Discussion: US Orienteering ideas

This thread is for ideas for US orienteering.
Rules (guidelines):

1. Post constructive ideas for things we could do to benefit US orienteering.
   
2. Do not critique or comment on others' ideas. This thread is just collecting ideas. Start your own thread for further discussion if you like. I'd like to be able to come here and see a whole bunch of ideas, without interruption.
   
3. Feel free to state the goal(s) your ideas would achieve, but keep that to a minimum; the main point is to see the idea.
   
4. Feel free to credit others for the idea; again, keep that to a minimum so we can focus on the idea.
   
5. If you don't like this thread, don't read it and don't post to it.
   
6. Have fun.
   

Clubhouses for clubs.

A Boston-based training center (h/t Erin, Becky, Alex)

More national relays - they are exciting and draw people - get clubs to send teams. (h/t Ed, Erin, ...)

Adventure-running style races, eg CSU Forest X (Ed, Alex).
Goal: draw trail runners and other newbies.

Big fun team orienteering-based races with a Hunger Games or Pokemon Go flair.
Goal: draw new people. Raise money.

Concerted effort to start school leagues.

ARK-like programs (= kids pay to come to weekly fun sessions including fitness, agility, map racing)
Goal: expand junior base

Monthly open internet meeting showcasing various local efforts (h/t Deb Humiston)

Summer youth employment programs (eg Nav Games, $18k from Cambridge MA to employ 10 kids for 6 weeks doing whatever orienteering related thing we want).

Kits for schools (equipment, instructions).

Continuing education credit courses, certified, for teachers (PE, other)

Major effort to work together with cross-country coaches in high schools.

Provide help to students headed to uni to start clubs at their schools
Aim: don't lose juniors you just got when they go to uni

Create a package for student to send to university explaining orienteering and the required type of training
Aim: uni start using international runners as promo for uni, hopefully runner gains facilities/funding

Guerilla park orienteering (= just show up at a park, with a little internet PR ahead of time, and set up intro courses. Do it the same weekend every month at the same park for 6 months. See what happens)

Local club meets are heavily team-based, instead of individual races. I heard about this being done at a European club. This is great for safety for kids. It is also useful for adult training so you learn from each other and push each other.

US team members in good standing get fully funded to compete for USA. (good standing = they've done their part of the deal = training following an agreed upon plan, and/or otherwise contributed to the sport)

Exchange programs: clearinghouse for orienteers from different countries to visit each other. Focus on teens doing exchange years.

Send press releases to the local papers for all US Champs, Team Trials, Interscholastic and Intercollegiate winners.

All adult US orienteers take the Safe Sport training, or an abbreviated version of it.

Experiment with use of take-them-as-they-are, unfieldcheck LIDAR maps or topo maps, or minimally fieldchecked LIDAR or USGS maps, to provide freshness of terrain with minimal mapping expense or effort. Both point to point and score/ROGAINE/WM rules events.

Expand orienteering to neighboring cities that have orienteers. (E.g., for RMOC, Fort Collins, Alamosa, Taos, Canon City.)

For training or low key events, experiment with not using markers (click a waypoint on a GPS device or cell phone when you think you're at the right point) or biodegradable streamers. Volunteer effort is often a limiting factor in orienteering. Setting, vetting and collecting controls can be a significant fraction of small event effort. Europe seems to benefit from far more frequent opportunities for orienteering. Not every orienteering opportunity needs to have the full ceremony to be useful.

More opportunities for orienteers to map, perhaps using free software like OOM to map schoolyards and small parks in support of school orienteering, or conceivably have ten people each map 25 acres in a map-raising party. Mapping, even a small area, is an excellent way to improve orienteering skills, especially at the advanced beginner or intermediate levels.

More use of small but good terrains for training or Motala-style or control picking events, in order to keep up terrain variety in local orienteering.

Target NE prep schools. Many have extensive campuses and the most of the students board at the schools and may be looking for weekend activities.

Experiment with professionally run orienteering events. In Oslo, these afforded the opportunity for frequent orienteering without any volunteer effort by the local clubs. Professionally run ROGAINEs haven't seemed to adversely affect USFS permissions in Colorado.

Experiment with use of aerial photos for orienteering events, both as a way of inexpensively and easily "mapping" terrain and as a way to aid newcomers in thinking about maps (a learning aid).

At least one orienteering map in every US state.

Resume tracking of ISOM maps in America. (There used to be USOF map numbers for each ISOM map; some clubs like NEOC had their own numbering system for their maps.) I see some maps missing from NEOC's master list; maybe they can no longer be used, but maybe they're just lost.

