Junior Development Meeting

[maprun]

The minutes are shown on the BO website.

https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/ ... inutes.pdf

Interesting minutes, discussions and follow up points. However I can't get my head around why there was no action point from the meeting dealing with the anomaly that English regions and clubs have no National representative on the Development Steering Group. Likewise why the remedy considered was a single person to represent all the English Clubs. I would have thought a representative from each English region, so all the BOF regions have a representative would be far more appropriate. Not a National representative but a single group representing BOF views across all the regions and National bodies. I'm sure the English regional reps could form a National view for SportEngland purposes.

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

[Marian]

A decade or two ago I was paid a lot of money by an IT consultancy to produce weasel words for bemused clients. Even they would have been embarrassed to have

investigate potential to create a development forum

and

look at feasibility of hosting a Conference

as the only two action points from a day long meeting.

[cbg]

It seems to have been a group discussion rather than a committee. BOF probably only took from it what they wanted.

[awk]

What goes around, comes around. Interesting how many of those points were an issue a decade ago. And it looks as if the development conference might see a return.

[SeanC]

I guess the problem is that if each english region sends a representative to the development steering group, the size of the meeting becomes too big to make agreement/consensus likely.

Looking at the steering groups page, the coaching and development groups have a different structure to the events and competition committee. With the later, regions and individuals make nominations, which get approved by the board - there isn't an attempt for regional representation, just an attempt to get the best experts I assume.

What's interesting is that in another thread, one of our directors has hinted that the next development submission could be more bottom up, rather than a single national strategy promoted to clubs to implement (like club nights). This sounds good in theory, and could for example see different strategies at club level, or even within clubs appropriate to local conditions. Eg in London using open orienteering map to support a big increase in evening street events. In constrast, in suburban areas in the home counties, clubs might have the idea to request money to support a big expansion of well publicised local events aimed at families and schools.

The steering group presumably has the hard job of encouraging and gathering these good ideas, and helping to turn them into workable proposals that will succeed and may win grant funding. It seems tough for one committee covering the whole of Britain, but good luck to them anyway.

[maprun]

What's interesting is that in another thread, one of our directors has hinted that the next development submission could be more bottom up, rather than a single national strategy promoted to clubs to implement (like club nights). This sounds good in theory, and could for example see different strategies at club level, or even within clubs appropriate to local conditions. Eg in London using open orienteering map to support a big increase in evening street events. In contrast, in suburban areas in the home counties, clubs might have the idea to request money to support a big expansion of well publicised local events aimed at families and schools.

Let's hope the next strategy is bottom up, not only do clubs have different geographical areas, they have various approaches already in place such as strong school connections and local leagues. You would hope BO might be able to assist expansion and possibly replication via local authorities (education, parks etc) and nationally (Forestry Commissiom, National Trust etc). Nitty gritty slow project building that once in place clubs have will added, with BO's assistance, permanently to their breadth of development.

[Snail]

As SeanC says it doesn't have to be one idea for the whole country.

I am not sure that a Development committee / forum really needs to do anything more than efficient collation and dissemination of ideas. There are plenty of examples discussed on here and elsewhere of successful practice: TVOC (and MADO in the past) with publicity and newcomers, MAROC with juniors, SLOW with street events, etc.

Perhaps all we need is for a group, or the paid national staff, to collect these ideas; get the originators to explain how and why they worked (and what they tried that didn't work); and to publish them to everyone else. And probably not just to 'Development' officers - I suspect most successful initiatives are primarily down to just one or two people picking up an idea and really pushing it - and any one specific idea might not work for every club. But if all the ideas were widely shared we all might find there is someone in our club who would say "I could do that ...".

[awk]

As SeanC says it doesn't have to be one idea for the whole country.

I'd go further: it mustn''t be one idea fits all - that's so often been the big mistake.

I am not sure that a Development committee / forum really needs to do anything more than efficient collation and dissemination of ideas. There are plenty of examples ......But if all the ideas were widely shared we all might find there is someone in our club who would say "I could do that ...".

I now really am getting a sense of deja-vu!!