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Damn - are we orienteers that dumb?

Show Profile  addison Posted: 16 November 2008, 11:01 PM  
I think it is time for me to say, I am annoyed. Not only am I annoyed, I am frustrated.

Orienteering is such a smart sport. Everyone in it, wow, super intelligent. Yet we are so dumb at the same time?


It has been a few months since I controlled the NZSS Champs. Enough time for me to vent my frustrations. Here I was, my first A-grade event as controller. We had a blunder - two control codes mixed around on the white/yellow, even after appropriate checks were in place.

Cutting a long story short - I write an event report. It was a few pages long, it detailed everything that happened and made recommendations going forward. I sent this to our technical director.

So why am I annoyed? I didn't even get a response at all about it. No body does. First time controller, and I didn't even get comments about the courses, about the terrain about bloody anything - let alone the way I handled the issue at the event!


But in my mind, that is small fry. If controlling was a job, surely you would expect some sort of comments from your boss. Something to say you did these things well, try working on this. But the really big thing in my mind is the fact that a lesson learned by one person, isn't a lesson shared!

All these controllers reports, and no other controller ever bloody sees them. I was talking to Michael Wood at the Labour Weekend events about how I had found that the Australians do a 6-monthly controllers magazine. This is a few pages long, and people submit articles covering everything from map printing, map making, how often you should have water on courses... etc. We could even have an area where the technical director (or editor) goes through recent issues and could give ideas or things on if it was handled well, or what they would do to mitigate this occurring in the future.

Now wouldn't that be smart? Any other recommendations or ideas?

Show Profile  onemanfanclub Posted: 17 November 2008, 12:27 AM  
Even collating all these controller reports, online and/or in print so other controllers could see them would be a start, and surely not a particularly difficult one?

Show Profile  jeffg Posted: 17 November 2008, 4:53 AM  
Good call, Simon. With controllers' reports probably overdue already after TONIC, there is no great feeling of incentive, except for ticking a completion box. But there were a few lessons from Day 4 that are not only useful for me (just my second A level event), but would be worth sharing with the wider controller community. We are fortunate in that we're planning a TONIC debrief as a precursor to Nationals (which would have happened already except for key people mysteriously injuring themselves), so a lot of this stuff will get aired and chewed over. A 6 monthly magazine sounds like a good idea. Would a controllers thread on Maptalk be useful, or would that degenerate too rapidly?

Show Profile  Selwyn Posted: 17 November 2008, 12:28 PM  
Thanks Simon. Excellent observations.

As a first step, these controllers' reports should go live on the NZOF web site. The comments can be of significance to every competitor.

Jeff's suggestion of a Controllers' thread on Maptalk looks good to me. I see no reason why most of this discussion shouldn't be open to the full orienteering community.

But it's also possible that controllers (and maybe setters) have comments after events that they would rather circulate only amongst other controllers. A 6 monthly technical officer's bulletin would also be nice.



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