations, snowmaking, grooming, and lift teams. Drawing on practical examples from document review, training development, inspection support, and planning, it explains where AI can save time, where human judgment must be incorporated, and how to use these tools without exposing sensitive information. Attendees will see how AI can help turn existing SOPs, logs, and standards into clearer checklists, training outlines, and first drafts that staff can refine for real-world use. You will leave with a practical framework for testing AI on one operational task right away to improve consistency, speed up preparation, and support better decisions on the mountain.

Takeaways:

Identify operational tasks where AI can be used without replacing the human component
Use AI to build first drafts of checklists, training materials, and planning documents from existing resources
Recognize what information is safe to use in consumer AI tools and what should stay out
Apply prompt-writing techniques that produce more useful, resort-ready results
Designed for operations managers and on-mountain teams.

Snowmaking Best Practices and Operational Strategy for Surviving a Warm, Difficult Winter – Ayden Wilber, VP of Operations, Greek Peak Mountain Resort
This presentation explores proven snowmaking and mountain operations strategies for getting the most out of every weather window during a challenging winter.

Snowmaking Math and Numbers – Tim Wang, Ratnik Industries

This will cover formulas, calculations and numerical data in several aspects in snowmaking and how they relate in real life to snowmaking personnel.

Fresh Tracks: New Approaches to Boosting Skier Participation – Dave Belin, SnowPartners

Participation in downhill skiing and snowboarding dipped this winter — and after a lackluster season nationally, the industry is ready to turn it around. The goal is simple: more people, sliding on snow, at your ski area. Sounds simple, but you might be asking yourself: what’s the best way to approach this always challenging issue? Brand-new skiers or lapsed ones? What message actually gets someone out on the snow? To take a lesson or not to take a lesson? And what’s working right now at ski areas like yours?

Dave Belin, chair of NSAA’s Growth Committee, will present what the committee is prioritizing, who the target it, and how they’re tracking it. Then a panel of ski area operators shares what’s actually moving the needle — and what they’re trying next. Walk out with a plan to bring more people to your mountain this winter — first-timers and lapsed skiers alike.

Elevating Mountain Operations and Chairlifts with Artificial Intelligence – Dave Byrd, NSAA and Earl Saline, NSAA

How will Artificial Intelligence reshape ski area operations, especially with lift operations? This session will analyze the rapidly evolving use of A.I. video technologies to improve safety and operations, with the few examples at the small number of ski areas experimenting with A.I. and chairlifts, including new fraud detection options. We will also show how A.I. can be used to summarize—with the right prompts—manufacturers’ manuals into more manageable guidance and safety action plans and operator checklists. We’ll discuss some of the risk management considerations using A.I., including new strategies with overall video surveillance. This will be a valuable session for lift operations managers.

MPWR- New online system for registering your ski tow/tramway/Amusement Device – Paul Falchi, Safety & Health Program Manager 1, Utica

Covering the new SH 50 (Ski Tow/Tramway Application Form) and also Amusement Devices SH 80 (Amusement Device Application) and SH 87 (Amusement Device Location Notice).

Preparing for DOL Inspection and Investigation – Brian Koch-Supervising Safety & Health Inspector – Buffalo

What to expect from your inspector for routine inspections and accident investigations.

Management Sessions

JUST ADDED: 9/10: Modernize Without Comprimise – A Blueprint for the 21st Century Independent Ski Area – Stuart Winchester, editor and host of The Storm Skiing Journal & Podcast; Erik Morgensen, Indy Pass, Entabeni Systems and Black Mountain Ski Area

Stuart Winchester, editor and host of The Storm Skiing Journal & Podcast, interviews Erik Mogensen, owner of Indy Pass, Entabeni Systems, and Black Mountain, New Hampshire. When Mogensen was a teenager, his local ski area outside of Buffalo, New York closed to the public. He felt as though he’d lost a big part of himself. In the decades since, Mogensen has dedicated his life to helping small ski areas access tools to reach the modern consumer (tech platforms, multimountain passes) and the affordable infrastructure (lifts, snowmaking, grooming) to ensure a good experience once they arrive. Winchester and Mogensen will explore Black Mountain’s rapid transformation from a ski area on the brink of closure into a booming business without losing its essence, and how that same toolkit can help any ski area meet the demands of operating a ski area in 2026 and beyond.