Permanent courses on all (or most) of A-meet maps

Seasonal permanent courses on all (or most) of A-meet maps, i.e. put out a bunch of controls on a map that can stay up for several months to be used for trainings or informal events.

A mobile app that serves as a bridge for non-orienteers.

The app would have a georeferenced hi-res orienteering map with a course on it (either perma or day-of-event). The app would also allow you to toggle between orienteering map, aerial images, and digital streetmap (like Google or Bing or whatever).

The app would also plug into the GPS and compass functionality of the phone and show an auto-oriented map and glowing blue dot indicating position, which I know isn't true orienteering, but the under-30 set has pretty much lived their entire driving ages with GPS directions and all of adulthood with smartphones.

Orienteering is hard. Make it easier. And fun. And catching up to modern technology.

There are similar apps that already kinda exist (like MOBO), but we don't really use them, especially for day-of-events. For day-of-events in the wilderness (no cell reception), you can make map downloads available with a local wifi network.

Other possible features:
Use QR codes at the start to download maps
Use QR codes or NFC (as MOBO does) to punch checkpoints
When connected, allow for people to share their progress on the course with social media and photos.

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Piggybacking Pokemon Go.... it would be fantastic if we were allowed to build "events" within the system. You could create an "event" at a certain location for a certain time duration, and create an exclusive set of Pokemons (checkpoints) for people to find for that event. Ideally, we would use the official Pokemon Go infrastructure here, since there's a HUGE captive audience for it. Creating a knock-off augmented reality game wouldn't work as well, but if you did, it could be rolled into the app above as a kids' version.

Advertise local events on kid-friendly websites/apps (We have a local group that sends out a weekly calendar of kid-friendly events)

Pokemon Go gatherings for kids at local parks, where one activity is a 20-min orienteering thing.

Inexpensive and quick way to make orienteering training maps on terrain not suitable for hosting large events ( like, limited parking) but great for weekday practice or able to be used in non traditional event. Open source detailed instruction on how to do so. Goal: more maps in smaller geographical area for training or beginner outreach.

Redesign all existing US club web sites with home pages dominated by text to prominently feature attractive photographs, preferably a slide show, of people having fun orienteering in beautiful outdoor spaces. For example, http://austinoc.com/, http://www.mnoc.org/ (although really, MNOC, your slide show depicts 9 individuals and only one of them is female, none of them young children (younger than can be in JROTC)), http://www.dvoa.org/ (to a lesser extent - slide show takes up relatively little of the page). It wouldn't take very much effort to make orienteering look a lot more enticing than it currently appears on many US orienteering club web sites.

Ditto on idea of getting orienteering going among universities' sports clubs.
Dito on the idea of established clubs reaching out to form new clubs or s\atellite clubs to spread out their orienteering events.
Ditto on the idea of quick, cheap but good maps for local events.
I'd like to re-offer the idea of ranking clubs based on their cumulative results at national events. This gives more people - usual middle of the packers - a reason to travel to big events. They may not get in the medals themselves but they can contribute to their club and feel good about that.
Experiment with area appropriate versions of orienteering such as canoe and equestrian. Bring navigation games to existing sports.
Clone barb about 100 times.

Regular bilateral US-Canada competition to provide a more accessible international representation step.

Ditto gordhun on ranking clubs. U.K. Has a compasssport cup race where it is all about the club result to quilt for a final and then final club score is who wins. Great fun and gets more people out!

@Alison ..."quilt" = "qualify"? (Or is there fabric involved? :-) )

gordhun has a good idea with club rankings. Many people come to orienteering from team sports (AR) and want to go out as a group or team. A club ranking would also encourage more runners to join their local O-club.

"Regular bilateral US-Canada competition" means more than the biennial North American O Champs (near Hanover New Hampshire this year)?

In coordination with local running group (or November Project group or hiking meet-up group), host an event with two courses: a short yellow/orange (say 1.5km) and a long yellow/orange (say 6-9km).

Try to have most legs have a "yellow" level option that's longer around with the feature close to the trail and an orange level with more cut-through the woods but has a solid catching feature.

Require that everybody carry a map, but beyond that encourage individuals or groups as people desire.

People can try the short one, come back & talk about it, and then go out on the long one. Or just do the long one.

Pros: only sets two courses so easier to set, focussed on one types of audience instead of trying to meet everybody's needs in a single event, gives people a workout, high rate of success.

With friends who wanted to learn adventure racing, I did the following:

There were 6 people to start, so broke everybody into groups of 2 and we signed up for an orange course. We all started at the same time.

