Discussion: Feedback

Thanks for coming to SWSW 2018! We're working on sending out a survey for collecting systematic (and anonymous) feedback, but until then I'm interested in whatever comments people are willing to share publicly!

Did you like the schedule? Which areas were your favorite / least favorite? Which activities? Would you be interested in more scheduled tourist / cultural / social activities? What can we do better?

If you didn't attend this year, why not? What would get you to attend?

Some things we already know we need to do better next year are to clarify some of the mapping standards and provide more information online sooner for each event. We can't promise blue skies every day for the whole week but we can (pretty much) guarantee a lot of sun.

Looking forward to your comments!

I had a FANTASTIC time, and I can't wait to go back in 2019!

* I loved having an event every single day (I could have chosen to skip a day if I had been feeling tired or if I had wanted to do touristy stuff -- but I was there to orienteer and I wanted as much orienteering as possible).

* I liked that the organizers coordinated a few social events (escape room and pizza dinner at Peg's house).

Suggestions:

* For training courses, put streamers at the start & finish (in addition to the actual control locations) for doofuses like me who have trouble finding the start / finish. I also could have benefited from streamers leading me to the start at Cat Mountain (since I somehow ended up on an unmapped trail...).

* The "training events" are not really for beginners; maybe call them "advanced skills training" and/or offer a true beginner training option in addition to the more advanced stuff.

* Add borders to the mini-maps on the master sheet, so that they're easier to cut to a uniform size (I had to eyeball the ones that had lots of white space without clear edges). :-)

Since we were sharing a house, I saw how much work Cristina was putting in every night to get everything in place for the next day's activities. THANK YOU to Cristina, Melissa, and all the other TSN & GPHXO volunteers. I had a really great nine-day trip. :-)

I only did the last weekend as that was when spring training baseball games began. The other days sounded fun; hope to come longer in the future if I can justify the expenses. I liked the First Water terrain; too bad I couldn't get into the map for the early technical part (skipped the training for baseball). I fold my map & I had a bit of a problem with ink coming off in places; don't know much about map printing but it doesn't always happen. Thanks so much for all the work.

Here's feedback from someone who hasn't attended, but is considering doing so next year: The sooner the timing of the week can be announced, the better from my perspective. Not looking for details, just enough to book flights. (Or is the week always going to begin on Presidents' Day weekend?)

Why I didn't attend this year: Too close to next week's ski-O.

For training courses, put streamers at the start & finish

This leads me to another question: are streamers as control markers ok for training events? How important is it to have actual control flags out in forested terrain?

Or is the week always going to begin on Presidents' Day weekend?

Leaning that way for 2019. It's a school vacation week in some states (and countries) and rodeo week in Tucson (Thursday and Friday off school). Unfortunately that means the first weekend conflicts with the Vancouver Sprint Camp but Tucson is far enough from Vancouver, and the offerings are different enough, that I don't think that's enough of a reason to avoid that weekend.