Discussion: Promoting Orienteering Results

So, a National Championship in the competitive sport of orienteering just happened. Unable to go myself, I figured I'd check out the results ...

1) Go to Official Event webpage ... no results. Lots of information about the event, how to register, etc. But, no results, or even any information on how to find the results.

2) Go to National Governing Body webpage ... no results. And, no mention that a National Championship has happened.

3) Go to an awesome web-site for die-hard aficionados of the sport (which you would naturally think of if you are in the know), go to discussion for the event, find a discussion titled "Results", with links to some website (called obasen in some country 1000's of km away). Super detailed results, lots of excellent information, super. (Oh wait, doesn't give eligibility status, so still not sure who won the National Championship!).

If we are interested in promoting our sport as a competitive activity, it seems like we might make finding the results the day after the event just a little bit easier for those who might be interested in knowing what happened :-).

It took two days for the results of our Saturday event to become available online. TWO DAYS!!! I really wanted to check if the status of my mispunch had changed.

And here I thought this was going to be about sending out press releases to various local media about what local person won a national championship.

To phrase it a bit different, it would seem that the national championships would be a good opportunity for OUSA to send press releases to each winners local media. A huge task I know but, orienteering needs to increase it's visibility and what better way of doing that than to get hundreds of mentions in hundreds of different local medias scattered around the country?

Carlch, That is a great idea that I am going to steal. Thanks :)

@bmay: if you are volunteering to take charge and help tabulate and format corrected results and post them while the few event workers who travelled hundreds of miles and also had responsibilities for equipment pickup, participant safety, and myriad other responsibilities get safely home and catch up on a few hours of much needed sleep, we would really appreciate the much needed assistance. Please contact me or Valerie directly, and we will try to get you the information and data so that you can take over this task and put out the publicity that the event deserves and that we would all like to see happen as quickly as possible.

The trick on Attackpoint is to click the event link:

http://www.attackpoint.org/eventdetail.jsp/event_1...

I use the Attackpoint feature that emails me when splits are posted, and I got them fairly quickly after the last finisher was in. (That feature is under "settings", "Edit your profile" in the upper right of the screen, and I think it works if you have the event as a "Yes" even if you don't have a claimed SI number. Perhaps Ken will explain it, and specifically if it works for "Maybe" and "No (on list)" and "No (not on list)".

But---point well taken.

Re: OUSA website, point taken about no mention of the Championship event having occurred, though I'm just a web page updater, not a PR person (which OUSA doesn't really have).

As for results link, I wait until the host club posts an official link to them on their sites if I can, rather than posting a link to Attackpoint, though I've had to do that In the past on occasion. Yes, having results posted the day after the event is "nice to have", but results are usually a bit more complicated to post than those for a road race, for example, especially when you have a limited number of volunteers and they're exhausted from only getting a few hours of sleep during the event.

The Champions lists will be updated when I have the OCIN link(s). Otherwise, check the "Spectating from afar" thread for links to each day's results and eligibility, for now.

It was always thus. For every 10 jobs to be done, a couple are done superbly, and these set rising expectations. 4 are done quite well, 2 are picked up by inexperienced or reluctant people. Check the maths, 2 aren't done at all. The jobs in each category are different for each club, each year, each event. Because of the rotation, we know what the gold standard is. Because of the maths we don't get it throughout.

Celebrate the good bits.

Hi Mike and Matthew, First, rest assured that this is not an attack on you guys as I know what an incredible amount of work you both do for the sport and it really is appreciated.

The point is that posting results in a place that is easy to find and publicizing/celebrating those results in a timely fashion is something that we as a sport should be doing better. I've been one of those people focusing on the myriad of details that we tend to get wrapped up in (course setting, map printing, stadium set-up, control pick-up, etc.). And worrying about updating a web-site at the end of a long, long weekend of organizing is really tough to do. The point is that event organizers should allocate some resources (i.e., not the meet director, course setter, vetter, control-picker-upper, etc.) toward publicity including publication and publicizing results after the event.