For the first control, we looked at our map and I asked them (1) what they were looking for and (2) what was nearby that would help them find it. They looked at the map & around. After some discussion, I said "go" and all groups ran to the control and stayed there.

From control #2, we talked about what worked, what didn't, and what people noticed. Then planned leg #2 together & went off. We could see which routes worked better and which ones didn't.

From there, we did another 3 legs or so where we regrouped at each control and talked about what happened, or what we noticed. This helped discover things new map symbols, attackpoints, catching features, and comparing routes.

From control 6, we decided to regroup at control 9. And, then it was just a race to the finish (in pairs).

This format seemed to work really well, since you could learn from each control, learn from each other's experiences, and adapt. Plus, it was fun for everyone and there was a sense of racing too.

So, I'd recommend an option where for $30 or $50 you can "hire a coach" for the course, and do something like this. Note that this is just $5-13 per person if you have a group of 4-6 people.

That looks like a questionmark Jim. Yes it means each country selecting a team. Pardon me if that happens already, it doesn't seem to be talked about on this forum.

Ah, now I understand, national teams to the North Americans. (No, it doesn't happen, afaik. Those interested show up and compete.) Thanks for the clarification.

NAOC is an "open" competition.

To Pink Socks' app idea I would add the ability not to use GPS. For example, by default the GPS dot does not appear; it can be called up and will appear for a few seconds, but there is a time penalty for that. This way, hopefully, with every run the player will use the GPS less and less, so it will be an even better bridge to "true" orienteering. And hopefully more fun, even for today's kids :)

You can still have selected national teams in an open competition (Australia-New Zealand competition mostly works this way, which I guess is what gruver was referring to).

At one time - it may still do - the NAOC had three national 'team' competitions within the open competition. There were the regular junior and elite level competitions. Ho Hum. However the 'Master' age participants get to compete for the coveted Berman Trophy. My impression was that the Berman Trophy is normally won by the home team but that should change this year.

Introduce (or replace U.S ultra long champs with) a pair/ team race. Normal ultra long (but don't call it ultra since it is sub marathon) point to point race but for pairs. Top orienteers would get opportunity to personally ask trail runners to participate as their pair and get them like this introduced to the beauty of O and off trail runninig racing without them having to learn how to navigate first. And get O mentioned at trail runners blogs and US O champs titles as trail runners achievements, and make it like this feel normal for trail runners to participate O races.

Introduce/add one super easy unforked leg to US relay champs. Clubs /teams would get opportunity to ask trail runners to run this leg. Have this relay race same weekend as the team race, so there would be two races for them.

An interesting orienteering podcast or , maybe better, appearing on more running podcasts. I heard one interview of a north eastern orienteer on ultra running podcast which was pretty cool

True, the relatively recent sprint relays are national team competitions using selected participants -- selected only by the coach, not the federation.

Not something of general applicability but I've been given to understand that CAOC is terrain-limited while BGR, a couple hours drive to the north, appears according to its web site to have quite a few maps in good condition, many of them of interesting kettle moraine terrain, but not the wherewithal to hold events on more than 4 of them this year. That looks to me like it could be a win-win for CAOC and BGR to make an arrangement for use of BGR maps in events run mostly or entirely by CAOC. Events could be training weekends a la DVOA, something like the UNO camping weekend, a weekend A meet, a weekend with training one day and a goat the next - whatever would be sufficient to justify the effort for CAOC to run something a bit further away from Chicago than usual and the driving time for the participants. CAOC gets some more variety in their orienteering, maybe more orienteering, and BGR members have some more orienteering events in their neck of the wood to attend (and promote) without straining to hold more events than they currently feel up to.

Of course, I'm not intimately familiar with goings on in BGR or CAOC so maybe there's some reason this couldn't work. From afar, it looks like a potential win-win.

On a similar note about CAOC and maybe other clubs with a similar situation, it may be worth re-asking about access to Indiana Dunes. RMOC lost practical access to Florissant Fossil Beds due to various new restrictions that made it not feasible for us, and now has reasonable access again. Park priorities and restrictions change. I get the impression that the Park Service is much more focused on attracting visitors now. Just a thought, since there's a map there which Google says is an hour drive from Chicago. Also other large parks along the shore further along.

Same place (though there's an adjacent state park by that name too; I can't remember whether the map included bits of both). The article says that a sinkhole and safety concerns prompted the closure (I hadn't known about that). But if the state park is open, or the Michigan state park further around the lake, those might be opportunities (for orienteering).

removed to comply with rules

....Indiana Dunes?....

CAOC has had a long-standing effort to use some portion of the Indiana duneland, which stretches from Chicago's city limits, through Indiana and into Michigan.