Preparing for the unthinkable: Emergency preparedness, event security and active assailant planning – NYSP Troop B, School and Community Outreach officer James D’ambro

As ski areas (and similar venues like the LP venues) continue to host larger events and welcome diverse guest populations, emergency preparedness has evolved beyond traditional mountain operations. This session explores how ski areas are adapting to today’s security environment through proactive planning, strong partnerships, and coordinated response strategies.

Officer D’ambro will begin the session with an overview of how event planning has changed, including the implementation of incident action plans, security measures, prohibited item policies, and collaboration with local, county, and state law enforcement. Attendees will gain insight into how these partnerships support safe, successful events while maintaining a positive guest experience.

New York State Police will then present on active assailant awareness, response considerations, and mass casualty incident (MCI) principles, followed by a discussion on how ski areas can prepare for and support unified emergency response.

Participants will leave with practical ideas to strengthen emergency planning, enhance interagency coordination, and improve readiness for high-consequence incidents.

Business Succession Planning: Assuring the Successful Continuation of Your Ski Area while Navigating New Tax Law Shift and Labor Challenges – Lee Resnick – Resnick Associates/Resnick Succession Group

In understandable language, SANY business owner attendees will learn about the 1/1/2026 federal estate tax law change that could have a direct impact on their overall wealth and future health of their ski area. In addition, there will be discussion surrounding vital strategies in the areas of business succession as well as eventual transition of assets (with special focus on the business). Typically, the more successful business owners become, they also become more vulnerable. Accordingly, techniques will be discussed showing how to combat those vulnerabilities and assure that the business remains ongoingly successful! Among the areas of focus will be why profitable businesses ultimately fail, the importance of business owners coordinating business succession plans with estate plans, addressing active vs. inactive children within a family business (does it make sense to leave the business and related businesses to all your children?), liquidity issues, valuation methodologies that will satisfy the IRS while lowering the tax bill, the proper type of buy-sell agreement that allows for maximum tax savings/cost efficiency and frequent insurance funding mistakes that oftentimes result in massive tax liabilities that could have been legally avoided. The session concludes by tying in many of the areas of the seminar discussion into a compelling real life family business case!

***Special attention will be given to the June 2024 United States Supreme Court Ruling that will severely impact business owners that have specific types of buy/sell agreements that are funded with insurance (which most are). Current labor challenges and how to retain key personnel will be addressed, and much more!

This session drives home the point that as a business owner, when it comes to business succession and estate planning, you must know more than you have ‘something in place’ and realize that the specifics of the plan directly correlate to the success and outcome of your plan!

Building the Future Ski Industry Workforce: How The Pipeline Project is Connecting Career & Technical Education to Resort Careers – Tiffany Whitcomb, The Pipeline Project

The ski industry has a workforce challenge—but it also has an opportunity. This presentation explores how The Pipeline Project is connecting Career & Technical Education (CTE) students with meaningful careers in the ski industry through year-round workforce development. Learn why today’s CTE students represent an untapped talent pipeline, the barriers that currently exist between schools and resorts, and how The Pipeline Project is helping bridge that gap through partnerships, career exploration, and hands-on workforce initiatives.

From Stoke to Staying Power: What Keeps Seasonal Employees Coming Back – Kathleen Brennan, CEO – PSIA-AASI Eastern Region

Seasonal staffing remains one of the biggest challenges facing ski areas and outdoor recreation businesses. While much attention is given to recruiting employees, long-term success depends on creating an environment that inspires people to return year after year.

Drawing on decades of experience in snowsports education, workforce development, and leadership in a variety of seasonal businesses, this session explores what transforms an enthusiastic first-season employee into a committed member of your team. Participants will examine the role of passion, mentorship, belonging, recognition, and personal growth in employee retention, and discuss practical ways to create experiences that encourage seasonal staff to return, contribute, and grow.

This session is relevant to managers and supervisors across all departments, including snowsports, lift operations, rentals, guest services, food and beverage, patrol, and mountain operations.

Me, Myself & AI: Building Your Virtual Chief of Staff – Mike Lannen, Eternity Marketing

You already have a chief of staff. It’s just you, doing the job until 9pm.

This 75-minute working session is built for general managers and operations directors: the people holding the schedule, the staffing, the vendors, and the budget in their heads at the same time. You’ll learn to build an AI that actually knows your job. Not a chatbot you re-explain yourself to every morning. A system that has read your email, sat in on your calls, seen your calendar, and can draft, decide, and report back in your voice.

