I read yesterday that it takes 70,000 hours of vounteer time to put on O-Ringen. This year they have 15,000 runners over 5 days, so that's almost 1 hour per started run! This is much less than it used to be, and they have a stated aim to reduce it further.
It made me think about how much volunteer time we use in the UK. My feeling has always been that it's way too much. In just about every area (parking, registration, start, finish, courses etc) I think there is significant opportunity to save manpower, mostly by being more efficient - fewer courses, fewer start boxes, fewer bits of paper to complete, no manned road crossings, DIY parking etc. But the thinking is always the other way around, "to cover all this complicated stuff comfortably we need X volunteers"
I think eventually we'll be forced to do things differently because we'll run out of volunteers. But it would be better to be proactive about it - we could start by sharing best practice?
How many volunteers do we need?
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
Parking seems to be an area often with excess manpower. The amount of times someone will point me towards the very obvious person in hi-vis 50m down the track. My favourite is them stopping you to tell you to go to the next person, wasting time and causing back-ups.
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
SprintScotland, featuring 3 World Ranking Events, appeared to have about a dozen actual volunteers, and a handful of others coopted to collect controls etc.
It was all fine, but the people involved (gg, SIman) are the usual superefficient suspects and work very hard. I spent the afternoon stopping controls from getting vandalised. It's impossible to know if that saved the event or was a total waste of time.
Our Wednesday sprintelope* evening events are run by two people, one to set
up the courses, one to do registration, start & download. It works fine, but mainly because
the 50 participants already know what they're doing.
* Look it up, come along!
It was all fine, but the people involved (gg, SIman) are the usual superefficient suspects and work very hard. I spent the afternoon stopping controls from getting vandalised. It's impossible to know if that saved the event or was a total waste of time.
Our Wednesday sprintelope* evening events are run by two people, one to set
up the courses, one to do registration, start & download. It works fine, but mainly because
the 50 participants already know what they're doing.
* Look it up, come along!
WOC2024 Edinburgh
Test races at SprintScotland (Alloa/Falkirk) and Euromeeting (near Stirling).
Test races at SprintScotland (Alloa/Falkirk) and Euromeeting (near Stirling).
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graeme - god
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
graeme wrote:Our Wednesday sprintelope* evening events are run by two people, one to set
up the courses, one to do registration, start & download. It works fine, but mainly because
the 50 participants already know what they're doing.
As presumably do the 2 volunteers. I was speaking to a Dad and a child yesterday who had done a local event recently where two controls on the yellow course were apparently in the wrong place, one of which he couldn't find. The child was apparently pretty devastated he couldn't find them and hasn't run since. His Dad is keen to find him another race so as not to lose the initiative.
I guess what I'm saying is theres a balance beyond which the risk of things going wrong goes up and that balance can be quite difficult to find.
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
I agree about the need for balance, but more people isn't necessarily better. Better to have 1 skilled control placer (getting up early) than 5 novice ones...
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
ba-ba wrote:Parking seems to be an area often with excess manpower. The amount of times someone will point me towards the very obvious person in hi-vis 50m down the track. My favourite is them stopping you to tell you to go to the next person, wasting time and causing back-ups.
This.
I'm also amazed that the entry-on-the-day process remains so incredibly manual, either filling in a piece of paper for a volunteer to manually retype, or spelling out unusual surnames as somebody labouriously enters them into the system in real time.
In a world where 95%+ of competitors at an event will have access to a wifi capable device, it should be possible for an experienced runner to connect to a local wifi network and enter their details, chosen course etc straight into the database, and then just wander over to the registration tent to pay.
Although we also ought to be reducing the number of payments taken in muddy fields. If the assembly area has an internet connection, competitors could both enter and pay online from the comfort of their car; if it doesn't, the competitor could enter over the event's local wifi, and the entry fee would be automatically paid using a bank card that they had previously registered with the orienteering entry app.
I'm really hoping that one of the major entries/timing providers already have something along these lines up their sleeves.
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Scott - god
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
We were discussing exactly that kind of idea for on-the-day entry while dealing with the 500 or so entries we received at each of the races at our recent three-day event. In theory, the existing systems should work fine but they are dependent on the data in the existing runners database (name, class, SI number, etc) if typing is to be avoided completely. All you then have to do is go to registration, get your SI brick read and your entry is registered. Payment is by invoice sent out to the club, cash or the Swish function linked to the person's 'phone. However, the different payment methods and different fees for adults and juniors as well as hire SI cards meant that we still needed a paper note for each entry to make sure we knew who had paid/ has to pay what. The fact that telephone reception was sketchy didn't help either. The guessing game of how many maps is also an issue. Someone made the mistake of offering both 1:10000 and 1:7500 for one of the classes which caused no end of bother at the start.
The ultimate function would allow registration, payment and printing of a map (at a scale of choice) in one package.
The ultimate function would allow registration, payment and printing of a map (at a scale of choice) in one package.
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
Scott wrote:it should be possible for an experienced runner to ...
Go straight to the start, punch the check-box for safety monitoring, run round the course, and have the results system pick up all their details at download.
ab esse ad posse, this is precisely what I did at SprintScotland. It did mean I wasn't included in the WRE, but being told I'd scored "nul points" wasn't high on my agenda.
