8a.nu and Vertical-Life team up

www.8a.nu was started as my personal blog where I wanted to spread news of the new routes I put up and also where I shared the training tips I gave as the coach for the Swedish Youth team including Said Belhaj. In 2000, the scorecard was developed by my webmaster Leif Jägerbrand and within some few months, 8a became a very popular global website. Most of the current scorecard pages are actually looking the same as they did in 2000. In 2002, Jonas Emanuelsson joined as the new webmaster and the current website including Ticklists etc are his work. During several years, we have tried to find new web designers that could help us redesign 8a to state of the art look community interaction and user friendliness. Tieme van Veen has helped us with the beta.8a.nu available for mobile phones and within a week or so, you will be able to add routes here much quicker. During this spring, I have lived with my family in Bressanone, Italy, where Vertical-Life is located. It was started by Matthias Polig and friends in 2012, with the aim of creating a worldwide premium topo platform. Vertical Life offers a system to combine printed guidebooks with all the advantages an app can offer. In fact all their partner's guidebooks offer a code to unlock their digital version for free. Until now Vertical Life offers approved content for 50 destinations including Kalymnos, Frankenjura, Yosemite, Magic Woods to name a few. Right now they are working on the Céüse guidebook in collaboration with Arnaut Petit. I do like this approach to base topos on the local community instead of ripping off these local guys by just copying their work and selling it. The local FA's and the community around them including topo authors, rebolting and taking care of access issues etc, are the key in our very fast growing climbing community. Lately, they have also created an App where gym owners can manage their routes, which then also can be Zlagged by the climbers in order to create a training-log. The platform is becoming a more open tool for different players such as gyms, coaches and events. Based on our mutual focus and because VL, in fact, is also a design company, having put up the exhibition The Climbing Gardens of the world in Berlin, we started discussing if they could do a total make over of 8a. I am very happy that finally we have made a deal and that VL will invest in 8a and that they have started to work on this big mission. At the same time, I will remain as the editor-in-chief allowing me to spend more time finding and presenting the latest news and training articles etc. I am very sure that this cooperation will create a much better product. There will be less banners on the first page and it will be easier to add and find routes in the database. Please feel free to give your suggestions on what we should improve and what could be included in the upcoming modern website in order to give you a better experience visiting 8a.nu.