PathWrangler is excited to announce that we’ve been selected as a Finalist for the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona on November 13, 2012:

The Travel Innovation Summit@The PhoCusWright Conference shines the spotlight on the new applications and ideas that change the industry.

Thirty global innovators demonstrate applications, technologies and solutions with the potential to transform travel planning, purchasing and memorializing.

Travel Innovation Summit attendees come prepared to find the next market-changing innovations, seeking fresh ideas, new partners and investment opportunities. Attendees have open access to the innovators and are encouraged to connect and provide feedback throughout the event.

A World Class Event

PhoCusWright’s experienced analyst team carefully screens each candidate to find the best and eliminate the hype. There are no “speakers” or “presenters” at The Travel Innovation Summit. The innovators demonstrate their products through live walkthroughs of their technologies and tools, creating an immersive experience for the audience. The demonstrator package provides innovators with more than just marketing and promotion, they get business development opportunities, on-site meetings and critics’ feedback and a chance to wow the audience during Center Stage@The PhoCusWright Conference later in the week. Award winners vie to return home with The DEMO Award for the Most Game-Changing Innovation. Startup, emerging and established companies (including last year’s demonstrators!) are invited to apply based purely on their innovative accomplishments, regardless of organizational size, age, sector or location.

We are absolutely thrilled and excited to demonstrate our technology in front of some of world’s top travel thought leaders.  In building PathWrangler, we didn’t just set out to make a cool app; we aim to upset and change the adventure travel and outdoor experience.

What do we do?

Simply put, PathWrangler makes building and storing experiences easier than ever before.

Let’s face it, planning an adventure trip or an outdoor excursion is like herding cats. It is maddening to get everyone and everything prepared. We’ve built a collaborative web tool that makes trip planning not only easy, but fun. The goal is empower you so that your only limitation is your imagination and sense of wonder. It is used just as easily by professional guides running recurring expeditions to the Himalayas to just a handful of avid outdoor enthusiasts planning their next hiking trip in Yosemite.

We take the conversation that normally occurs over emails, spreadsheets, PDFs, Word Docs, etc and puts it into a central place where your team/group interacts with each other from a single version of the truth. It is interactive, dynamic and a way to get everyone involved. After your trip, all that hard work turns into a wonderful trip report that stores those memories.

Tell us what you think before then.  Go in and check us out for yourself by signing up for a free account.  With your help, we’ll see if we have what it takes to hang with some of the world’s best.

Please join me in welcoming Christina Heyniger to the PathWrangler team!

Christina’s influential work in the adventure industry led us to her a year ago.  Since our first over-coffee meeting on Valencia Street the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, we discovered a common view on some of the key challenges in our industry, and how we can work together to solve them.

Since 2004 Christina’s consulting work has been focused on the adventure industry’s potential to transform local economies and foster the type of cultural exchange that supports world peace.  Her clients include governments, adventure entrepreneurs, and international development agencies from India to Brazil to Saudi Arabia and many places in between, who are now trying to use adventure travel as a path to sustainable economic development.

In 2008 she pioneered the Adventure Tourism Development Index (ATDI), a ranking of countries around the world based on principles of sustainable adventure tourism.  Now in its fourth year, the ATDI is guiding destinations in creating sustainable adventure tourism markets, and also helping to reshape the global perception and understanding of adventure as a means of social and environmental development and stewardship.  In emerging markets, government policymakers are using the ATDI to argue for sustainable tourism over less favorable types of tourism development.

Here are some of Christina’s career highlights in her own words:

In 2004 I started a consulting firm (Xola Consulting) focused on adventure tourism as a means of economic development.  My first client was a small river rafting business based in Pollock, Idaho.  In exchange for training as a river guide, I provided the company owner process analysis and management recommendations for his small company.  I’m forever indebted to this company for the chance they gave me to apply my corporate management consulting skills in a new environment.  Over the course of three months one summer and in subsequent trips I learned to row the rapids of the main Salmon River (not very well, I’m afraid) and all about how this family-run business operated: from managing local partners and guides to keeping the guest lodge full.  Since that first “client” I’ve been learning about the importance of tackling development issues with a systems approach and exploring different avenues for how to accomplish this.  In 2011 I merged my consulting practice with Vital Wave Consulting, and shifted the consumer-facing elements of the business to an internet company selling adventure travel online, called Xola.com.

Prior to 2004 I lived in Washington, D.C. and worked for a large, global consulting firm based in Tysons Corner, Virginia.  I was in the technology infrastructure solutions group; our clients were government agencies, communication companies and technology-oriented foundations.  Starting Xola Consulting was one of my life’s defining moments, a radical upheaval that eventually caught a little attention from Outside magazine and also Roadtrip Nation, an organization that helps students explore pathways they never knew existed through programs and resources focused on self-discovery.

I write and speak regularly on small and medium business development and tourism issues related to the environment and human development.  In 2008 I was a contributing author of two chapters, one on Bhutan, and another on Kerala, India, in a book published by National Geographic titled Riding the Hulahula to the Arctic Ocean- A Guide to 50 Extraordinary Adventures.

Before these things all happened I was studying at various schools, where I earned an MBA in Entrepreneurship (Kogod School of Business at American University); an MA in Communication, Culture and Technology (Georgetown University); and a BS in Communication (Cornell University).

Another important thing about me that influences much of my thinking and things I like to do, is that I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska.

