BOF home page video

[EddieH]

Having read the comments before watching it, I am somewhat surprised. It seemed to me to be aimed at all types and do it rather well. Maybe I am wrong in assuming that people are capable of watching the bit that doesn't interest them, but there again if that is someone' concentration span they're hardly likely to perform at orienteering.

[Scott]

I liked it. As others have said, I'm not sure it would draw in young adults or already-sporty types, but for the "family of mixed ages looking to get active" I would have thought it makes orienteering seem pretty appealing.

[andypat]

I also think its a good step forward. Very positive bit of work.

But, in line with some of the other comments, a bit too much emphasis on walking, kids and not enough on the elite aspect for me.

I mentioned this on the other thread, but in my view there's a big difference between "promoting the sport" and "encouraging participation in the sport".

I think videos etc should "promote" which means they should show off the elite aspects of the sport, provide role models, and encourage aspiring athletes to want to be the best. For example Scott Fraser appears a couple of times, but there's no indication of who he is or how good he is.

You encourage participation by making it easier for people to participate at their level, but without the elite side of things, you lose the aspiration to do better, which is what keeps people coming back.

[daffdy]

Maybe I am wrong in assuming that people are capable of watching the bit that doesn't interest them, but there again if that is someone' concentration span they're hardly likely to perform at orienteering.

I'm not sure that is a correct assumption - it is basically an advert for orienteering, and how many adverts are three minutes long? I'm not sure someone in the 15-30 age bracket is going to watch the whole thing when the first 40 seconds are of kids and families running together.

Which isn't to say I don't like it - it's a very well done tool for recruiting families especially. But it's not the video with universal appeal that the BOF home page is crying out for. Maybe it's an impossible task, but we need to make sure we don't reinforce or widen the gap between orienteering and sports the average person perceives as cool, like adventure races. Perhaps we need two videos on the home page along andypat's lines, one about how anyone can orienteer (although that's not actually true - anyone been to an event a visually impaired person could enjoy?) and one about how the elites do it.

[Clive Coles]

I thought I would check out what another Sporting national body is doing about promoting their sport on their web. Badminton came to mind ~ non main stream sport but one that attracts the very sorts of active folk that might also be candidates for Orienteering.

http://www.badmintonengland.co.uk/landing.asp?section=5&sectionTitle=Play+Badminton

What struck me was their use of moving images and pictures. They make their sport look competitive but fun. Even the tabs which take you to further pages are named to chanel interest. And many of these pages also have a video frame.

Compare that site to ours. I groan when governance is the first word to register between the eyes.

So as not to be accused of a southern bias I also looked at http://royalcaledoniancurlingclub.org/ the national body for Curling north of the border. Even they have pictures that move !

Our web site fulfills a real need ~ it is a place where all information relating to the running of British Orienteering is stored and where information ( and copious minutes) can be retrieved by anyone who is so inspired by the challenge. But we need a better introductory screen that presents us as an active sport.

The home page should be more dynamic ~ why settle on just one video which doesen't even start to run when loaded. Moving pictures are so much more stimulating . We need pictures alongside news topics rather than page after page of text.

There is so much that could be done ~ we need someone with the time and marketing flair. Poor old National Office. They are doing their best but are hard pressed to keep up with their workload.

I think we present our sport as one that is seriously governed, has rules for everything and places a great importance on structure and membership of committees. It's hardly a big sell. No wonder other sports are attracting new recruits.

[EddieH]

Loads of assumptions in this thread.

Two I'd pick up are

1 Sports like adventure racing are perceived as cool? Clearly they are by a select group of young (and even older) people, but in my experience the vast majority of people, when they find out a little about it find it utterly daft, and certainly not attractive for themselves.

2 Other sports are recruiting and growing like mad? Really

[SJC]

Poor old National Office. They are doing their best but are hard pressed to keep up with their workload.

Most of the marketing budget seems to be spent on making Focus bigger and better, yet this only gets distributed to those who are already taking part in the sport. Would some of this money be better spent on improving the content of the web site?

[Clive Coles]

Agree with you SJC ~ do I see another thread developing ?

I really don't see why we need a FOCUS. Much of what is published has already been reported as a news item on the website. It's just that nobody knows when a news release has arrived (unless they use the RSS feed) so we need a glossy to tell us what we have been told. It's surely time we made full use of the technology.