Led by Mike Lannen, founder of Eternity and an internationally known speaker on AI for travel and tourism, this working session is a live build. Bring a laptop. We start by having ChatGPT and Claude interview you to pull out how you actually think and write, then connect those tools to the systems you already live in every day.

You’ll walk away with:
A step-by-step guide to connecting Claude or ChatGPT to your email, calendar, messages, and Zoom or Teams recordings
A written voice profile your AI uses so its output sounds like you, not like a press release
A working “virtual chief of staff” dashboard that pulls your own data into one view
Scheduled tasks that run every morning without you and send you the results
The security and privacy guardrails to put in place before you connect anything

Labor Laws and Regulations for Ski Areas – Johanna Cabrera, Supervising Labor Standards Investigator and Christopher Mason, Investigator Officer

The Strategic Enforcement Unit of the Division of Labor Standards will discuss Labor laws and regulations affecting ski areas and ski instructors, including minimum wage coverage, wage calculation, required records, wage payments, child labor permitted hours, employment certificates, prohibited occupations, postings, and schedules.

Marketing Sessions

Leveraging AI in Mountain Operations – Earl Saline, Director of Education, NSAA

Takeaways:

Identify operational tasks where AI can be used without replacing the human component
Use AI to build first drafts of checklists, training materials, and planning documents from existing resources
Recognize what information is safe to use in consumer AI tools and what should stay out
Apply prompt-writing techniques that produce more useful, resort-ready results
Designed for operations managers and on-mountain teams.

Reversing the Slide. Fixing the Trial and Conversion Funnel – Sam Rufo, nxtConcepts

The 10% year-over-year drop in lesson visits flagged by Mike Reitzell, at NSAA, isn’t an operations problem. It’s a marketing funnel problem. This highly tactical “revenue recovery” workshop reframes lesson and rental bookings as a funnel you can fix, stage by stage, using marketing tools you already have plus the newer ones reshaping how guests find and book you.

We’ll work top to bottom through the funnel.
Get found (awareness). How guests now discover ski areas through AI search and answer engines (AEO/GEO), and what it takes to be the answer when a first-timer asks ChatGPT or Google “where can I learn to ski near me.”
Remove the friction (booking). A live audit of the first-timer mobile booking experience and landing page, finding the clicks and confusion that quietly kill sales.
Nurture and convert (re-engagement). Building automated, non-salesy lifecycle email sequences that move lift-ticket buyers toward lessons and rentals, plus custom audiences and ad retargeting to bring back the guests who didn’t book the first time.
Target precisely (the thread throughout). Moving beyond the “blast email” by segmenting local vs. destination and skier vs. rider, so every message fits the guest.
Throughout the session, you’ll see how to build these pieces faster using the AI already inside the software you use. We’ll compare Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude.

What you’ll walk away with: a concrete, dated digital playbook for this coming winter.

This is a working session, not a lecture. Bring a phone or laptop.

Practical AI for Every Department – Dave Gibson – Propeller Media Works/Accessbility Works

There is not a single department at any resort that has enough staff or resources. That’s not a complaint – that’s just the ski industry. But for the first time, there’s something you can actually do about it that doesn’t involve hiring a unicorn or burning out your best people.

AI won’t just help your team do more with less. It will give them capabilities they flat out didn’t have before. That’s not an exaggeration – it’s what’s already happening at organizations that have stopped debating it and started using it.

This session covers real use cases across operations, training, finance, administration, marketing, and customer service – plus the workflows that cut across every department. We’ll also take a deeper look at two areas where AI is creating both urgent risk and real opportunity: the emerging agentic web and what it means for how guests find and choose resorts, and how AI is reshaping the customer service experience.

Bring your questions. You’ll leave Lake Placid with something you can put to work immediately. AKA Superpowers. Cape not included.

Where Marketing Meets Risk: Aligning Brand, Safety, and the Guest Experience – Hugh Reynolds, Chief Marketing Officer, SnowPartners with Lauren Garfield, Sales & Marketing Manager at Whiteface Mountain and Jackie Cerra, Marketing Director of Mountain Creek Resort.

Marketing and risk management have traditionally occupied opposite sides of the chair lift. Marketing teams are tasked with showcasing the excitement, progression, and adventure that define snowsports, while risk managers focus on safety, reducing incidents, liability, and exposure. In today’s digital-first environment, however, the two disciplines have become increasingly intertwined.

