Gore-Tex Experience More Blogger Summit Day 1

Yesterday I left the snowy mountains and headed to the east coast as a guest for Gore-Tex’s Experience More Blogger Summit.  What exactly is that?  Well Gore-Tex is launching a new community and invited various bloggers from outdoor arenas to come out for a couple days to find out more about the brand and the community.  So yesterday’s adventure started super early as I woke up at 4am in Steamboat and headed to the airport in town to make my 6am flight to Denver.  Denver received quite a bit of snow yesterday so there was a delay in getting out to Philadelphia but eventually I made it out of the mountains.

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Upon arrival in Philadelphia, I found myself with a group of other bloggers who were on my flight and we climbed into a shuttle van to make our way to the Gore-Tex facilities. Also from Steamboat is Chris who runs snowboarderguide.com, we had never met until this trip but know of the same people and live in the same town.

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At the Gore-Tex Center, we were greeted with appetizers and drinks (Ah yes Yuengling!) and we started out tour, with introductions of the bloggers and the Gore staff before starting the tour by Gore-Tex’s Gene and Emily who focused on explaining the fundamentals behind Gore-Tex:  PTFE, Physical, Biological, Chemical, Analytical and Electromagnet.

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I’m coming from my snowboard background so what blew me away was learning about the other thousand Gore products that aren’t about keeping you dry on the mountains.  The PTFE explained the material that does start that process but then how it can be made into so many other things including Biological products that save lives and are used in the medical world.  Just a number I recalled is that there are 25 million people with Gore in their bodies.

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After the tour we sat down for a dinner and getting to know each other.  I was at the same table as Gore’s Katie who handles their online/web and social media so we had a lot of great discussions going on.  Steve the blogger from Jackson Hole asked,”How did they choose us a bloggers to attend?”  It was cool hearing them say how they researched the bloggers that not only were passionate about the outdoors and had successful blogs but also were interesting people they wanted to meet.  After dinner we got the first look at what the Experience More site will look like and their plans on building this community of Gore together.

Tomorrow we tour the Gore Testing Facilities and spend more time with the Gore crew, so day 1 is completed and here’s onto day 2!

*Full Disclosure:  Please note that at the Gore-Tex Experience More Blogger Summit my expenses were paid for by Gore-Tex.