Bloggers and tweeters wanted

[SeanC]

Just thought I'd plug BOF's initiative to use social media to promote events. See BOF homepage. A good initiative I think.

I think many of our members would be interested to read tweets and posts about major events, even if they don't go to them, and it should encourage some of the newer members to venture beyond the safety zone of local events (and who may not know what the JK is).

It sounds a bit formal, but I guess the code of conduct is necessary to prevent people using it as a soapbox, we've got nopesport for that.

[andy]

What a great idea. I remember a few months ago someone on the BOF twitter account was asking who was doing what that weekend and there were a number of responses, but then it kind of died out.. Will be great to see this work

[graeme]

No need to wait for BOF. Get facebooking, retweeting and other verbose verbification.

http://www.facebook.com/groups/294744437301029/
https://twitter.com/RaceTheCastles

[daffdy]

Bump for the online action team, the deadline was yesterday but there's still time to get involved if any more people are interested. It won't be too formal, the code of conduct is mostly a sensible precaution against the unlikely event of people posting inappropriate things.

If you Tweet, Facebook or blog and would like to improve how orienteering looks in social media, get in touch by Wednesday to be a part of the beginning of something exciting!

(Why Wednesday? Because CUOC are away training from tomorrow until then!)

[andypat]

The Scottish Orienteering Association have also been looking at similar posts to invigorate our social media presence. So far no takers, but we're very much open to offers and had put a small amount of money aside to help with training for the right person.

[PhilJ]

enjoyed a new local park run on Sat and before the run I approached the park run people to have our 'O' club added to the "club" database. So any O'ers from the club would appear in the results as belonging to our club, hence another free bit of publicity, plus there is a POC at the country park where the park run is held. Answered a few questions and gave a club contact.
Today the nominated club contact (who looks after the web) received an email listing who was the first male and female winner plus a list of all the club members who ran, their position and time. Have you ever received a list of club member results from an 'O' event?, usually it's the case of trawling thru the results and then compiling your own list for the club magazine/web etc.
'O' is definately missing a trick here....can't SI or similar produce results by club and then email the results to the club secretary/webmaster? Very impressed with the use of IT at park run events.

[andy]

'O' is definately missing a trick here....can't SI or similar produce results by club and then email the results to the club secretary/webmaster? Very impressed with the use of IT at park run events.

I'm not so sure.

parkrun (no space, your post confused me initially) is a very informal affair which is run centrally, so they can do pretty much whatever they want and they have an easy to admin single database that does the results for every run throughout the country. the parkrun database was built to run parkrun, it's central to its working. As far as I'm aware every event uses the same kit and is required to send data in the same to the HQ.

orienteering is very different, until recently we haven't had a central results database and even now it is MUCH less regimented than the parkrun one. Results come from various software packages (SI, MERCs, Emit, OE, others I don't know about) and have different export files that someone uploads to the BOF database. It's fairly pointless to ask the software companies to email out results as, crucially, they don't hold them. The software that O clubs use is usually purchased and results are published on club websites. The only place something like this would be viable would be the british orienteering database. I don't see it happening any time soon unless there's a big push for it from somewhere (especially given there's some trouble getting the more important UKOL results correct...)

What would be great is being able to filter bof results for club. You can do it in the rankings so shouldn't be a massive task to add a results extract by club. Does require development work though, so if bof funds are tight....

[Glucosamine]

enjoyed a new local park run on Sat and before the run I approached the park run people to have our 'O' club added to the "club" database. So any O'ers from the club would appear in the results as belonging to our club, hence another free bit of publicity, plus there is a POC at the country park where the park run is held.

Our O club name has been on the parkrun database for a while now - we are currently club number 3 by number of runs at the local venue ... which also just happens to be mapped. As well as the publicity associated with our sport's name, our next event there got a plug on their parkrun and facebook pages, and we were able to hand out fliers at Saturday's snowy event. We previously leafleted (with permission) another local venue, and the next (starting next month) is also mapped. Not sure how many takers there have been, but it all helps raise the profile.

How many of the 100+ UK parkrun venues are mapped?

[Spookster]

How many of the 100+ UK parkrun venues are mapped?

Sheffield has 4 Parkruns, and they're all on SYO maps. I'm fairly sure we're not doing as much as we could to tap into this source of potential new orienteers.

[andy]

Sheffield has 4 Parkruns, and they're all on SYO maps. I'm fairly sure we're not doing as much as we could to tap into this source of potential new orienteers.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13730

[Spookster]

Sheffield has 4 Parkruns, and they're all on SYO maps. I'm fairly sure we're not doing as much as we could to tap into this source of potential new orienteers.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13730

Exactly, we're all too busy with other orienteering stuff, so we need to employ someone to help us do more coaching and development...

[Street]

I think the work done by this team over the JK weekend has been really good and is a fantastic step in the right direction for orienteering in Britain.

[HOCOLITE]

I agree it is vibrant and exciting. Keep it up.

[Sunlit Forres]

Agreed. It really was excellent. Thanks team.

[andy]

As someone who wasn't at the JK I have to agree, gave some insight into what was going on with updates and some videos etc. Great step forward.