Discussion: Media in the North American Orienteering

Hi everyone, I wanted to see if anyone in the orienteering community would be interested in working on and idea with me. In the running world there is a web site called flotrack, they cover many meets, have live viewings of races, interview athletes and coaches, have blogs, training logs, discussion boards etc. I know in orienteering we have blogs and AP, but I was wondering if we can enhance these sites or create a new one that has potential to be a media center for orienteering, were we could do similar stuff like FLotrack as mentioned above. I am not very good at the technical side, but am willing and interested to learn from someone who is. I also want to start collecting videos and interviews from people at races. Eventually it might be something that could generate money for an individual interested in the work to be paid. Please use this discussion to throw out ideas and express interest. It would be pretty cool for orienteering if we could tell people to go check out the site where they could see footage of races, interviews with athletes and get a feel for the sport. I think it would definitely generate excitement.

I don't mean to be flip, but isn't that what the OUSA webpage is for?

Sometimes you need to think about working outside (or at least parallel) to official channels to do big things.

Lots of examples of this... who wants to take Greyhound? Let's take BoltBus instead. Blue Moon instead of MillerCoors. Etc.

Note: "Eventually it might be something that could generate money for an individual interested in the work to be paid."

Entrepreneurs rarely want to work for the government.

Erin, a few thoughts:

A slick looking platform about orienteering is a good idea. But, there are lots of existing websites that cover more or less everything you're mentioning in some form or another so what really would be the purpose and intended audience of this specific platform? It seems to me that unless there is a specific target audience that would be better served by a website that collects content in a different way than does orienteeringusa.org, attackpoint.org, worldofo.com, etc. you are wasting your effort.

It seems to me from your description that you are basically wanting to recreate worldofo.com on a North American scale. At the same time I don't think there is enough content to warrant the creation of a site to collect that content. How many North American orienteers have interesting blogs? How many 'high profile' events are there in North America that people are really interested in paying attention to and how many of these have any media in a format that could benefit a site like you are proposing?

I think time would be much better spent focusing on getting more people to create cool and interesting content about orienteering in blogs, on twitter, in video, etc. than in creating a location to collect what little does exist.

The only difference between what's on the OUSA webpage now and what Erin described is content. Someone has to provide the content. Janet can post anything you want on the webpage. It'll only be as exciting as what you send her.

You might want to also check out tv.worldofo.com and orienteering-tv.net.

As Canadian says, it seems like the first step is to start making great videos. After that, there are many easy ways to share them.

Erin, it's a really good idea. I was going to do something similar in the UK, but I realised that for most orienteers in the UK their interest in the sport extends no further than themselves.

I love going on FloTrack to watch the vids to see how things are done at all the colleges in the US. I've learned a lot from it.

I know there could be a lot learned by the US from seeing similar things from clubs in Europe.

My desire is not to eclipse any website that exists. I just want to have a pace were I can start posting workouts videos, training videos, etc. World of O is great but it is not geared towards the individuals in the the sport. Also you cant post just anything on the OUSA website it has to represent the OUSA organization in some way. If all we care about is ourselves then lets create a website were you can go see yourself being interview, training etc. I am happy if its possible to enhance or work with someone to enhance one of the websites already out there. If world of O is willing to accommodation all kinds of North American orienteering stuff tell me who to contact. When we were at JWOC i took a video of a workout on the track and Barb posted it on the USA blog and about 10 teams at JWOC knew about it and had seen it. If we create a space for this kind of stuff to be collected people will do it. If you have an iphone or any phone that takes videos you can get simple stuff really easily. Once you generate enough stuff, you might bring in money to get better equipment. Who cares if we don't have a ton of great people in North America, lets find out who we have, and get to know them. What if we had a weekly interview by Peter G. giving advice or Sharon Crawford, I'm sure juniors would tune in. What if we had Alli C's workouts recorded to see how she trains and what shes does week to week. It would not take that much to do this kind of stuff. We could set an example in the orienteering world. We could open the door up for orienteering athletes around the country to post training Like Nixon mentioned it would be a great resource for juniors and anyone really to see what people are doing for training. For juniors its pretty inspiring to see yourself, and other great orienteer's and what they do. Just reading a blog post is nice but to watch a video of a race or a workout is inspiring.

Just get yourself many FB friends and post all the stuff there.

Inspiring is right. And I'm inspired by your enthusiasm.

Go for it!

Erin, based on that post it seems to me the purpose of the website is more along the following lines (correct me if I'm wrong):

To create a website with orienteering specific training resources to get people, and juniors in particular, interested in training competitively for orienteering.

