Is it all going wrong ?

[RJ]

With several councillors, the chairman of event operations, and members of rules and fixtures groups on the working party then if they didn't lead the implementation who on earth did ?

That, to my mind, was the biggest single mistake - the ERG should have been tasked not just with recommendation, but with leading up implementation.

There is a huge bit in the middle, long before implementation, that the group should have been involved in, and that is the presentation of the ideas and the proposed model. To explain what the new model is going to achieve. And it should have been the event review group because it is their distillation of their ideas that the model is based on. There is no point in hiding things away on the BOF website, or having 'skimped over' synopses in Focus etc.

A wide ranging debate on Nopesport would have been appropriate..... because that is where we are now!! And we, collectively, would have come up with a much better scheme than has been given birth to!

[seabird]

A wide ranging debate on Nopesport would have been appropriate..... because that is where we are now!! And we, collectively, would have come up with a much better scheme than has been given birth to!

Isn't that what happened here viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8335&hilit=+new+event+structure and on several other threads.

My (doubtless biased) recollection was that the nopocracy were largely in favour of the ERG recommendations.

[SeanC]

I think Nopesport's a good place to test an idea or proposal. You can rely on this forum to pick lots of holes before it's put into practice. I think you still need one person or a small group to document a coherant plan (and then maybe send it back to Nopesport for further bashing into shape). That same group/person or another group/person could organise the implementation. The last bit seems the hardest as it' might involve asking (a minority perhaps) of hard working volunteers to do things differently when they don't want to - and often without the possibility of face to face discussion.

[Clive Coles]

We seem to have two debates going on within this thread.

[Clive Coles]

We seem to have two debates going on within this thread.

There are those who quite correctly point out that clubs and regions are staging a damn good mix of orienteering events at present. This has certainly been facilitated by the event restructuring and a less proscriptive set of rules and guidelines.

And there are those who who are frustrated over the way the recomendations defined by the original Event restructuring working party were implemented. I believe, had BOF included District events within Level 2 from the outset, we would be much further forward than we are today. By now we would have adjusted to the flexibility within the rules and guidelines which permit both old style regional and district events to be run on colour-coded lines. We probably would not be having the 4-tier proposal debated at the AGM.

But the BOF execulive, for reasons best known to themselves, decided to implement the restructuring in their own way.

BOF went about the introduction of the new on-line fixtures registration system in a similar manner. In this instance they failed to consult with Association Fixture secretaries at key stages of the design and development. What we now have in place is good thanks in no small measure to the work Peter, Pat and Richard put into the project in 2008. But it was a frustrating 12 months ~ a lot of the original BOF proposal had to be reworked. The beta test versions of the developed software were awful. Overcoming these hurdles delayed the implementation.

It seems they have set about the development of the ranking system in a less divisive way. They have been open about the need to develop within an agreed budget ~ there seems to have been better consultation. By so doing they managed expectations.

It must have been back in 2007 that the requirements for the event entry system were first discussed at a National Fixtures Committee meeting. BOF at that time were intending to collect the pre-entry fees and provide lists for clubs so that they could manage start lists, split times etc. I argued, if the facility was to be developed, it should at least contain equivalent functionality to the software products that clubs currently use.

Has anyone any idea if event entry developments are still being pursued and, if so, what facilities are being provided. It would also be interesting to know what charge BOF will levy for processing an entry ? If BOF cannot compete with products such as Fabian4 they will be wasting their time and money.

BOF do tend to keep the lid on things and then " pull the rabbit out the hat". Then, if we don't get what we were expecting the debates and recriminations begin.