We do have an old map, made for a one-day event by group of visiting Swedes long ago. But efforts to expand or renew use of that map, have met with stone-cold refusals, both from the state park, and from the National Park Service. I don't believe we've attempted to get access to Michigan's dunes, which are several hours away from our home base.

I think one of those "visiting Swedes" was one Jim Baker, at the time from Massachusetts. (And it was my understanding that the map never did get used.)

FYI, on Aug 27, there will be a meet on a NEW two state map at the Indiana Michigan border, just outside of South Bend, Indiana. All courses will run in two states.

Awesome to hear that there will be some O in that area.

Yes, I was involved in the fieldchecking, along with Stefan Wetterstad, on behalf of Mikell Stern who was organizing a tour for Scandinavians, including Indiana Dunes, southern California and more. He had wanted to have the last control or finish as "Lake, southern edge" so that people could point it out on a globe. He had been working with the park for months or longer, and yet a week after the map finished it was announced that the area would become some sort of preserve -- no orienteering --- but they'd love to have the map please. Of course a preserve takes a long time to happen, so it seemed like the park service was deliberately screwing him. Parks do change though, or at least FFB did.

This thread is for ideas for US orienteering.
Reminder about the rules (guidelines):

1. Post constructive ideas for things we could do to benefit US orienteering.
   
2. Do not critique or comment on others' ideas. This thread is just collecting ideas. Start your own thread for further discussion if you like. I'd like to be able to come here and see a whole bunch of ideas, without interruption.
   
3. Feel free to state the goal(s) your ideas would achieve, but keep that to a minimum; the main point is to see the idea.
   
4. Feel free to credit others for the idea; again, keep that to a minimum so we can focus on the idea.
   
5. If you don't like this thread, don't read it and don't post to it.
   
6. Have fun.
   

We may set another training course in August at Silver Lake State Park if there is enough interest.

Blanket a town with orienteering. Every afternoon set up at a different park. Return to the same park at regular times & days. Reach out to different interest groups - for example, have a garden tour where the gardens have controls hanging, and of course there is a map, and punch cards. Hand out free seeds or seedlings if they punch all the controls.
Beer crawl, again with the map and punch cards and controls.
Playground crawl.

Copy ARK

Use materials from British Schools Orienteering Association

Do whatever needs to be done to offer frequent, scheduled orienteering in whatever geographic area is relevant (not necessarily the turf of a single club). My personal feeling is once a month is minimal, twice better, with no upper limit if you have the resources and doing so doesn't lead to excessively diminishing returns on the effort. Of course, this needn't be a year round effort - almost everywhere in the US has an orienteering off-season due to either snow or heat. I suspect very few people are likely to develop a high level of commitment to orienteering unless it's something they have the opportunity to do reasonably often without having to travel very far. So do whatever you have to to make that possible - there are several ideas upthread for how less labour-intensive events than the traditional 7 classic length courses on a more-or-less ISOM map might be organized, if terrain/maps to support those are a serious limiting factor.

What Jon mentions above is probably one of the most important things to do.

It doesn´t matter how many new recruits you get from a recruiting drive if there´s nothing to keep the masses busy with regular activities afterwards.
Once or twice a month is certainly a minimum - once a week (or more) would be even better and it doesn´t have to be championship/ISOM standards as long as everything is fun to take part in.... Of course orienteering is our main activity, but it doesn´t always have to be that - just do something else to keep everyone "alive" in the community also in the off season.

Regular day, time and place also helps in planning and spontaneous attendance by those not yet "bitten by the bug". I suppose the typical Swedish club-house could well be substituted by a park shelter or a sports facility for everyone to meet up. Pizza and/or beer afterwards adds to the fun.

+1

More pizza and/or beer after trainings and informal races. Host weekly trainings/park races from a pub.

Calgary had weekly orienteering year round when I last lived there. Winter (October though April) had simple steamed street orienteering mostly, while the summer had more forest orienteering. The largest clubs can probably achieve this, or similar.

Stop flying to A-meets. Develop local o instead.

Give the new guys a job; include them in running the meet. At one of my first orienteering events, the Georgia club put me to work posting results. In those days, this was hanging little pieces of paper on a string stretched between two trees. It was a small job, but it was an honor to be included, and all the runners were asking me for information although I was just learning the sport. I've been hooked ever since.

To follow up on @haywoodkb's comment, GAOC just published our 2016-2017 schedule (we follow the school year schedule). Not counting the JROTC meets, we have 34 orienteering days with 19 different meet directors. That maybe a high water mark for us (we will assist with another 6 - 8 JROTC days).