From social media content and influencer partnerships to safety campaigns, incident response, and reputation management, marketing now plays a critical role in shaping guest behavior and supporting resort safety objectives. In this panel discussion, resort operators, risk managers, and marketing leaders will explore how successful resorts are bridging the gap between brand storytelling and guest safety. Panelists will share real-world examples, lessons learned, and practical strategies for using marketing as a tool to strengthen safety culture, support risk management efforts, and protect both guests and the business.

Risk Management Sessions

Incident Investigation in the Field: From Scene to Report with Earl Saline of NSAA and Mark Petrozzi of AlpenRisk

When an incident occurs on the mountain, the quality of the investigation that follows can impact the claims and litigation that sometimes follow. This full-day, hands-on course walks risk managers and patrollers through the entire investigation process, from the role of the first responder through evidence collection, witness interviews, and report writing. Morning classroom sessions cover legal foundations, immediate response protocols, a simple framework for approaching any scene, and documentation considerations for photos, measurements, conditions, and recording, including practical use of the tools available to you. The afternoon moves outside for on-hill application where participants practice scene documentation and mock witness interviews before returning indoors to draft and compare incident reports. You will leave equipped to run a well-documented investigation the next time an incident happens at your area.

Takeaways:

A step-by-step protocol for securing the scene, addressing priorities, and identifying roles and responsibilities
A simple framework for sizing up any scene, plus techniques for documenting it, from photos to terrain measurements
Practical interview skills for gathering reliable statements from guests and staff
Hands-on practice running a full investigation, from scene to report

Relevant for risk managers, ski patrol, and others involved in the incident investigation process.

NSAA’s Fall Education Series (FES) is returning to the SKI NY-PORA EXPO with another packed agenda of current trends in risk management, legal updates, operational best practices, and helpful technologies emerging across the ski industry. Sponsored by MountainGuard for 33 straight years since its inception in 1993, MountainGuard’s Ryan Lavoie and NSAA’s Dave Byrd will again helm the FES—along with assistance from our amazing local ASDA counsel in New York. This year, the FES will be taking place in four distinct sessions on Tuesday, September 22.

Session 1: Re-visiting Terrain Parks: Safety, Risk, and the Latest Industry Considerations

Terrain parks remain an important staple of ski area offerings, and like most departments, there is an ongoing progression and evolution in park operations. We will discuss fresh strategies in park safety, including signage, daily operations, guest education, entrances and exits, investigations and video surveillance, and unique features. As park events and competitions grow in popularity, event risk management also remains critical. From workers compensation and freestyle lessons to impactful safety messaging with social media and the value of NSAA’s Terrain Park Resource Guide, we’ll discuss effective strategies to mitigate risk and exposures, and improve park safety.

Session 2: State of the Slopes: Important Industry Updates arising from a Shifting Regulatory Landscape

The regulatory terrain in the ski industry is rapidly evolving, and these need-to-know updates will improve operations and mitigate liability. From upcoming ANSI B77 key changes and ASTM updates on rentals, padding, and tubing, to unique issues with aerial evacuation, night lighting, restraint bars, video surveillance, and the importance of manufacturers’ recommendations, this session will help your ski area comply and stay current about important shifts across industry operations—punctuated by new data from NSAA’s injury study and recent claims. NSAA will also roll out its new Lift Safety Toolkit and our new Lift Incident Database for monitoring trends and challenges with uphill transportation and guest safety—stay in the know with what is changing, what’s pending, and what’s on the regulatory horizon.

Session 3: Regional and National Claims, Trials, and Trends: Operational Take-Aways

There have been a number of key rulings in ski lawsuits recently across the country, thankfully many with positive outcomes. As with most claims, there are important take-aways and lessons learned that will improve your operations and mitigate potential exposures. Working closely with our great ASDA counsel, we will provide updates on unique claims and recent court decisions, including key rulings on releases and waivers, and the growing threat facing all ski areas from class action lawsuits. From lifts incidents and collisions with man-made objects, to skier-skier collisions and tubing claims, we’ll break down common themes about improving investigations, on-mountain risk management, and the critical significance of well-written internal manuals and policies.

Session 4: Employee Safety and OSHA: A Critical Priority for the Industry

At each of the 10 stops of NSAA’s fall education seminars, we will have a local panel of respected industry leaders who have successfully elevated—and invested resources in—employee safety at their ski areas. We will analyze what programs are most effective at mitigating employee incidents, and the role management plays in accountability and leadership. This is now especially critical, as both state and federal OSHA specifically target ski areas given their comparatively high injury rates with other industries, and the significant exposures that creates for ski areas and the broader industry.