Communication within Orienteering

Jamie Posted: 27 February 2014, 8:51 AM   on another thread comatose lamented the loss of printed magazines. Do people share this loss? To me Facebook is a great way to communicate sound bites on a daily basis. Much better than email. But we have lost the communication channel that used to exist across the Orienteering community through the national mag and regional newsletters. What effect has that had?   hughff Posted: 27 February 2014, 9:43 AM   HBOC still puts out a magazine every two months... if I can get the setters' to write their reports.   theoman Posted: 27 February 2014, 1:45 PM   The magazine was amazing, I remember it being one of the best things about orienteering when I was younger. Reading about the elites, map analysis e.t.c It is also awesome now bringing them out and having a read. I believe something physical is significantly better than an email or online blog/magazine. Something to have on the table to read about orienteering, just too good.   JohnR Posted: 27 February 2014, 2:14 PM   Yes the magazine was great.When i was on council I was against the mag being dropped. The reason was the cost and low numbers ordering the mag. It was to be replaced with a before and after. The before was to be monthly news letters from ceo. This started but is now scrapped. The after was to be a annual publication with all the results from woc jwoc schools and masters ect This also has stopped. Now we are left with....nothing   Chris Forne Posted: 28 February 2014, 12:49 AM   I reckon an annual magazine would be awesome, with highlights/stories/pictures/route analysis, etc from the previous year   thomasr Posted: 28 February 2014, 10:05 AM   I support a magazine too. Definitely worth it as a record of what has been. Spark one up for this year? I'll write a nationals article, a whangarei report and one about godzone. Any other takers? Due date for final submissions December 1. Published after that?   Dwayne Posted: 28 February 2014, 1:15 PM   I agree. And with all the excellent stuff on blogs these days, it would be quite easy to fill a section or two with a "best of" electronic content for the year that many would not have seen.   Jamie Posted: 2 March 2014, 11:55 PM   Yep, I'll help. I'll write a Wellington Roundup, A Report on TWALK and something else. Do we have, need a co-ordinator?   thomasr Posted: 3 March 2014, 12:52 AM   We need to choose a format to produce it in. I am the first to admit I have zero design skills. Any uni/school students who need a project for the year?   theoman Posted: 5 March 2014, 2:18 PM   We should have course of the year, event of the year and map of the year sections as well. Aspects of orienteering that just dont get recognised unless there is a magazine. Supposing that we want just one magazine, maybe it is better to have two, and we aim to have one released by the end of June, then another one by when Tom suggested. The main job that is required is a coordinator of all the articles. I am happy to help out with the design of the magazine.   nick Posted: 8 March 2014, 1:24 PM   I'd rather have a quality website with quality content. Faster, easier, cheaper, greener and more powerful. Greater potential volume of content; more up-to-date content; multi-media content. Greater potential readership; stronger promotional tool; better potential for attracting advertisers. Avoids the repetitive built-in time/money costs of a hard-copy mag. No time lost on lay-out/graphic design for each individual edition. No lag time on printing & posting. No print/posting costs. More environmentally conscious. Less paper. Less petrol to get it to your door. No waste when you're finished with it. No risk of printing too many and being lumped with boxes of useless magazines. Look, I loved the mag too, and yet I don't greatly mourn its loss. It cost a fair bit of money and it was more & more an indulgence as competing technologies evolved. In terms of return on investment it wasn't paying back much IMO. Certainly warm fuzzies for the inner circle, but what else? Unfortunately NZOF has struggled to seriously embrace the obvious & superior alternative: the web. That is not intended as a pointed comment - there is more involved for NZOF than just replacing the magazine. In the meantime, the grassroots community have done rather well: I love Maptalk, OSquad, various individual blogs, and facebook groups seem to be working well. One day NZOF might be be able to use all that awesome content to leverage promotions, funding, sponsors, advertisers etc... in a way that a few hundred copies of a hard-copy magazine could never offer (if we had a consistent readership of a several thousand, the calculations might be different). In the meantime, if some people want to volunteer their time/money to help the O community, I'm not gonna stop them. But please, don't stop coaching, or running school programs, or publishing OSquad blog, for the sake of a magazine. All that work is FAR more valuable.   mcroxford Posted: 8 March 2014, 2:14 PM   Where's the like button Nick.   mcroxford Posted: 8 March 2014, 2:31 PM   Looking for Facebook links? Try: Your local Orienteering Club. The other Orienteering Clubs on your island. Or one or all of these page: NZ Elite Orienteering Tour; Auckland Orienteering Training Cult; NZ JWOC Team Supporters; Orienteering in Wellington; Sprint the Bay; RouteGadget; WorldofO.com; Orienteering Australia; Orienteering Canada; New Zealand Orienteering Federation; International Orienteering Federation; JWOC 2014 Bulgaria | Junior World Orienteering Championships 2014; World Orienteering Championships 2015 Scotland; Matthias Merz.   JohnR Posted: 9 March 2014, 11:44 AM   Nick we would all like a quality website but we have been waiting six years with many promises. How many times have I said xmas is coming   nick Posted: 10 March 2014, 10:28 AM   Yeah Robbie I think we all understand that sentiment, but lets not go there in this thread. I know I was treading a fine line, but I tried to stick to the subject of the thread, which is whether or not its worth restarting a hard-copy magazine. I don't beleive it is.   JohnR Posted: 10 March 2014, 2:45 PM   I agree Nick I think the thing that is coming out of all this is not a mag but a year book. Its great to see the young ones putting up their hands to do the work. I still think there is some thing in this.The need is a co-ordinator and a sponsor.