I too have pondered the unrealistic expectations of "webmasters". Again nothing new. In the days of club magazines, the "editor" was really a journalist, wheedling information from people and writing a great deal of comment. Luckily expectations of presentation were low. Now the "webmaster" is expected to find results, source graphics, write comment, design layouts as well as understand how to put it all on the web. We need to recognise those journalist and PR roles.

Ok, so I just discovered the "temporary results" on Valerie's web-page (which was linked in the thread "Spectating from a distance at the Flying Pig" and which made it to the web in a remarkably quick manner). Those have the eligibility, so is just what I was looking for. Copy those results (assuming they are official) to the event web-site and the job is done.

The job of the "webmaster" is a really important one in event organization. The "web" is the event's link both to participants coming to the event but also those who aren't coming who are interested in the sport.

I am not sure i understand the reason for this outcry. Detailed results were published, quite promptly, i would say. Probably the column titled "US Champion Eligible" could be added with Y/N for each runner for those curious.
Focusing on real issues, like qualified course design, also map quality may do more for promoting orienteering. The reason I got interested in this event was expecting to go on interesting tough and fair courses on a well-mapped challenging terrain.

Detailed results were published, ...

I would actually argue that results are not yet published. There aren't any results on the event's official web site nor on the governing body's home page. There are "temporary results" (I presume still unofficial) on a personal website, linked from a somewhat obscure forum for the sport. But, is that really how the results of a national championship should be published?

The Boston Marathon is on Monday, April 20. If I go to http://www.baa.org/races/boston-marathon.aspx on Tuesday, April 21, will I find results there? Or will I have to go to the Message Board on www.letsrun.com to find out who won?

If its anything like Australian Marathon events, I wouldn't be surprised if you have to go to the later :(

Its far from perfect, but I notice an improving results service since much of Australia moved to Eventor. I suspect that with one consolidated site to place event details, then the same site is familiar once the event is over, so the step towards results is simpler. Bottom line, the more that is automated, the more that will be done.
And I second Gruver's comments. Voluntary organisations are about cobbling together disparate passions. Occasionally all the jigsaw pieces are there.

Most of the press releases can be written in advance, just fill in the names and winning times after the fact and send them on their ways.

As part of registration, you can have people list their local media outlets and maybe a short bio. When they, it's just a copy/paste/send.

Here's how it should work to minimise fuss when people are busy:

Well in advance of the race, agree on a single place to post results ASAP after the race has finished
A few days before the race, put a link to that single place from everywhere "Results will be published after each race at http://whateverwherever.com/results/"

Race IT people only have to put up a single set of results that everyone can find and can get to it from everywhere, minimial fuss during the event with a bit of thought in advance when pressure is off.
I was looking for results on Sunday night and the only thing I could find (between race site, OUSA and AP) was a discussion topic with WOC points for WOC only runners.

For every 10 jobs to be done, a couple are done superbly, and these set rising expectations. 4 are done quite well, 2 are picked up by inexperienced or reluctant people.

Right, and if some big shot doesn't like the way you did something, they may chew you out to your face in front of your peers, drop the F bomb, bad mouth you in e-mail cause the don't know the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All" (cause it is a given that you will be bad mouthed somewhere), and then wonder why there are threads like this bemoaning the paucity of willing volunteers. This isn't rocket science, folks. I know if I were volunteering at the race in question, I would be real motivated by the OP's tone. How soon can I sign up for the next round of that experience?

Now, someone will chime in that the problems in this thread will be solved by paid staff and a profit motive. That might be a good idea. Maybe OUSA should spend six figures on someone over several years to address some of these problems. No, things like publicity and media and web site results are not anyone's job.