WOC2024 Edinburgh
Test races at SprintScotland (Alloa/Falkirk) and Euromeeting (near Stirling).
Test races at SprintScotland (Alloa/Falkirk) and Euromeeting (near Stirling).
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graeme - god
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
One thing orienteering clubs could do is let the organiser decide on the start and finish location instead of the planner. This might make starts and finishes far from registration less likely.
I agree, another possibility is pre-entry. We were discussing enabling EOD on all our local events because we're getting lots of non-members, and that takes lots of time at the event entering the details. Unfortunately there are some fields on Fabian4 that can be offputting to non members (eg "BOF/SOA number" ... they're not likely to know what BOF is, definately not SOA ) but I'm told there are plans to improve the Fabian4 GUI, so pre-entry at local events could be a possibility soon.
Making pre-entry compulsary for club members (instead of allowing both eod and pre-entry) is another easy way of reducing workload, so long as pre-entry stays open as long as possible, eg 2 days before an event. For newbies, allowing EOD for those that can't do pre-entry is a better idea though as (the feedback I've had is) that some want to turn up on the day and have a human explain everything....
I agree, another possibility is pre-entry. We were discussing enabling EOD on all our local events because we're getting lots of non-members, and that takes lots of time at the event entering the details. Unfortunately there are some fields on Fabian4 that can be offputting to non members (eg "BOF/SOA number" ... they're not likely to know what BOF is, definately not SOA ) but I'm told there are plans to improve the Fabian4 GUI, so pre-entry at local events could be a possibility soon.
Making pre-entry compulsary for club members (instead of allowing both eod and pre-entry) is another easy way of reducing workload, so long as pre-entry stays open as long as possible, eg 2 days before an event. For newbies, allowing EOD for those that can't do pre-entry is a better idea though as (the feedback I've had is) that some want to turn up on the day and have a human explain everything....
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
SeanC wrote:Making pre-entry compulsary for club members (instead of allowing both eod and pre-entry) is another easy way of reducing workload, so long as pre-entry stays open as long as possible, eg 2 days before an event. For newbies, allowing EOD for those that can't do pre-entry is a better idea though as (the feedback I've had is) that some want to turn up on the day and have a human explain everything....
Careful with this though. Disadvantaging people for being a member of a club when there is already an expectation that you spend valuable time doing club type stuff is a dangerous road. Not to mention trying to manage all the other pulls on our time.
Also since our neighbouring club started making it "compulsory" to email in advance to guarantee a map at their evening events I think I've done considerably less events as I don't often know until the day whether I can make it from work and its not worth the risk of maybe a 90 min round trip for the possibility of no run.
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
SeanC wrote:One thing orienteering clubs could do is let the organiser decide on the start and finish location instead of the planner. This might make starts and finishes far from registration less likely.
I agree, another possibility is pre-entry. We were discussing enabling EOD on all our local events because we're getting lots of non-members, and that takes lots of time at the event entering the details. Unfortunately there are some fields on Fabian4 that can be offputting to non members (eg "BOF/SOA number" ... they're not likely to know what BOF is, definately not SOA ) but I'm told there are plans to improve the Fabian4 GUI, so pre-entry at local events could be a possibility soon.
Making pre-entry compulsary for club members (instead of allowing both eod and pre-entry) is another easy way of reducing workload, so long as pre-entry stays open as long as possible, eg 2 days before an event. For newbies, allowing EOD for those that can't do pre-entry is a better idea though as (the feedback I've had is) that some want to turn up on the day and have a human explain everything....
Would it be possible for "pre" entry on Fabian4 etc to be open right up to and even during the event? The number of entries accepted would have to be limited to maps available once the normal closing date had passed, and start times would be slotted in to gaps rather than being allocated. You could perhaps show the confirmation email on your phone to the entries desk to prove you'd paid, collect your SI Card, etc. Of course, this only works if there's phone coverage at registration.
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
andypat wrote:Careful with this though. Disadvantaging people for being a member of a club when there is already an expectation that you spend valuable time doing club type stuff is a dangerous road.
You could view this another way and see non members as our guests and people we are most keen to impress.
We've also had feedback from the newbies that they find our events cheap - they turn up expecting to pay about £10 (for adults) but we charge half that, so one possibility to prevent any negative feelings is a reasonable surcharge for non members (eg £3 adults, £1.50 juniors) since they seem happy to pay this. The extra money could then be ploughed into labour saving equipment ... eg more SI kit (to reduce sharing), a new laser printer (to make it easier to print nearer the day), the latest easy to put up tent etc.
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
graeme wrote:Go straight to the start, punch the check-box for safety monitoring, run round the course, and have the results system pick up all their details at download.
That also works, although it leaves the start team to deal with later starters who are annoyed by turning up at the start to find that there are no maps left on their preferred course.
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"If only you were younger and better..."
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Scott - god
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
roadrunner wrote:Would it be possible for "pre" entry on Fabian4 etc to be open right up to and even during the event?
That's basically what I was proposing above, except that, as long as the assembly area has basic internet coverage, it should be possible to make online entries during the day sync automatically with the results software used at the event.
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Scott - god
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Re: How many volunteers do we need?
SeanC wrote:One thing orienteering clubs could do is let the organiser decide on the start and finish location instead of the planner. This might make starts and finishes far from registration less likely.
I hope Planners and Organisers discuss such matters; I do
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