Following my role as technical lead (web, entries, timing and results, IT, commentary etc) at the British Championships in 2010 I was asked by new major events manager Dave Peel to speak at this year’s Major Events Conference, held just down the road in Birmingham.
http://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/downloads/documents/events_majoreventsconferenceflyer.pdf
The conference is designed to pass good practice, experience and lessons learned on to the organisers of future major events such as the British Championships and JK. As major events pass around the regions of the UK, it means that many years can go by between events in any one place and therefore skills are lost or sport development overtakes individuals existing knowledge.
The introduction of the major events managers should alleviate this to some degree but the conference is still important and is a informal forum for discussing new developments in orienteering.
I knew I had a very varied audience, from those practically IT illiterate to those very experienced in various areas. I tried to keep my presentation un-techie and concentrated on those areas I felt were often neglected, that most event officials were unaware of, or held out of date information. I also tried to get a few laughs at the expense of my dear wife, just ask her about programming check boxes…
The thing that surprised me most when putting the presentation together was when I thought it good to present my orienteering ‘CV’ to get some credibility with my audience at the beginning…… Yikes its been a long time since I organised the British Student Champs in 1995 !
I ended the presentation with a piece about version control and mentioned a free product called dropbox http://www.dropbox.com/. I was shown this by a friend a few months back. It enables an event team to seamlessly share event documentation, ensuring everyone always has the most up to date files, very important and something that has tripped up many organisation teams in the past.
My very hastily prepared presentation is here if anyone is interested …. major events.PPT
1995 was a long time ago, shame the BUSF we organised was actually in 1994!