Training Log Archive: iansmith

10 - Splits

Despite some early morning Toronto traffic, I arrived at the Orienteering Canada AGM in time to join the lunch and late afternoon sessions. One of the most interesting parts was the Junior Development discussion led by Kitty Jones of FWOC and Jeff Teutsch.

Briefly:

1. Jeff and Kate Knapp are working on the Athlete Development Matrix - a curriculum for natural orienteering development. Part of this will include a Navigation Skills progression from basics to advanced with fairly high detail. (I'm imagining o-training.net but with lesson plans and in greater detail).
   
2. A big part of the discussion was how people would like to use it. Adrian and I suggested frequent beta testing - get out what you have and see how people interact.
   
3. The discussion turned to mentioning what everyone is doing: Adrian Zissos of SOGO in Calgary has ~500 kids, good advertising, and a neat booklet. Turnover to club events is low (~ 5%).
   
4. Gary from Edmonton has 30-50 kids in his group; bringing parents is paramount. They have a targeted event each season targeting families.
   
5. Kitty has information about researchers studying parent involvement and how it affects kids.
   
6. Meghan Rance of DGL noted that it takes time to migrate kids from the junior programs to regular clubs events - seeing top juniors training and discussion things like JWOC inspires others to greater ambitions. Hamilton has switched to social media in lieu of traditional media. They found getting into recreation guides was useful, as people come looking for activities. Finding parents who are social/network hubs is useful.
   
7. Jenn from Yukon observes that it's important to put a fun spin on each activity with junior dev.
   

C • Athlete Development Matrix 2

A bit of a pitiful little jog around the Perth sprint map doing the touristy scavenger hunt with Jeff Teutsch. Fun times. Total time was about 40 mins.

Afterward, I ate at the banquet, chatted up my Canadian peeps, and listened to a great talk - "Big Dreams for a Little Canadian" by Kempster. The evening was great, though the awards ceremony for the sprint was longer than necessary. I strongly support one applause line per class, and photos of one group while the next is getting called up.

Today's frantic eurotechno:

Another OUSA Open question:

There seemed to be some good discussion on the OUSA membership question, so here's another: What can OUSA do to increase local starts and membership? Can we have a campaign?

OUSA doesn't actually organize any events; events are organized exclusively by clubs, and often by a relatively small number of people in clubs. Consider OUSA starts data from Robin Shannonhouse that I modeled for 2009-2016. Local starts were negligibly up, while national starts, club members, and OUSA members all declined.

Let's set aside the national starts/membership with the premise that everyone who goes national starts local, so let's increase local first. When I was planning the NEOC schedule, no one from OUSA contacted me to say "hey, this year we're really pushing ;" there was no plan or concerted strategy, just a laissez faire approach. While the value of marketing nationally is still an open question, we can communicate intention to the clubs.

For instance, in 2018, say we said "our goal is to increase local starts by 10%. Please try to increase the number of events you have by 5-10%, and here are some resources (materials, marketing guidance) to try to attract people." Some big clubs might already have saturated markets - COC, QOC, DVOA, NEOC, but I don't think most (or any) clubs have reached the point where more events will result in fewer people attending. Maybe we can incentivize it, by offering small prizes for the top 3 clubs at the end of the year by %change - say new e-punch units or a teardrop banner or something.

Is this viable? Pointless? Would it move the needle by giving a concerted effort and direction to our federation?

C • How to move the needle on local starts 17