What’s this all about?

This site follows the Penn State Varsity Hockey program as it progresses to NCAA Division 1 status.

Who am I?

I’m UncleLar, a 60-something former IBM employee who retired from the company a few years ago after 25 years of service. I was a computer technology geek/expert before it was fashionable to be one. My academic credentials include being one of the original undergraduate computer science majors at Penn State switching to that program after four years of mathematics study. I also majored in management information systems in Penn State’s MBA program.

What’s my background?

I’m a dedicated Penn State sports enthusiast and can often be found prowling the campus venues on the Penn State campus. Look for me at Beaver Stadium, the Bryce Jordan Center, Rec Hall, Medlar Field, Jeffrey Field, Nittany Lion Park, Astroturf Filed, and, coming soon, the Pegula Ice Arena.

Over the years, I have been a long time member of various Penn State fan forums. I’m currently an active member of Penn State Hoops (for 15+ years), BWI (over a decade), FOS (since its inception), and Lions247 (over two years). I have a lot of user experience on fan forums.

Have I ever done anything similar?

I’ve developed several sports oriented fan websites (many have run their course and are now inactive). Through the years domains that I have owned and operated include HappyValleyHoops.com (PSU basketball site), HappyValleyHardball.com (PSU baseball site), HappyValleyHalfNelson.com (PSU wrestling site), HappyValleyHeroes.com (non-specific PSU sports site), PSUTPC.com (The Penalty Corner – a PSU Field Hockey site), and DeerPhobia.com (“Fear The Deer” – a State College Spikes site). While none of them are currently active, I do have a broad background in sports fan sites.

I was a founding member of The Goon Show (an internet radio show www.GoonShowPSU.com with former PSU football greats Keith “The Goon” Conlin and Tim Sweeney. Other active projects of mine include Oglympics.com (an Olympic Games site) and TheSantaCrawl.com (a holiday charity fund raising bar tour).

Why a hockey site?

Like many, I was caught up in the hockey excitement generated by Terry Pegula’s incredibly generous gift to the University. My previous connections to PSU hockey were tenuous at best (a former roommate of mine was instrumental in helping to bring hockey back to Penn State in the early 70s). But the enthusiasm generated by the decision to go D1 swept me right back into the fold. I immediately went out and purchased since tickets for the last couple of years at Greenwood. I also was dumbfounded to discover that the HockeyValley.com domain name was available. That seemed like a big oversight by someone, so I jumped on it and bought the domain (I’ve made a lot of not so bright domain purchases through the years but this seems like a wise one).

So what took so long?

Kyle Rossi’s incomparable ThankYouTerry blog which filled much of what I might have planned for my site. Kyle’s knowledge of the program far exceeds mine. His passion for the sport in general and the PSU program specifically makes his blog a must read. I couldn’t compete with that.

UPDATE (FEB 2015):  Kyle eventually shut his site down, which I believe has created even more of an opportunity for a curated news site.

 

What’s changed now?

As great as Kyle’s site is, it’s missing something. At it’s heart, it’s a blog, which gives Kyle a perfect outlet for self expression, but provides little opportunity for other fans to express theirs. A PSU hockey forum would provide that outlet, so my focus turned in that direction.

UPDATE (FEB 2015):  As mentioned above, Kyle shut his site down. I actually put mine on hold for about a year but have decided to relaunch it as a curated news site only.

Aren’t there already hockey forums?

Most of the PSU sports websites do not have hockey boards. Any hockey posts are delegated to a general sports board where they are just overwhelmed by the football fan base. Fight On State does over a hockey only board. However the traffic there is virtually non-existent. We are approaching the most exciting moment in Penn State hockey history, yet there have been just four posts (one of which was by me and one of which had nothing to do with PSU) since the beginning of the month on that board.

I’ve recently become aware of another site, the “Pride of Pegula”. That site has been open for over 18 months, but only has had about 200 posts (that’s about 3 a week) – 75% of which were by Kyle Rossi of Thank You Terry and one other person. That’s not a whole lot of interaction.

I find it hard to believe that there isn’t more of an audience out there for a hockey forum. If 6000 people are going to show up for games, SOME of them are bound to want to discuss what went on during them and that doesn’t even consider the thousands who will be catching the games on the Big Ten Network (nor does that consider all the free publicity that I’m going to get every time someone refers to Penn State as Hockey Valley).

UPDATE (FEB 2015): Apparently, there wasn’t much demand for a hockey forum. My site got little traffic which eventually led to my decision to put it on hold. But with the success of the program continuing to rise, I think the demand might eventually come back. For the time being, I’ve decided to run the site strictly as a curated news site. Should the demand rise, I will revisit the idea of creating a hockey forum.

What’s different about HockeyValley.com?

One, I will be offering a curated news section. Not because I expect to compete with TYT’s insight on the news, but because I want members on my site to have immediate access to the current news stories. In any sports forum, much of the discussions revolve around the media’s take on the topic. I feel it’s important for forum members to easily be able to access those stories.

Two, the forum section will have a robust set of features. Forum users will have access to many social networking features such as customized and editable profiles, avatar uploads, friend connections, private messaging, and activity streams.

Three, the site will closely integrate with existing social networks. Users will be able to log in from, and post to, their current social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Four, users who aren’t social network centric will be able to subscribe to the site and receive email updates.

Five, eventually we will build up a repository of Penn State hockey reference materials including user editable interfaces to Penn State hockey articles on Wikipedia.

The secret to HappyValley.com being a success will be its user community. I’ll be drawing on my social network marketing experience to build up that community, but the community itself will be what makes or breaks the site.

UPDATE (FEB 2015): I’m relaunching the website with a new design and a new mission effective February 2015.

The site will primarily be a curated news site. It will attempt to provide one stop shopping for the Penn State hockey fan. There will also be some unique features that I will hope elevate its popularity.

1. Much like football, hockey typically has one opponent a week, so each week I’ll sprinkle in a few reports from the media outlets of that week’s opponent.

2. Recruiting info is very hard to come by, but, at a minimum, I hope to be able to provide some info on the kids who have committed to us (I’ve only barely started doing that so there’s lots of work to do here).

3. I will also provide updates on the women’s program too.

4. Still undecided about how much, if any, original content I will provide.

5. Also, one still TBD level of content sourcing will be Twitter. Twitter makes it difficult to easily scrape their feeds so I’m wrestling with what I will do with it. No promises, but it is on my wanted feature list. I will post things that I stumble across that I think are post worthy (recent examples were a commitment tweet from a student athlete and vine from Pegula from a hockey celebrity.

6. I’ll be mostly mirroring the site updates on Facebook (www.facebook.com/hockeyvalleyforums – not the greatest name but something that I set up with the old version of hockeyvalley.com) and with Twitter (@PSPucks). For true luddites, I’ll also provide a subscription service with email updates.

7. The site is responsive and is fairly mobile friendly so for the time being making a web app out of it is on the back burner.

Sign up now.