Besides, if you think about this like an economist, you'd realize what the real problem is. Outside the OP, and probably about 10 other people, everyone who cares about the results is probably at the race. So, the cost to provide timely results or results on a particular server exceeds the market for them. Otherwise, someone would step in and sponge the profit from that market. Instead, we criticize overworked volunteers for not providing it for free.

Of course, you could argue that expanding the market, that is, increasing the number of people who care, might be a good idea, so that doing this would be cost effective. But, it is no one's job to expand the market either.

At some trail races, unofficial results go to the official web site the instant runners cross the finish line. All the technology for this is out there, starting with a chip in the bib, and assuming there is a cell tower around. Maybe it should be someone's job to look into a general way to implement this, or see what solutions are out there, from bib to official web server, that each race director can plug and play, and not have to reinvent at each race, or use too much volunteer capacity. No, I'd be called "stupid" for such a suggestion, and wondering what people's jobs really are.

On a related note, lets say I was into outdoor sports, and wanted to do, say, "navigation racing". I might type that into google, with or without the quotes. Our friends at MerGeo come up first in the search results. However, after going thru 20 pages of search results, and tiring of the process, still no sign of the putative "official" web site for this sport. I even find kayak racing before OUSA's web site. But, its no one's job to look into this or make sure this isn't so. Of course, hiding it under names like "orienteering", and "minoxidil" (or whatever its called), is the way to go, cause those are the search terms people will use. No one's job to think about this stuff tho, and those who are willing to and put it out there are called "stupid". Well, apparently it was someone's job at MerGeo. Good for them.

One should look into the history of the "Spartan Races". Impressive growth over a very recent time frame. I heard an interview with their CEO on a business channel recently. Interesting and valuable stuff (maybe try to find an archive of it), but it is the outcome you can have when it is someone with the acumen's job.

But, I'm just a stupid iconoclast who is upset at the way orienteering treats its volunteers. At least I make suggestions and attempt to point out where the product, marketing, and organizational problems are. Meanwhile, the drumbeat of these sorts of threads rolls on year after year, and no one, outside the unwarranted volunteer bashing, is held accountable.

@bmay I think the comparison to the Boston Marathon is a bit unfair as their entry fee is $175-225, and they must be getting tons of sponsorship from big companies. I also bet there are professional event organizers who jump at organizing the event in this known sport.
On the other hand, I guess it is the "if you build it, they will come" idea?
In any case, I like what @Pink Socks says. I have done press releases in our local newspaper before, but I guess it is always me, about my boys and they get tired of it. For crying out loud, I would do about others, too, but that is all the juniors from our area who compete nationally; last year at least I had also our Finnish exchange student to boast about orienteering and great national results of local kids. In any case, such promotional writing coming from OUSA would be a golden opportunity.
So Pink Socks idea about filling in the media outlets into registration would be great. I would add something like entering an e-mail address if a runner wants, to be given to the media outlet, maybe they would like to do an interview.
And doing that especially also for the young kids, juniors and very senior age groups would show the breadth of the sport.
@mikeminium and yes, I would do it (call me crazy ;), but I think I should be able to do it from some kind of official e-mail address or something, because I truly believe it should come from OUSA and not just some member. It would carry a bit more weight. And no, I am not good a formulating great sounding texts :(

Valerie did an outstanding job of posting the results right after the event, with eligibility and all the trimmings. And they appeared just as they always do on an AP "spectating" thread, I would not know what more could one ask for.

I visit OUSA site once a month maybe, and I am on AP every day. So it makes sense to post things where people are, and where it is easy to do so.

On the practical suggestion side -- OUSA site has its Twitter feed on the front page, so the easiest way would be to post links to Valerie's results right there.

...improving results service since much of Australia moved to Eventor...

I did some research this morning into Eventor in Sweden (really looking for another service that I´d heard of before). Then I found that there is a built in function for Press Results where you with a few simple clicks can produce press results for just about any occasion - all based on results uploaded into Eventor. You just pick a District (State) + Club or whatever other filter you want to apply and make a few additional choices and there you go...

