Discussion: Maps

All,

An idea came to me from a USOF member. He suggested that A meet Meet Directors make their unused maps available to anyone that wanted them. The intereested party would pay a small shipping and handling fee to the Meet Director.

A tangental idea that I thought was we would scan and store the maps on the USOF website. Acknowledging the issues with printers it may be a broader option.

Thoughts?
Glen

How about encouraging people to put maps at:

http://omaps.worldofo.com/

Splike,

Thanks for the suggestion. Cool site.

Glen

II think the printed maps would be useful for armchair training and the physical training with map in hand some orienteers favour. Not, I hasten to add, that I want to discourage archiving projects and online availability of past courses.

Printed maps are also useful for teaching and other classroom activities. Most large meets typically end up with a supply of left-overs. I also frequently give away old maps to park officials, rangers, naturalists, biologists, etc.

I've also seen old maps used as envelopes, note pads, and gift wrap. Nice when it is possible to re-use / recycle.

Should we have both? Paper is used until they run out for arm chair training and you have an electronic file for posterity? Could be part of the USOF website? (or is that repolicating "maps.worldofo"?

Glen

Canada has a national RouteGadget database (rg.orienteering.ca). It is nice to be able to view maps there, but we would enjoy having more organizers put their events here.

Provides maps, courses, and routes (if runners enter them), along with results (and cool animations)

...I've also seen old maps used as envelopes, note pads, and gift wrap....

It is a damn shame to take a valuable thing like a map, and cut it up for scratch paper. Why not turn old maps into a profit center for USOF, and promote orienteering at the same time?

Properly folded, O maps could be sold from low-cost vending machines located at visitors' centers, park gas stations, or rest room buildings right on the map itself. A sticker or copy of the map in park display cases would direct folks to the machines.

Priced at $5, $10, $12, $20 and paid by credit card, the sales appeal would be to provide hikers, bikers, bird-watchers and trail runners instant gratification. After all, there's really no competition; most free park service maps are almost unusable aren't they? And these people don't really care if the map is a couple years' old, do they?

The machines would have the word "orienteering" in large colorful graphics. And the back of the maps would be printed with USOF publicity, aimed at getting the user to the next level: sending Glen a check for membership and more orienteering info.

Maps purchased with credit cards from vending machines to entice buyers to join USOF by sending a check to Glen.

Whether the contrast inherent in that image was intentional or not, that is pretty funny.

Robin still gets the membership checks, not Glen.

Having access to maps of previous events from a centralized website at USOF would help expand the sport. 6 friends began orienteering after I was able to use the maps of local parks from previous events I could take them to the park and show them how to navigate, locate yourself on the map, etc.
Pictures are worth a thousand words....

I find low-resolution jpg files to be of limited utility from a training perspective. They're fine for comparing routes, but if what you want is to get better at reading an orienteering map, you need an orienteering map. A repository of ocad files, or vector-formatted map files (eps, pdf, etc.) would be awesome, but there should be some associated framework for generating the funds necessary to create and maintain those maps. I would guess there's something to be learned from the music industry here, but I've never purchased an mp3 online, so I wouldn't know.

You don't have a vending machine at the park. You can just have maps available and people pay on the honor system in a cash box (works for the NFS campground system and others, or even better they can buy a pdf version online before they head out to the park for cheap since they are printing it at home.

Maps might be good advertising tools, for the kind of people who like maps, many of whom might like orienteering. I posted some old overprinted A meet maps on the walls at my university (decades ago), to find crowds huddled around them studying them. (Admittedly, we didn't immediately get crowds at events...but a map with a course makes a great visual for explaining what orienteering is, without a ton of words. Maybe there's a good way to use that in some marketing endeavor.)

I always carry a couple of pieces of map (twice the size of a business card, folded in half) in my wallet, to show to people if the topic of what orienteering is happens to come up. It's nice when the folding equipment for a sport will fit in a wallet.

So do I. I carry JJ's business card.

Whenever we do a big run for one of our State Parks, we always give the park a few hundred maps. Incremental cost to us is almost zero and the park can make a few bucks selling them at the visitor center. It's an easy way to keep relations good and the club website is on the map, so maybe we get a new member out of it.

So do I. I carry JJ's business card.

Cool. The map pieces that I carry are a little more useful for explaining orienteering, because they have course sections on them.