Project · TTR World Snowboard Tour
Two systems never meant to meet
From 2003 to 2007 the world ranking of a global snowboard tour lived in a membership system built for sport. The website ran on TYPO3. Between them sat code I wrote.
What it was
The TTR began in 2002, the year the international snowboarding federation, the ISF, collapsed. It was the riders' answer to that: a tour of their own joining the most important independent events, co-founded by Terje Haakonsen. It grew into a worldwide series with hundreds of events across several tiers, Air & Style among them.
What it held was not a league table. The TTR carried the world ranking of snowboarding and the world championships. The website was no business card to match: it carried that ranking, along with articles, news, a fantasy team and social features. Anyone wanting to know where a rider stood after a contest looked there.
The problem
The ranking lived in member pro, a membership system built for sport rather than for a website. The website ran on TYPO3, which is good at content and knows nothing about league tables.
Both systems were good at what they were built for. Neither was built to talk to the other.
What I built
Custom code carried the ranking data out of member pro and into TYPO3, in a shape the website could work with: filterable by event, athlete and discipline.
The tour changed its format during those years. Nine events with a single final became a points system with tiers from one to six stars. The integration had to follow: what it carried was structured differently afterwards, and some of it was called something else. That is the part people underestimate about integrations. They outlive the assumptions they were built on, and they have to change when the thing they describe changes.
That sounds like an afternoon's work today. In 2003 there were no ready-made parts for it. No REST, no JSON APIs taken for granted, no integration platform to put in the middle. Whatever had to happen between two systems, you wrote.
Why it is here
It is the earliest systems integration in my records, and it has nothing to do with e-commerce. Connecting two systems that were never meant for each other is not a new line in my offer. It is where I started.
I hold no figures: no audience numbers, no results. What can be evidenced is the work and the period, not its effect.
Related services
Do you have two systems that do not know each other?
They need not be shops. Tell me which two systems need the same data, and who carries it across by hand today.