Now I notice that the same function exists in Eventor Australia.
Once something similar to that is implemented and all (or most) results are stored in a common place the task of informing local press will be a lot easier.

Spectator thread (with vmeyer.net results) and AP upload exceeded my desires for results for my category and my fan boy F/M 21 categories. The live monitors were fantastic on site - very fun to see if your position would hold or not and how the superstars and your friends were doing.

Or will I have to go to the Message Board on www.letsrun.com to find out who won?

The world famous message boards on letsrun will have the winners before any other site that's not bootleg-tv-feed.com. If work's not too busy that day, I'll see how long it takes to show up on USATF.

Focusing on real issues, like qualified course design, also map quality may do more for promoting orienteering.

The most successful navigation sport promoter in my state uses the crappiest maps. He is much better at marketing than the folks in my state with the best maps. Anecdotally, o club meet attendance does not correlate with the quality of the map, but does correlate with weather, proximity to population, and whether or not Local University has a football game.

Tuesday morning doesn't seem unreasonable to me, 21st century or no 21st century.

I brought the PR idea up recently with the Oer of the year awards, another PR opportunity for OUSA I would think.
As is the naming to the Team and the National Event winners.
I know some like the sport as its small niche, but if we really want to attract more athletes to our Teams and more public to our events, we have to tell them we exist and present some idea of how interesting the sport is.
I, too , have promoted my daughters, to the local paper, to the city paper, to their colleges. Who knows of the results, but if OUSA got behind a PR effort, we certainly could at least have a chance of attracting more of the public.

andrewd wrote:
Here's how it should work to minimise fuss when people are busy: ....

Now we're talking. The key is to have a plan in place before the event, so that at the end of each day, it is easy to copy results to where they need to go. And, so people can find results for the event easily from the event's webpage.

Boston Marathon already has a "Results" tab on their home page. I bet they have thought about how people will find results when the event is over.

Why not just link the AP discussion thread to ocin.org? Perhaps put a note that it's the place for timeliest results. Easy.

Thanks tundra. That link is in fact there, toward the end of the main results page. It could perhaps have been there sooner - maybe that's what you were implying.

@bmay, I would have been very happy to set up links to results pages in advance. That was in fact the plan. But dealing with things like new construction at the university which threatened to force us to redesign courses and reprint maps took away the hour or two (and more) that would have been spent creating that page. That orange fence just after the start? It went up just a few days before the event. The gravel road and dirt pile (dot knoll) just west of the start? Only a week old! It took a lot of time and negotiation with the university and the contractor to get the fence breached (as shown on the final maps), so that we didn't have to re-do all the courses. Working out permissions to open the fence, correcting the maps, and getting them printed took priority over designing a results page. That's only one of the last minute behind the scenes issues we had to handle. So please excuse that I showed a little frustration with people complaining that it took a couple days to get results pages designed and posted. I'm not the greatest web design expert - I can code a little basic HTML and that's about it - believe me, I would be delighted if we had a dedicated volunteer to do the web pages and results and get them posted more quickly.

@bubo @randy. Glad that someone else noticed the potential national solution. Despite all that I like with Eventor, I have to report its Australian implementation hasn't been without the usual complaints about change etc - much as randy describes. I wasn't the one who bore the pain, but I hope those who did receive their due recognition.

You shouldn't force Eventor onto people, particularly those that lack the computer know-how and whatsit to operate it properly.

Where's my prize for best post? I want a pocket knife too.

One of the best things I like about IOF Eventor, is it has your pass results in the one location

http://eventor.orienteering.org/Athletes/Details/1...

I meant that there is utility to putting up a link to the event's Attackpoint page on the event's official page at the time the latter is first published, with a note that the AP page contains pre- and post-event discussion and may be timeliest for results.

Utilities around here mostly put up hay bales, trade tools and bogans.