Ultimately, though, Christina is an entrepreneur.  While many high-level strategists often look at problems from 40,000 ft, they can be more academic than offering real solutions.  Christina, on the other hand, repeatedly takes the leap without a map in hand, gets her hands dirty and finds innovative ways to solve problems and create value.

Christina is joining us on an advisory basis and there are some big projects that we are working on that you will see shortly.  Until then, please give a warm welcome to Christina!

Today, PathWrangler is proud to announce that it has launched a whole lot of awesome on the adventure travel and outdoor community.  PathWrangler is a revolutionary tool that  makes building and storing experiences easier than ever before.

Let’s face it, planning an adventure trip or an outdoor excursion is like herding cats. It can be maddening to get everyone and everything prepared. We’ve built a collaborative web tool that makes trip planning not only easy, but fun.  The goal is empower you so that your only limitation is your imagination and sense of wonder.  It can be used just as easily by professional guides running recurring excursions to the Himalayas to avid outdoor enthusiasts planning their next camping trip to Yosemite with a few friends or family members.  The days of chasing people down over email and managing trips with spreadsheets, PDFs, Word, Excel and Google Docs are over!

Who is giving us love for what we created for them?

Guides and Adventure Operators love us because we make their businesses run better.  We significantly cut down on their office work and help them to build deeper bonds with their clients prior to the trip.  Customization, trip changes, queries from customers, eye-candy quality presentation of trip itineraries, recommended gear fulfillment, packing lists, logistical support and sharing “beta” or information with other guides is not only more efficient, but more engaging and dynamic.

Travelers and Outdoor Enthusiasts love us for two reasons: 1) we provide a great way for them to interact with their adventure providers on their trips.  There is always a conversation from the time a traveler signs up for a trip to the time they are ready to leave.  We make that conversation collaborative, easy and way more fun.  2) We also provide them a way to organize their personal trips with friends and family as well.  It is far easier to herd the cats get everyone organized and out exploring.  In the end, all that planning and hard work is memorialized forever.

Private Beta

All this is available if you were lucky enough to get an invite to our Private Beta.  In this next stage, we’ll be working with our existing customers and thought leaders to build the next stage of our product before we launch it to the public.

For those that are interested in Beta and either haven’t been contacted by us yet or made a request, please request through our homepage and we’ll do our best to get to you as soon as we can.  In these beginning stages, we are absolutely committed to personal service for all of our customers, so bare with us as we get everyone onboard and settled.

Thanks

I’m absolutely thrilled to be working with such an incredible team that has put in so much work and overcome a lot of adversity to get us here.  Eric Remza (Customer Development), Mikey Clarke (Tech Lead), DG Elmore (Investor/Advisor), Brad Wisler (Advisor), Neal Patel (Advisor), Angelique Coffee (our blogger extraordinaire ).  I’m amazed not only at the talent and vision of our team, but of the indefatigable nature of each one of you as we took a kernel of an idea and turned it into something that we know will change adventure travel forever.  All of us are going to be banding together to provide the best service to our present and future customers.

A huge thanks to Axel Albin and Josh Kamler of Language in Common and Ryan Faubion and Matt Dimmit of Bold Exp for their tremendous concepting, design and implementation.

Also, we didn’t build this product in a vacuum.  We had some really incredible guides, tour operators and thought leaders that have been working with us since the early days to focus our efforts on building the right product.  We’ll provide more detailed info on who these visionaries are and how they contributed in the near future.

In the meantime, pack your bags!  Adventure Travel just got a whole lot easier.

Doug Heinz – CEO & Co-Founder

PathWrangler is looking for a Ruby on Rails engineer:  apply here.

This is a very unique opportunity.  How many engineering jobs out there will give you access to opportunities that look like this?

And This?

There is a $1,000 check with your name on it if you refer us our person.  You can apply through the link above or email us directly at info@pathwrangler.com.

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We are San Francisco-based start-up, looking for a senior engineer ruby on rails engineer to help us build a new way for adventure travelers and outdoor enthusiasts to do what they love easier than ever before. We have built our first release, have some customers and have raised a seed-round of funding to get us rolling. It is a very innovative application that is first to market and was built directly with input from some of the top guides and guide companies in the world.

What we love:

You more than anything: it’s about you more than your skill set. You should be super-pumped about becoming a key component of an amazing team that works their butts off and has a ton of fun. We’re having a ton of fun working on this start-up and are looking for you to come in and help make this a reality. It is key that you enjoy and thrive working as part of a team.

Creativity: this is the opportunity for someone who is looking to reach beyond their current bag of tricks to solve problems in new and exciting ways. From day one, our culture is about establishing an environment that feeds and nurtures constant innovation.

Experience: you’ve solved problems before, whether as part of a start-up, or as a senior engineer at an innovative web company.

Commitment/Passion: you’ve got the guts to do whatever it takes to stick it out so that, together, we can see the vision of our start-up through to fruition.

What we really, really like:

- We dig Ruby on Rails.
- AJAX/JSON
- Javascript (jQuery a plus)
- Passion for data-modeling.
- You can do CSS and XHTML.
- Mash-ups and integration with 3rd party apps.
- You write well.
- You thrive using behavior driven development and agile methodologies.

What we also like:

You live in the Bay Area. Not an absolute-must, but those who you’ll be working with regularly are out here and we have a great time working with each other in person.

You are into the outdoors and adventure travel. Building an innovative app will require someone who is intimate with our customers’ problems.