Discussion: Planning etc

Always good to see new people planning/organising etc and hopefully those of us who are more experienced encourage them with good feedback, comment so they want to do more.... I believe Steve realised he took on more than expected when it came to the map, so Mike had to finish it off in a bit of a rush..... we should be happy with the level of these events as we are the only club I know of who does this many on proper maps rather than open street map or similar (which can also be fun.... ask RCro and Mark2 about SWOC events).... have we come to expect a bit much in BOK as we are spoilt?

Absolutely happy to see new people organising, and have sent Steve a quick email congratulating him. I didn't bother mentioning the control placement as I didn't want to give him too many "little things for next time" at once, but I did mention that by putting the controls at the end of really long dead-ends he was basically giving us a really cheap map-reading time as we ran back again the same way... but mostly I just congratulated him on providing a course that was challenging in places and certainly caught me out with the change of rythmn from long legs, to a short sprinty dash around some alleys, followed by out into park/woodland.....

I am totally happy with these events, and really hope that whoever takes over from Mike Forrest will be able to keep it up!

BOK's evening series is a model that other clubs should be striving to follow - my *only* criticism is that publicity needs to be better and a bit more bespoke (and at £6 for EOD it seems a little expensive for what you get...)

On the flip side, as the largest and best resourced O club in the country - expectations from competitors will always be very high; once you've started down this route there's no going back in making it informal. There is a lot to be said for the SWOC winter and summer series - it hasn't swallowed up a huge amount of volunteers or time to set up, but succeeds at its goals, and feels very informal and friendly. It's an atmosphere and level of organisation that neither BOK (nor NGOC I suppose) are able/allowed to get away with now.

Orienteering clubs are, in almost all case, pretty awful at publicity.... we mostly do it on sites that only orienteers use which totally fails to reach anyone new....

Why aren't clubs using sites like this

https://www.timeoutdoors.com/events/orienteering-e...

The course sounds fun and for a first effort it does sound that Steve got quite a lot of the ingredients right for a good variable course.... I would be interested in seeing it at some point

I will send you a jpeg of my map with my route QR'd onto it. You can see my stupid f up at the end....!