One of the toughest things to do on AP I find is to give constructive criticism in a manner that will help improve future events - including reducing volunteer load. I felt bmay's post was well intentioned and he attempted to add some anonymity (well, okay, not much ;-).

To my mind the key response has been andrewd's of actually coming up with some way to solve the problem for future events. I will also point out that having a plan for where to put the results, and creating that place on the web in advance will actually REDUCE volunteer time and stress. It becomes a simple, almost mindless thing to do at the end of the event. Not having such a plan creates extra work for the timing team and additional stress following the event (such as created by this thread, and people asking when the results will be posted).

[parenthetically, this is one of the requirements of a WRE - that results are posted in a timely manner (I think it is the same day, or 24 hours after an event). This forces organizers to plan for this, and eliminates this AP thread entirely.]

Well said AZ, including the first paragraph.

This leads me to contemplate writing something that monitors an email address and posts results sent to that address to Eventor. Our results all get emailed to a bunch of people, one of whom has to upload it, so automating the middle man would be awesome.

*adds to list of stuff to write*

Edit: there's no reason why you American types couldn't do something similar that creates a web page instead...*ponders*

Results from national events should be the responsibility of the national organization. OUSA should have a webpage dedicated to results from all national events and should have someone(or an automated program) that posts those results once they are received from the host club.

When someone wants to view results from national events they would know where to go for all national events and one person would be responsible for making sure the results were posted in a timely fashion.

I think a system like this would produce much better results than hoping that each individual host club gets the job done. It would be more professional, too, and would allow OUSA to archive all national event results.

For lack of a better plan (beyond my programming abilities), results links for foot O events in the US, and major international events, are compiled here. Bookmark it to find it quickly, or put "results" into the search box to more easily find the link.

Host clubs don't send me links, but I pick them up by scanning AP, Clubnet, and club websites.

And sometimes when clubs change websites those links become broken. I try to archive Championship event results to be sure they're not lost when such a change occurs.

The big annual Easter carnival is on in South Australia. Results were in the event computer by 2pm, but still not uploaded on Eventor or the event website by 7pm. This is poor, very poor.

Most of the participants are only back to their accommodation near 7pm, after driving along a dirt track in the middle of nowhere from the event assembly, where course closed at 3-4pm. The local Jamestown doesn't have reception let alone internet. Edit - this was written in Jamestown. Edit - Orienteering SA has been amazingly organised and cannot fault them at all!

I don't doubt it's been a fantastically run event and good on them - wish I could be there. But surely there was some way to get the results online much earlier?

Hard to get results online when there is no reception at event centre

Hi Fly - come back to Perth. results were up by 5.30pm our time!

And Oscar still leading NOL!

Dunno about anyone else, but I'd rather the SA crew devoted their resources to organising great events that run flawlessly (as they have) than worry about how to get the results into papers that no one reads, from an area with no net access.

+1

Priority 1 - well run event
Priority 2 - well run event with timely Results for participants
Priority 3 - well run event with timely Results for people who wish they could be there

SA ticked all those boxes

Agree!

We ended up in category 4 yesterday - timely results for people who were there but had to leave early to catch a plane (well the real reason was that Tash and Polly were cold so we left) so I didn't see the results until we got to the airport ;-)

Outback orienteering it was. No internet, but lots of bulldust. Fun event.

All the bulldust almost made me wish I'd run Sledge... almost. However then I wouldn't have got to run a 16km course!

Perhaps publicity could be a job for volunteers who lack the skills and experience to set courses, vet, meet direct, run finish and results, and so forth. Sometimes there are enthusiastic newcomers who can't yet do the more technical tasks, but are willing to help. NEOC used to have an official who sent out press releases for every local event. Post event publicity seems like a similar thing, which could be equally worthwhile. NEOC got a lot of newcomers over time, probably due to work like this.

Doing that kind of publicity also requires a certain set of skills and experience, not to mention willing to do it, but if you have someone that's interested it is an important role for the club.