In my mind then you would blogs of elite orienteers in North America on the site, a spot for instructional training videos, other videos of interest, interviews and other blog posts specific to the site, etc. There could also be a database / list of workouts, information on how to put together a periodised yearly training plan, etc.

On a related note have you seen the new Orienteering Canada LTAD guide? It's a great resource for this type of thing: http://www.orienteering.ca/2012/09/presenting-orie...

Hey Jeff, ya i saw the LTAD its great I love how it is laid out its a pretty impressive document. Especially the build up through the levels. I am not technically sound but I guess its time to learn. Anybody have any advice about were I would start to learn how to create a site. Or anyone want to help?

Erin, I have some experience put websites together and I may be able to help with laying out a system to maximize effectiveness. We can chat at the North American's if you'd like.

A job like this requires John Fredrickson. Time to repair the Bat-Signal.

For that matter you could create a 'NA Training' group here on AP, and post topical items there. Video's can just be uploaded to youtube for hosting and you can embed them in the threads within the Training group. Interested orienteers could join the group to keep tabs on the training ideas, plans, interviews etc.

The concept of a dedicated site is good, but it dilutes the user base. Most folks don't want to hop around between too many disparate sites and will tend to settle on a few that best meet their needs to get the bulk of their information. For the North American market, I would say that would probably best be served by Attackpoint or OUSA - the former being more international in scope. (Caveat, COF may be a good spot too, I haven't looked).

I like the content on Flotrak but admittedly rarely go over there to peruse new content. If similar orienteering related content were found here on AP, I'm sure I'd probably get a lot out of it, others probably would too.

my vote is with cmorse, especially for AP

I recommend you look at WorldofO and start a discussion with Jan Kocbach (jankoc) about ways to incorporate country- or region-specific filters. I'm sure other countries would be interested.

I think WorldofO is primarily an aggregator, which means perhaps we should be looking at ways of publishing our information in formats that WorldofO could automatically pick up.

And I'm not saying WorldofO is the best solution, I'm just saying that it might be. Certainly information that WoO aggregates can be aggregated by other websites.

In fact, I just went to WoO and noticed the flags at the top, under the banner. You can select a language *and* you can select a country. When I click the US flag, I get a lot of AP discussion listings, plus Spike and Samantha blog postings (you have to scroll down a bit).

This is def an interesting idea. And people interviewed don't have to be stars, but editing would be good. Portugese TV (a private channel, I believe) would air 10 or 20 minutes of coverage from local orienteering events every two weeks.

Sounds like reinventing the wheel, to some extent.

Go on FloTrack, then compare that to OUSA

Sounds like reinventing the wheel, to some extent.

Everything what Google have done is they re-invented the wheel. Because something already exists it does not mean it could not be done better.

I understand the desire to have something exciting like FloTrack (I've been a regular reader of CyclingDirt, made by the same company.. well, until they posted a homophobic skit, but anyway..)

But I agree with Canadian. We're just not there yet. I advocate for more quality content. If I may toot my own horn, that's what I try to do with RunBosco.com

When making videos about our local Winter Series meets, I don't just post unedited headcam footage- I try to add useful narrative and context.

http://www.runbosco.com/search/label/Winter%20O

Though, yes- there are times when I just make "orienteering is fun!" videos- such as my most recent video that celebrates the awesome terrain at the Three15er rogaine.

http://www.runbosco.com/2012/10/three15er-terrific...

But I still make a point of writing up some context for the video. I don't just dump it into ether.

...

My recommendation is to use an easy-to-edit (no web design skills necessary) blogger platform (e.g. blogspot.com or wordpress.com) and start making interesting and useful content that is specific to your neck of the woods (such as how my Winter O videos are pertinent to my local club).

And once we have more quality content, we can start linking to each other's sites.

We may not be at a point where a Flotrack-type site is viable, but wouldn't it be cool if there were an active blog in the NW, the SW, the NE and so on.. so you could go on a geography tour of orienteering blogs?

Agreed. AP's not a bad option too.

But maybe someone better qualified than I am should tell Erin about the Water Stop's history, including how much time it took to maintain, its value, etc.

Everything what Google have done is they re-invented the wheel. Because something already exists it does not mean it could not be done better.

I would consider that to be improving the wheel. "Re-inventing" would include going through the analyses needed to determine that it should be round.

Getting away from metaphors, I'm just saying that it would be a much more efficient use of limited resources to adapt or augment an existing application -- like AP.

@Run_Bosco: nice video of the rogaine! Did you use iMovie to edit? to stabilize the picture?