Mike’s eNews – 24 April 2015

Contents

   BOC Sprint & Middle

Victory in Europe Day 70

AGM 2015

Vision for the sport

Vision Consultation

World Orienteering Championships

JK Mapping Survey

Insurance & Night Events

Risk Management

Ordnance Survey

SPORTident Air+ touch free punching system

As always, feel free to forward this eNews to your members; it’s going to be published on the eNews page at http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/page/enews on Monday so if you would rather send them a link please feel free to do so.

BOC Sprint & Middle

Can you let your members know that entries close at midnight on Sunday 26^th April entry is via www.fabian4.co.uk.

Victory in Europe Day 70

The Government through Nick Pontefract, Deputy Director, Sport at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have made a request concerning the forthcoming celebrations for VE Day 70.

“VE Day 70 represents an important milestone in the history of the UK and world. It is an opportunity to remember the sacrifice and sheer determination of the people who saw us through this dark period, to give thanks to those who so bravely played their part and to celebrate peace and reconciliation.”

The Government and its partners, including the Royal British Legion, will be arranging events to mark the occasion. These events include the lighting of beacons across the UK, the Army versus Navy Rugby match at Twickenham and a service of thanksgiving and parade in central London. Details can be found at www.gov.uk/veday70.

Sports clubs across the country are being asked to play a role in marking this commemoration and we are being asked to take part. Saturday 9 May is deemed the Day of Celebration and Government is asking sporting organisations to recognise the Day by holding a moment of applause at the beginning of their events during that weekend.

If your club thinks this is appropriate – recognizing this is not that easy in orienteering – can you let me know? If you think of any other way you can more easily support this commemoration to recognize VE Day 70 I’m sure it will be most appreciated; please do let me know.

The government is also providing a detailed repository for activities recognizing VE Day 70 and these can be entered on a map at www.defencehq.tumblr.com/post/115284856685/veday70-event-map.

AGM 2015

The AGM was held immediately after the JK Sprint at Lancaster University and the minutes have now been published here.

There were no contentious matters dealt with at the AGM although the Hon Treasurer, Bob Dredge, did provide a warning to members about the likelihood of a significant deficit being made in the financial position of British Orienteering in 2015 when it is report at the 2016 AGM. His warning to members has now been published and can be found here.

The Vice Chair, Judith Holt, also explained to attendees that work has commenced to review and update the vision for the sport. The content of Judith session is dealt with in the next section.

Vision for the sport

The work to review and update the vision has now commenced and a summary of the briefing provided at the AGM follows.

Most of the attendees at the AGM were probably at some time, if not now, motivated to orienteer because they enjoy the competition. But there are plenty of people participating in orienteering who are motivated by other aspects of orienteering including people who at one time might have been referred to as wayfarers. In our vision we need to be clear whether we want to concern ourselves with all these potential benefits of orienteering or whether our vision for the sport should be narrowly focused on Competition.

If our focus is almost exclusively on competition rules and the standards of competition this will become our major preoccupation. If we are equally concerned with one or more of the other aspects then we will want British Orienteering to invest energy (and resource) in those areas.

Most of us know what clubs do, it is probably almost 100% known and evidenced; the remaining organisers of orienteering activities are known only to some extent - we do know there is a lot going on about which we know little. The data we have on club activity can be evidenced whereas we only have evidence from some of the activity from the other sectors.

It is easy for people who go to Orienteering events staged by clubs to underestimate just how many other organisations are providing experiences which they call orienteering. In our vision of Orienteering in 2025 do we want British Orienteering to have an influence on these providers, just some of them, or just the events that our clubs stage?

While our unpaid volunteers are key to putting on club events, some officials are already being paid to do some tasks that need to be done. Volunteers provide passion and commitment. In a local area they may build up long term experience but paying people can bring consistency over a wider area or set of tasks and take some pressure away from volunteers.

The events staged by Local Authorities, National Trust, and other organisations are increasingly likely to involve a paid person, maybe someone with relevant expertise working alongside an orienteer.  Should our vision take account of the possibility that paying event officials might become the norm?

Figures are individual participants in 2014; JK is known and just less than 3,000; other numbers are minimums; adventure holidays and outdoor education combined provide at least 250,000 people with their ‘first experience’ per year. Then there are schools which introduce an unknown number of children to orienteering related activities each year.

Where are most people likely to hear about or experience orienteering? Should British Orienteering be influencing that first experience?

The final question is the big one: Whatever our vision for British Orienteering, how will we resource the work required to bring the vision about?

Vision Consultation

We need our members’ views on the future of the sport.

Keep your eyes on the news items as there will very shortly be a survey for members to capture their views on some of these aspects of our vision for the future of the sport.

World Orienteering Championships

Organisation of the Championships and the Scottish 6-Days event which sits alongside the Championships continue and Paul McGreal, Event Director, says there is now a great feeling amongst the people involved in staging the event.

Please promote the event with your members whenever you get chance. You can see the details on the WOC 2015 web site; the Scottish 6-Day details are also available.

It now seems highly likely that there will be at least orienteering highlights from WOC 2015 on the TV but we’ll give you more details when they become available.

We are now entering the final 100 days before the championships commence and 4 athletes have been selected early to represent GBR at the championships. This early selection is to ensure that the athletes that have demonstrated they deserve early selection can focus all their efforts on performing to their best at WOC 2015.

JK Mapping Survey

Many of you will be aware that a survey of competitors was completed after JK 2014 to try to understand members’ views on the maps used and to find out a little about their eyesight. The same survey is being used after JK 2015 to see if and how the information derived from the survey has changed.

Although the JK 2015 Mapping survey remains open it is already clear from almost 450 people who have completed it that we will need to investigate further a few of the outcomes. For instance there are questions about the preference for map scale used that the current survey does not address.
A further survey will be published shortly that will enable us to collect member views on the scales used.

Insurance & Night Events

After the last eNews was published there was considerable activity to resolve some issues related to Appendix E: Safety, some conflicting information and the requirements of our insurers.

You can see at the link above that these issues are now resolved favourably and clubs can go ahead in organising and staging events knowing that insurance cover is assured, providing the rules and appendices are being implemented.

Risk Management

Risk management continues to be a significant matter for me and guidance will be circulated when it is finalised that should clarify what event organisers are required to do to ensure insurance cover is in place and effective. The risk register and the way in which risks are dealt with is key to our on-going insurance cover.

Whilst we wait for the guidance to be circulated it is important that:

1. Risk management is documented and available.

2. Risk management commences early in the organisation of an event.

3. Risk management continues through to the event being staged and whilst risks may be mitigated this should be shown on the risk register.

4. All risks should be kept on the register; even if they have been dealt with.

Our insurers are now asking for more event risk registers – this is not of my doing, but as a response to their concern that when they have requested information about risk registers it has, unfortunately, not always been forthcoming.

Ordnance Survey

My apologies but I have not yet published the guidelines for mappers I promised a number of weeks ago. There remain a couple of significant issues to resolve with OS and as soon as I am able to finalise these the guidance will be published.

SPORTident Air+ touch free punching system

The IOF Council has granted final approval for SPORTident Air+ touch free punching system to be used. This means the system can now be used in IOF major events.

An updated list of IOF approved electronic punching systems is available on the IOF website at http://orienteering.org/electronic-punching/, and organizer and athlete instructions for touch free punching systems have been made available at http://orienteering.org/instructions-from-vendors/.

If you have any queries or comments regarding the content of this e-news please e-mail me at mhamilton@britishorienteering.org.uk.

'More People, More Places, More Podiums'

For further information about orienteering please visit www.britishorienteering.org.uk