Development manager vacancy

[SeanC]

I see the advertisement for Ed's old job (BOF development manager) has gone on the website. The job spec is quoting quite a decent salary http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/i ... anager.pdf. So hopefully that will encourage some good candidates.

Reading the job spec it would seem that someone who knows orienteering and is a good leader/manager might stand a good chance of getting the job, even if they haven't got experience in a similar role?

[Freefall]

Surely there must be a typo in the job ad or the event levies are being misspent.

[Sunlit Forres]

Isn't it funded by Sport England Colin? Looks an attractive job but far from easy. The one essential attribute it doesn't mention is needing skin as thick as rhino.

[orient]

Isn't it funded by Sport England Colin?

It does say this in the box above the salary..

[Freefall]

I stand corrected

[Lard]

That salary quoted must be wrong.
I'd like to think that nobody in BO earns that much.

[andypat]

It looks like a fair pay when you consider what they are being asked to do. I am a bit surprised BOF can afford it, but then again if its how BOF chooses to use its funding. As mere mortals we probably dont have the full picture. I suspect the cost of producing focus is barely covered by a single annual membership, let alone paying for anyone to run BOF.

[graeme]

I'd like to think that nobody in BO earns that much.

while I'd like to think they'll earn a lot more ... remembering that the salary is what they'll be paid, not what they earn.

[bewildered]

I skim read the job description and think that knowledge of orienteering is only desirable, not essential.

[aiming off]

From Board Minutes

As a consequence of the work with national partners we have been looking at the wider world of orienteering delivered as a recreational activity or as a tool for personal development and these are areas of work we will be looking at in more detail in 2014. Our current rough estimate is that there are potentially around 750,000 participant runs per year across the potential partners compared to the 180,000 participant runs across our events.

Don't understand what this is, but will it be the main thrust of development?

[graeme]

I think it means corporate team building. My former club did a good line in $50 orange courses. Just like the difference between what someone earns and what they're paid, there's a difference between what something costs and what it's worth. Especially when you have a lot of skilled volunteers doing the provision.

[SeanC]

Some minutes have been posted on the BOF website recently which explains in more detail. Local authorities seem to be the main "partners" at present:

b) Xplorer has been successful and achieved the targets set. Local Authorities love the product, it helps them with their targets for park usage and they can make a small income from their activities. 22 Local Authorities signed
up for the programme in 2013.
c) Xplorer is a robust product that has a wide ranging market of people/organisations wanting to deliver it, lots of people have shown interest in the product and there have been few difficulties getting buy-in. The product requires few changes, perhaps the addition of some different sets of control cards.

The comments on RunChallenge are interesting, and no harm in discussing them here.

RunChallenge was also produced to meet a target group that wanted a social experience and inevitably there is therefore a need for a larger group (probably 25 plus) participating. Where this has happened the response has been positive unfortunately this makes it far harder to grow a RunChallenge group to the necessary size, often the first session has been only small numbers and this is then seen by participants as not being a social experience.
g) Where British Orienteering staff have delivered RunChallenge to a target audience of 25 or more it has been successful with a very positive response and participants wanting to come back to the next session. This points towards a different delivery mechanism than we have tried during 2013.

I paraphrase the dilemma more bluntly.

"Most 20 somethings want to socialise with other 20 somethings, not 300 people 20-50 years older than them, so promoting traditional orienteering events to them isn't going to work.

The only thing worse is an event with 2 people."

If the "different delivery mechanism" could somehow make RunChallenge part of the orienteering calendar, then this would encourage more orienteers to go along and make up a critical social mass, plus would give a more obvious route into mainstream orienteering.

This is a trick that could be pulled off. Some orienteers like a long non-technical orienteering course (street O's/trail challenge etc). Perhaps it is a small number, perhaps on average a younger bunch of orienteers? 10 or 20 orienteers for any one Run Challenge perhaps? Enough to make a crowd, but not enough to swamp the new people with vets and super super vets. The event quality would need to be better than the past though, not the technical difficulty, but controls in the right place. With some orienteers turning up, some might be interested in helping out and improving the quality.

I guess though you could deliver "RunChallenge" as a corporate activity, though it seems a bit physical for many.

[Gnitworp]

but not enough to swamp the new people with vets and super super vets.

The terminology is evolving, Sean. I'm M65 and eligible to run as a Super-Vet in our club champs. There are two championship age categories above this: Ultra-Vet and Hyper-Vet and the Hypers are already trying to think of how to describe themselves in few years' time

[roadrunner]

[quote="Gnitworp"The terminology is evolving, Sean. I'm M65 and eligible to run as a Super-Vet in our club champs. There are two championship age categories above this: Ultra-Vet and Hyper-Vet and the Hypers are already trying to think of how to describe themselves in few years' time [/quote]
I like the Australian terminology mentioned in one of the letters in the latest CompassSport: Vet, Super Vet, Legend and Immortal

[Big Jon]

I like the Australian terminology mentioned in one of the letters in the latest CompassSport: Vet, Super Vet, Legend and Immortal

Surely the last stage is "dead"