SurfWatch recently caught up with Kristoffer Juneau, co-owner of JJ Lane's Furnishings, Braata Beach sims, and now co-founder of XSA, to find out more about this new surfing organization.SurfWatch: What's the name of your new surfing organization and where did the name come from?
Kristoffer Juneau: The Xtreme Surf Alliance - XSA. We wanted a name that brought together the power and excitement of cutting edge surfing with the tightness of a community of dedicated surfers. Once we heard the name, we immediately knew it was perfect. Website is http://surfxsa.com/ and our HQ is on Tortola.
SW: What made you want to start a new organization at this time?
KJ: We have been laying the groundwork for our own competitions for some time now, going back to last summer with our first SLSA comp on Morant Cays. As surfing in Second Life and soon other grids has been growing rapidly, competitions in other organizations are getting to capacity. Surfers are looking for new and exciting venues and that is exactly what the XSA will deliver. The SLSA has had tremendous success and has built a solid organization, but our thoughts on direction differ slightly from theirs. Not that our ideas are better, they are just different, and we want to offer options to the community.
The cutting edge developments in boards lately, such as the wipe-out feature and realistic tricks in Action boards, is opening up for major changes for surfing in SL. We are seeing boards being developed that are much more resembling RL surfing, and that is what has really pushed us over the edge to do this now. We felt we needed to take many ideas people have and put these ideas into action and lead the way. Also, we wanted to start this organization to be able to hold regularly scheduled comps at Braata Beach and use what we have built for the community. It's a natural progression for us.
SW: Give us some background on the steps you took to start it, who is involved, etc.
KJ: The XSA founders are Aurora Jacks and myself. We have been talking with many people in the surf community and have been gaining so much insightful knowledge from so many experienced individuals. Our goal is for the whole surf community to be involved, tho we are looking for a group of dedicated supporters and encourage anyone to IM us who wants to either surf or help run the organization. So far, the response has been wonderful, and we have been assembling many people. We are building this organization the same way we have built our business - thru dedication, hard work, and setting achievable goals.
SW: What are the goals and philosophy of this new group?
KJ: Our main goal is to offer surfers the ability to be free from constraints and freely participate in a vibrant and passionate community. We aren't looking to bite off too much, and our first goals are to have a good foundation with our website, forums, and home base at Braata Beach and get our first comp running. Historically, many surf sims have come and gone due to lack of funding. We feel this is where we can set ourselves apart and leverage our seasoned business with JJ Lanes and our partners' affiliations to be a solid anchor for the XSA and Braata Beach. These marketing channels offer our sponsors unique advertising and marketing opportunities. Not only will sponsors receive advertisements the day of a comp, but also in the weeks leading up to the comp in multiple strategic high traffic areas.
SW: You said the new group will be holding competitions. Tell us about that - circuit comps, locations, rules, etc.
KJ: The XSA will be holding comps and tentatively has the first one scheduled for August 15. Initially, comps will be held on Tortola at Braata Beach. Braata Beach has been designed to be a premier surf location for large venues. We held the largest SLSA comp, and I believe largest ever in SL, this past April with the JJ Lanes Longboard Epic. We had 60+ surfers and 125+ total people at the peak spread across 3 full sims to reduce lag. With our 3 full sims and 2 homesteads, we are the ideal large venue hosting area and are quite proud of that. In addition, we are open to hosting XSA sanctioned events at other locations as well, and the use of our sims is always open for anyone to use. We have a new scoring system under development that will offer unique ideas not yet seen in surfing competitions. Some key features are instant scoring after a run, competitor involvement in judging, and eventually, scores immediately posted to the web. We are aiming for this to be ready by the 15th, but RL commitments may delay that a bit.
The rules are a work in progress at this point and initial drafts can be found on our website. Our focus is one step at a time, and that begins with the basic groundwork and having our first comp. From there, we want to bring in more of the community to help form the XSA so it is by the surfers, for the surfers. Equally important in this ideology is protecting what we have built and helping to keep those ideals on track. This is the tough balancing act we are struggling with in the beginning.
SW: Will the new group be affiliated or sanctioned thru the SLSA at all so currently ranked SLSA surfers can use points towards their rankings? If not, will this new group have a ranking system?
KJ: The XSA will not be affiliated with the SLSA and will be a completely separate organization. The XSA current structure does not have a ranking system in place, but it certainly is in the long term goals of the XSA. Initially, we will just be holding single competitions with the aim of large prize payouts for the top 3 finishers.
SW: Is this open for anybody? Are there fees? Restrictions on boards?
KJ: It is open for everyone, and there are no fees for surfers. The idea is for open board competitions, but we may try to bound that somewhat and are discussing this, for instance, bounding this to just commercially available boards possibly (Action, HP, SSI). Another area we want to look at is requiring boards for some comps that have a wipe-out feature enabled and also a true long board competition. Some of these ideas do put some restrictions in place, but they don't restrict to only one vendor. Any board meeting the requirements of these type of comps would be eligible. The XSA wants the community to help form these standards, and it is important to let competition drive innovation in the marketplace.
SW: Will Braata be participating in SLSA events in addition to this new group, or focusing on just this group's activities?
KJ: Braata Beach will not be putting in to be a host site for an SLSA venue this upcoming season. Their competition format doesn't fit in with the open board format that Braata Beach wants to promote. Instead, we will be focusing our efforts on comps for the XSA and for organizations wanting to hold open board type competitions such as MUST. JJ Lanes/Braata Beach will be sponsoring a surf team as we did last season with Team Piranha and members of the team, as always, will be sponsored to surf in any organization.
For more information, stop by our headquarters at http://slurl.com/secondlife/JJ%Lanes%20ll/131/253/23 and visit our website at http://surfxsa.com. Site content is still a work in progress and rules being finalized until one week prior to the first competition. If interested in joining, you can sign up for our forums at http://surfxsa.com/forums and join our in world group "Xtreme Surf Alliance". Interested in forming a team, sponsorship or any other questions, please contact Kristoffer Juneau.
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