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Award for Maps/Mappers and the Year of the Brent

Show Profile  Jamie Posted: 16 November 2008, 3:16 PM  
Hey, since I haven't spewed up any of my chunky ideas onto this forum for a while, comments welcome!

1) We need an award for mappers. At our Nationals prizegiving there is three awards for pretty much the same thing ie admin. Mapping, and mappers are what drives our sport. It is a hugely challenging and technical task, not to mention lonely. We need a "mapper of the year" award. Maybe we could call it the Brighouse cup, that'd really confuse everyone.

2) There should be a "map" of the year award as well. Both for terrain, challenge and quality. It could be kind of like the oscars when they award best movie and half the room gets up. Except the speeches shouldn't be as long, in fact there shouldn't be any speeches at all unless Geoff Morrison wins.

3) The year of the Brent, thinking about international performance of the year...wasn't adventure racing mentioned when they gave it to Chris? (whats the other alternative give it to Marquita again? Or one of the top juniors?)

Show Profile  onemanfanclub Posted: 17 November 2008, 12:36 AM  
"Map" of the year, or "Course" or "event" of the year? There's nothing like ace course setting on an ace map, but there's definitely times when you look at a course and think there's a lot of potential there on the map that didn't get used, or alternatively the setting team has managed to squeeze a great race out of a fairly average area.

Show Profile  Selwyn Posted: 17 November 2008, 1:25 PM  
Dear Mr or Ms Onemanfanclub, (or is that onewomanfannyclub?)
You have deviated from the essence of the topic of the excellent Jamie post.
An award for mappers is the issue. Seems good to me. Quality maps are the essence of our sport, otherwise our sport dies.

Awards for setters - a separate issue. What happened to the course setting competition? Maybe it was too artificial. An award for real courses for real people could have more respect.
(Nothing to do with Helen who promised real jobs for real people.)




Show Profile  addison Posted: 17 November 2008, 2:25 PM  
I reckon it would be pretty mean to do a course setting competition, for an event, where you tell people where the event centre should be... also maybe a spectator control site or something like that.

You then don't announce who has won, until they turn up on the day to run their own course!

Show Profile  marcusd Posted: 17 November 2008, 9:17 PM  
Love that idea Simon!

With map of the year or mapper of the year Jamie could you do it by some online vote? Put the maps etc up on the web and let everyone go for it. Obviously multiple votes from one IP address can be disregarded.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 22 November 2008, 7:33 AM  
From the Victoria Orienteering Assn website: "In addition to presenting the Orienteer of the Year awards, we're announcing the winners of Course Setter of the Year in bush, mtb and park and street."

Show Profile  Jamie Posted: 23 November 2008, 12:01 PM  
Everyone seems obsessed with turning this thread to a course setting prize. Course setters when compared to mappers are just glory hunters. Mappers are the unappreciated legends of our sport, especially those that have done it under their own steam and found their own areas. Its a far greater sacrifice in terms of time and sanity.

Look at a mapper like Roger Bee, behind unique exciting projects like Acheron, Dalethorpe, Canann Downs, Takaka Hill, Rotoiti(?) and probably many more, how much repeated joy has he given so many orienteers over the years?

Good maps are the heart of our sport. They're what keep us all going. We need to somehow get them cranking out again. A change in emphasis is needed from on the day ticking over to real strategic assets for our sport.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 23 November 2008, 3:27 PM  
Fair enough Jamie. From the BOF website:

Map Awards
The principal awards are the Chichester Trophy for the best map by an amateur, the Silva Trophy for the best professional map and the Bonnington Trophy for services to orienteering mapping. There are also awards for cartographic excellence and for first maps and maps of small areas. There will be a new trophy for the best sprint map produced in the previous year.


Show Profile  ole codger Posted: 28 November 2008, 4:42 PM  
Mappers are the most unsung and yet the most important contributers to NZ Orienteering. The first mapper that should be aknowledged would be Ralph King. The work Ralph put into mapping Woodhill is legendary. Working from  Land and survey maps with few contours, he made acceptable maps in very complex terrian. He was also the first to map Waiterere in the Manawatu(1978 NZ Champs)and he was usually assisted by Robyn Moore. Ralph possibly put in more than 10 years of mapping for NZ Orienteering.There were others ofcourse in the 1970s and one good map for those early years that springs to mind is Dick Burbidge's Rotoehu map( NZ Champs 1978) in the BoP. I guess the base map was Forestry contours.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 30 November 2008, 1:28 AM  
An offshoot to the topic, but does any club have a complete collection of its maps back to day one?

At the Australian Champs there was a display of all the Australian Champs maps, could we assemble one for NZ?

Show Profile  addison Posted: 30 November 2008, 4:17 AM  
Jamie. Great idea in principal regarding the mapping award.

However

With such a limited pool of mappers, I feel such an award would eventually turn into a joke.

I don't doubt that mappers are the backbone of our sport. We need good mappers, and we need to acknowledge them. But the problems with such an award would be:
- Limited pool of mappers, eventually the award would not be given to the person / people that deserve it most - it would be given to people that simply haven't won it before etc
- Often a great map is made of bad terrain. Just as a bad map is made of good terrain. The award would inevitably be given subconsciously to the terrain not the mapper.
- There aren't many new maps coming on tap. If a mapper updates an area utilising an old map as a base map, do you give the award to both the original mapper as well as the new mapper. Because would the new mapper be able to do such a good map without a relatively good place to start?


I could go on for days on this.

Show Profile  Jamie Posted: 30 November 2008, 7:34 AM  
you can go for days on most things bro!:-)

Think you miss the point slightly though. I'm all for map of the year being awarded to the coolest terrain and the people that went to the effort to find it, think how cool it would be, and how many people it would inspire. Hence if you read my posting I suggest that the award go to a group of people not a single professional mapper.

More people are attracted to orienteering because of the challenge of visiting new and beautiful places (places you wouldn't normally go) than those who are attracted by technical excellence. This latter thing seems to be a disease that we all catch in time and use as an excuse to bitch about all sorts of things!

Show Profile  addison Posted: 30 November 2008, 3:16 PM  
I think you miss my point as well.

Practicality.

Show Profile  ole codger Posted: 30 November 2008, 4:43 PM  
Should not be to hard to make up a collection of NZ champs maps if no one has them all.I could dig up many of the early ones from Rotoehu 1977 on but all would have courses on them ofcourse. I have a collection of all 13 maps Tricia and I have done for Sth Auckland/CMOC over the years plus ones for other clubs we have done
I think Lyndsay Shuker has a full collection of CMOC maps in the Clubs Cupboard

Show Profile  Neil K Posted: 1 December 2008, 12:45 AM  
The mapping at Canaan Downs has put me off orienteering.

Show Profile  Michael Posted: 1 December 2008, 3:03 AM  
Haha this isn't really about mappers/mapping at all:-)) It's another shot in Jamie's campaign for FABBs - holding orienteering in Fabulous Areas in the Back of Beyond.


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