It’s often the simplest ideas that are the best and make you wonder why people weren’t doing that before and the same can easily be said for Humberside and Lincolnshire Orienteers new ‘find a control’ initiative appearing on their Twitter account.

This new idea is the brainchild of Mary Vickers at the club which sees a copy of a recent orienteering map, placed alongside a photo of one of the controls. The challenge, which control is in the photo? It may sound simple, but it’s had a great response, engaged more members in active discussion and inadvertently also been a coaching tool.

Mary explains how she came up with the idea:  “It started as a bit of a one-off, the club chair Peter Harris was collecting controls in following one of HALO’s pub league fixtures and took a photo of a control, I thought it was a really good photo and just paired it with the corresponding map. I posted it on the club’s Twitter account with the hashtag #findacontrol and we got a really good response.”

Always keen to find creative ways to engage members, the seed had been sown and Mary looked to develop the idea further and do a couple more tweets during HALO’s Poacher series. Mary would ask the planners to take a photo of a control by a significant feature, send it to her and she would add the map and set twitter away before revealing the correct answer a few days later.

Mary continued:  “The response has been so positive that people have asked me to carry on doing it and even sending in photos of controls and maps to use for future tweets. The added benefits have also been really good. It’s been a training tool in map reading and understanding the symbols, alongside promoting the club. We’ve seen more members interacting and getting into the discussion around the tweets not only from within HALO but also by people from outside the club, including Ireland.”

To see what HALO have been doing, check them out on twitter @HALOrienteering #findacontrol

Peter Brooke, Development Officer said:  “Hats off to Mary, the #findacontrol is a great idea, really interactive and is something that anyone can get involved in and try. Why doesn’t your club set something similar up on twitter or facebook and let us know how you get on?”