BOF Annual Reports

[Oldman]

So has membership at a junior level increased as a direct result of xplorer or is it not supposed to? If it is not then what's the point of it, or has graeme and others already answered that, bums on seats in HQ?

If a product like Xplorer is being developed and launched with appeal to youngsters and families, I'd rather it was under BOF's control than a separate company with a different agenda. Let the product evolve and then work on enabling some (NB not all) to make the transition (gateway??) to "traditional" orienteering, and work to fix any problems then.

[Spookster]

... what's the point of it, or has graeme and others already answered that, bums on seats in HQ?

Sport England is committed to helping people and communities across the country create sporting habits for life. This means investing in organisations and projects that will get more people playing sport and creating opportunities for people to excel at their chosen sport.

According to the Annual Report, 9250 people did an Xplorer activity in 2013. If they enjoyed it, perhaps they'll come again, and maybe even go on to try "real" orienteering with a club.

So the "point", is to get people to give sport a go. If they become club members, and regular orienteers, that's a bonus.

[SeanC]

Phil does articulate a common concern with these programs.

It's early days for Xplorer. You would want it first to be a success, then worry about how to get some of these participants into mainstream O.

Is it all down to BOF though. If Xplorer was down my way I imagine Southdowns would be much more successful at recruiting Xplorer juniors into their club as they have something strong to sell to new juniors. A junior squad open to all, lots of other juniors to compete against, regular (weekly or more frequent) events, junior coaching. Saxons and DFOK would find it a bit harder as there is less to sell - no junior squad, less coaching, but at least we have more local events than a few years ago, and a decent junior league. Hopefully we will catch up.

Southdowns are also very pro-active re publicity, I would expect to see someone at any future Sussex Xplorer event promoting Southdowns. Other clubs with less active publicity would find it harder.

It is something worth considering though. What can BOF do to help local clubs recruit from Xplorer events? Some help for clubs with publicity and help establishing junior sections seem two ways forward, but who would pay for this? Is this something covered in the SportEngland funding?

[mykind]

Phil does articulate a common concern with these programs.



Southdowns are also very pro-active re publicity, I would expect to see someone at any future Sussex Xplorer event promoting Southdowns. Other clubs with less active publicity would find it harder.

It is something worth considering though. What can BOF do to help local clubs recruit from Xplorer events? Some help for clubs with publicity and help establishing junior sections seem two ways forward, but who would pay for this? Is this something covered in the SportEngland funding?

But surely the whole idea was to increase recruitment into orienteering so that it should be automatic that Xplorer participants are made aware of their local club. Otherwise I cannot see what Xplorer has to do with BO.

Mike Hind

[Sunlit Forres]

I think Xplorer is an excellent initiative. I wish we had it up here.

[kedge]

There will be a chance for those attending Day 1 of this year's JK to sample Xplorer where an Xplorer Challenge course is being held in a part of Singleton Park not being used for either the Sprint or PreO events.

[bewildered]

But surely the whole idea was to increase recruitment into orienteering so that it should be automatic that Xplorer participants are made aware of their local club. Otherwise I cannot see what Xplorer has to do with BO.

Mike Hind

The idea was to increase participation. I have suggested to the board that perhaps they could set a target of converting a percentage of these to club members, but SportEngland aren't interested in that at all.

[PhilJ]

So really it's just a numbers game so sport England can say, x thousand increase in participation in golf, tennis, badminton, orienteering, judo etc as similar schemes like xplorer exists in other sports, unless BO link xplorer to clubs directly as SeanC suggests then all it will serve to do is serve the bean counters. We have all been here before trying to get links between schools and clubs, there are some winners, where a teacher is also an O'er and will take little johnny of mum and dad's hands for a Sunday morning. We have had experience of running school activity sessions, the teachers love them cos they get an afternoon off - fact!

I appreciate it is early days with xplorer and I do hope that it will prove successful to create more juniors in the sport, but this can only happen with clubs involvement.

How long does the scheme run for and will it be rolled out to all parts of England, how were the current sites selected? The sport needs more juniors as can be seen by the figures in the annual report 2009 = 45,688 against 2013 = 38,593, an increase in 2011 with a drop of 6000 in 2012 and a further drop of 3000 in 2013.