Except for designing courses and running e-punch volunteers don't have to have much, if any, orienteering experience. My experience follows Keven's, they first had me helping with starts, then pulling controls, setting controls, etc.

I agree with @ndobbs, if you are going to grow the sport grow it locally. At the GOAT camp we had 70 very enthusiastic kids training in some really horrible conditions(hot, humid, buggy). But more importantly, we had 6 volunteer juniors at the camp. These volunteers had either just graduated from High School or graduated the year before. They are all expressing a strong desire to continue Orienteering.

I think I mentioned this on a thread several years ago. I think it would be worthwhile to invest in a person or group to develop orienteering at every college in the US. That person/group could work with the geography department (if applicable) or other depts. and get professor/student support on campus. It could also be another intramural activity on campus. An ultimate goal could be to have every US college campus mapped.

Week long summer orienteering camps for kids.

Summary; keep them coming.
If you'd like to edit or reorganize the doc, go right ahead. You all have edit rights.

Realign the American color code system for courses to match the Swedish system, to provide a finer gradation of skill development. Not all events need (or likely will) have all courses, but some will, the rest will have a more precise description of technical difficulty, and the notion of more gradations of difficulty will be in our system of courses. This could help orienteers progress.

More frequent training, at a variety of levels.

Speaking of Sweden, the smily face/sad faces for a pre-white level course to bridge the gap between string courses & white courses (and to give kids more autonomy instead of being shadowed). In these courses controls are on trail-features. Around 100 meters after each trail junction there is either a happy face or a sad face to indicate if the kid made the right choice or not. This way it's better to choose right, so you don't lose time. But, you're not likely to go the wrong way forever.

Funnily enough, I had just been thinking of a smiley face/sad face kind of training this afternoon, in which a course would offer two controls number 1 (etc. ), with the instruction to go to the steeper (or wider, or shallower, etc. ) reentrant, as a way of teaching aspects of contour reading (or other map reading). Each of the control 1 circles would have a remnant of different steepness, each of the controls number 2 would have entrants of different width, and so forth. Similarly with knolls or ridges of different characteristics.

Fun and social

Provide child care at meets, with fun activities. When I first started orienteering, USOF had a childcare requirement and I think it still should.

Stolen from this thread in Will's log - broaden our target audience. Quoted from Run_Bosco:

Who are people, like us, that will only run if there is a goal? Soccer players.

Or, who are people, like us, that love problem solving for recreation? Board gamers.

Or, who are people, like us, that want a sport the whole family can participate in on the same day, and love getting dirty? Cyclocrossers.

A colleague told me that before meeting me, he thought of orienteering as physical chess. After hearing my tales, it sounded more like mud wrestling. (Just following on @acjospe's/@Run_Bosco's comment on cyclocross.)

+1 Sandy More permanent courses, (and easily accessible maps - perhaps downloadable to a cellphone?) or at least permanent controls that can also double as training controls for experienced O-ers (more likely to be created and maintained.

Map more intermediate difficulty terrain. It's my impression that in recent decades North American maps have tended toward city parks plus incredibly detailed forests. When I was young, there were a number of maps of simpler forest terrain...rounded drumlins crisscrossed with some low stone walls and a few boulders and trails, for instance. The club got lots of newcomers who moved up the ranks, and also did very well at national competition (the maps had enough detail for the experts). Now, the forest maps are bewildering to behold, delighting the experts, but putting off some others. (who've complained to me personally). I'm not suggesting to exclude detailed terrain, just to include a few terrains that can be more easily read by the less experienced, as an aid to transition. Think about what terrains will be most pleasing to each major level of orienteer.

1:7500 maps for older eyes

More Sprint events designed at getting more beginners out there. OLOU has had quite a bit of success with these. We hold over 30 per year. Maps are easier to make, meet direction is easier and the whole experience is just to get people introduced to Orienteering.

More sprints and urban-O. We don't value our sprinters enough because sprints don't earn points for advancement at WOC. But WOC 2020 is coming, and a series of urban races (sprint up through adventure racer-friendly ultra long or street scramble) may help us grow the sport and bring in some future talent. SART once a month/quarter in various regions? Some form of rankings would increase interest in competition and help identify that rising talent, too. Maybe split into forest and urban ranking systems?

Advertise events using Google ads. Very cheap and effective.

Make concerted effort to talk to newbies and first timers. Make them feel welcome.

For urban/college sprints
A few days before an event, put out a model control in plain sight where lots of people will pass by and see it. Right next to the model control, place a sign explaining what it is, when the actual event is and inviting folks to give it a try.

O-vendors--- offer O clothes that have been pre-treated with Permetherin.