The better vehicle for Championship write-ups and reports from the squad would be Compassport. A much more stimulating read. It makes the sport sound interesting. Perhaps BOF need to start to be nicer to Nick. Compassport is an asset.

[daffdy]

1 Sports like adventure racing are perceived as cool? Clearly they are by a select group of young (and even older) people, but in my experience the vast majority of people, when they find out a little about it find it utterly daft, and certainly not attractive for themselves.

Fair point. I was trying to allude to the fact that many people have the wrong idea about orienteering, and the idea they have isn't normally very complimentary towards orienteers. Everyone around here seems to think we spend our Sundays doing a short (so less good) version of DofE, where you stroll around a course in a group with a picnic and flask of tea. The BBC did an article about the growing popularity of adventure sports recently, but I can't find it now.

But just because you can do a sport at levels below elite doesn't mean the lower levels should be the main focus of the publicity. It's important that they are in there, but it does seem to be normal in other sports to use the top levels to inspire beginners rather than beginners to inspire beginners.

[Paul Frost]

Other sports are recruiting and growing like mad? Really

Triathlon is booming, even Glasgow has 2 clubs.

[the exile]

daffdy wrote:
But just because you can do a sport at levels below elite doesn't mean the lower levels should be the main focus of the publicity. It's important that they are in there, but it does seem to be normal in other sports to use the top levels to inspire beginners rather than beginners to inspire beginners.[/quote]

A very succint comment. In 40 years of orienteering I have never understood why British orienteering has nearly always presented itself as this "sport for all" image, rather than being presented as the tough, athletic, endurance sport it actually is, and as it was originally launched in the UK by top runners and fell runners such as Chris Brasher, John Disley, Gerry Charnley age - and the image that was then presented was successful in getting so many M/W 21s to start orienteering evidenced by the large numbers of competitors in the 21-35 age group in the 70s and 80s.

These recruits started orienteering then exactly becasue it was a really tough and hard sport across all sorts of tough terrain, and it was long, and you had to train, and it was difficult etc. etc. etc. not some short left,right, left round on the tarmac with a bit of grass and maybe a few steps if we're lucky urban race , which seems to be masquerading as orienteering these days .. but that's another theme.

In my view, street-o, or urban-o if you want, has a place but only as a novelty, promotional sort of event. As good as the Venice and London races are, do we really want street-o/sprint-o to be the main form of orienteering that we present to the public?

In most cases the image is also not too flattering either. There is a huge difference between the PWT elite competitors speeding round the streets and the image of the average street-o competitor i.e. the not always so fit looking middle-aged and older people going at a slow jog wearing strange nylon/lycra clothing. At least in the woods, we mostly hidden from general view ....

In my view BOF got it all wrong after WOC 76 in Aviemore by relaunching orienteering as a "wayfaring" sport, for everyman and his dog - and it can be a sport for them TOO,
but you don't see the British Athletics Federation concentrating on Doris and Joe Jogger instead of Mo Farah...

I'm seriously worried about where orienteering is going - it's certainly only partly resembles the sport I started in 1972.
And one way to get us back on the right route is to present the tough, athletic image of orienteering again. Look back 30 years, and re-invent the wheel if you like.....

[Paul Frost]

The home page should be more dynamic ~ why settle on just one video which doesen't even start to run when loaded.

Because video uses a lot of bandwidth and as someone that has a slower than 1Mbps connection I hate sites that start loading video on opening. Mobile users would not be happy either. It's a thin line between making websites look good with lots of images and video and them loading reasonably quickly.

[andy]

Definitely a step in the right direction, that I even suggested the other day! Quality production, reasonable graphics. Would liked to have seen a more elites and less little people. Thankfully no older people wearing pyjamas!

[frog]

It's a good job you can run faster than your parents...
I like this video for the geekery http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bht0zchQ ... re=related but suspect it'll appeal more to established orienteers than newcomers.

[greywolf]

...

maybe what's needed is an orienteering version of the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, with 4 old gits in threadbare brown o-suits moaning about modern orienteering and how it was so much better in the good old days of 1973 when M21E at the British Champs was 47km, the map was 1 inch to 1 mile and drawn on a cave wall with an HB pencil, and (in the days before pin punches) competitors were issued with penknives and instructed to carve the control codes into their skin...