Had anyone done any analysis why we lost 6000 juniors in 2012 (was that when we scrapped family membership?)

It will be interesting to see if my club gets any extra newbies on the back of xplorer at the jk as we start our summer recruitment back in singleton park on the 30th April, I will report back.....

[SeanC]

There's a fundamental philosophical difference.

a) Orienteering = running around with a map finding checkpoints.

b) Orienteering = running around with a map finding checkpoints at events organised by registered orienteering clubs.

SportEngland's brief is to get more people doing sport, not preserve orienteering clubs. If the sport is organised by somebody else and is successful...

I think when many of us talk about "development" we are really talking about "orienteering club development" and "developing the sort of orienteering that orienteering clubs do". I think it would be useful to describe what BOF does for club development, why it can't do more, and what it could do for club development if funding was improved (which would probably have to be from club orienteers).

From my memory, Xplorer and RunChallenge were focused on the north of England to increase effectiveness, too big an area and those running it spend too much time and money travelling and it becomes ineffective. I don't remember plans in this phase of the development program to spread it beyond the north of England, but I can't find the right documents on the BOF site. I think there are participation targets and BOF need to reach these to increase their chances of getting the funding renewed for the development program. I think the program is up for renewal 3 years after starting, which would be 2 years time, but this is borderline guessing.

[mrmoosehead]

Until reading this thread, I'd never even heard of RunChallenge and Xplorer.

Probably just me not paying attention, mind.

[graeme]

There's a fundamental philosophical difference.

a) Orienteering = running around with an accurate, appropriate map finding checkpoints in the right place.
b) Orienteering = running around with an inaccurate, inappropriate map trying to find checkpoints somewhere near the right place

Seems to me that Xplorer is in the first category, while RunChallenge and most "third party" events are in the second. RunChallenge could be so good if they used ISSOM urban maps...

[rocky]

There's a fundamental philosophical difference.

RunChallenge could be so good if they used ISSOM urban maps...

Something in another thread about barriers to entry (in respect of control descriptions hieroglyphics) made me think about this. Previous generations of orienteers came into the sport having a good idea of what O maps were all about having experience of OS maps: once you get around the change of scale and the fact that white=forest they are pretty similar after all.

Since then though I'd argue that awareness of OS style mapping has been dwarfed by Google maps and Sat Nav style maps. Should we consider using some kind of adapted google map for any kind of stepping stone style event, rather than a blown up OS map (which no one knows how to use any more) or a full ISSOM map (with too much detail and fussy rules (This week: "so that shade of green means a hedge you're not allowed to cross but this shade of green means a hedge you can cross, even if it's higher than your waist." Next week: "there's only one shade of hedge on this map so how do I know whether I'm allowed to cross it?" "....")

Just a thought.

[Spookster]

Since then though I'd argue that awareness of OS style mapping has been dwarfed by Google maps and Sat Nav style maps. Should we consider using some kind of adapted google map for any kind of stepping stone style event, rather than a blown up OS map (which no one knows how to use any more) or a full ISSOM map (with too much detail and fussy rules (This week: "so that shade of green means a hedge you're not allowed to cross but this shade of green means a hedge you can cross, even if it's higher than your waist." Next week: "there's only one shade of hedge on this map so how do I know whether I'm allowed to cross it?" "....")

Just a thought.

So what you're saying is that we could ideally do with some sort of simple o-map, based on readily available (perhaps even open-source?) data, that could be easily and cheaply created.

Oh, hang on...

[rocky]

Only if you're thinking from an orienteers point of view. From a newcomers point of view is OOMap more accessible / better than a straight copy of a google map?

[Spookster]

Here is the comparison:

Google map - Sheffield city centre west

google-map.jpg (105.82 KiB) Viewed 4811 times

OOmap - StreetO template

oomap-streeto.jpg (113.56 KiB) Viewed 4811 times

ISSOM 1:4000

issom.jpg (199.44 KiB) Viewed 4811 times