Vounteer Organisers

[Theseus]

It would help if we had some more of the route mapped out.

 

[simon_brooke]

I'm still here and still interested - and have experience of organising things like this. An agreed route and wiki would be good things; I could get a Wiki set up for the project if other people think it would useful.

 

[Garz]

I think it would be useful.

 

[PaulSB]

I'm still here and still interested - and have experience of organising things like this. An agreed route and wiki would be good things; I could get a Wiki set up for the project if other people think it would useful.

What would be the purpose of a wiki in this situation? This is me not understanding the need / reason, could you explain please?

 

[simon_brooke]

What would be the purpose of a wiki in this situation? This is me not understanding the need / reason, could you explain please?

We need somewhere to do overall planning, produce an agreed list of jobs each local organiser will be responsible for, produce lists of handover arrangements, contact numbers, and such stuff, so that on the weekend, whether you're a rider, organiser or whatever you have just one place to look to find out what's expected of you.

Also, local organisers need a place to put detailed routesheets and hazard warnings in advance. Actually a set of shared Google spreadsheets would be better for the detailed routesheets. But the local organisers really need to have routesheets up a month in advance for their riders to study, and then update those routesheets in the final week in order to warn of any last minute hazards.

 

[Garz]

Ideally you would get some form of sponsorship for the event like bike shop(s) or a company with both parties benefitting (advertisement vs gear/money). Any money raised would pay for a support unit and make the event run as smooth as possible with leftovers getting donated to a charity.

There will be a few members on the site that have experience in stuff like this, sadly I dont know them but can only hope they see this and get involved in some way.

 

[PaulSB]

We need somewhere to do overall plannin.....

OK that makes sense for me. Had to ask as my knowledge of wikis is limited to Wikipedia. It sounds as though we would have a wiki where all contributors are able to add / edit etc in the same manner as Wikipedia but access might only be available to those organising / participating?

Have I got it right?

 

[simon_brooke]

OK that makes sense for me. Had to ask as my knowledge of wikis is limited to Wikipedia. It sounds as though we would have a wiki where all contributors are able to add / edit etc in the same manner as Wikipedia but access might only be available to those organising / participating?

Have I got it right?

Yes, broadly. We can set up a wiki using the same engine that MediaWiki uses on http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia; it's free, paid for by advertising. Anyone would be able to get on and edit it, and the administrative overhead is very small. Alternatively we could use google documents (which would be better for route-sheets, etc) and that would be more secure - but would also use more administration effort.

 

[simon_brooke]

Ideally you would get some form of sponsorship for the event like bike shop(s) or a company with both parties benefitting (advertisement vs gear/money). Any money raised would pay for a support unit and make the event run as smooth as possible with leftovers getting donated to a charity.

There will be a few members on the site that have experience in stuff like this, sadly I dont know them but can only hope they see this and get involved in some way.

I don't see this event as being at all expensive to run. Each regional organiser can provide a support vehicle for their own section of the route, and if the route sheets are compiled and maintained on-line, each rider can print off their own. Yes, we could get sponsorship, but that means someone has to hassle to get it - which is fine if that's what you want to do. We certainly could raise money for charity - possibly quite a lot of money. But someone would have to do quite a lot of work.

We ought also to decide quite soon whether we're going for a serious record attempt, (i.e. we all really try to get hand overs as slick as possible and everyone tries to ride at near time-trial pace as they can make), or whether this is more of a relay pootle.

 

[Theseus]

We certainly could raise money for charity - possibly quite a lot of money. But someone would have to do quite a lot of work.

As I think I have mentioned elsewhere, I am not in favour of riding this for charity. If this becomes a pre-requisite for taking part, I will need to consider carefully any further involvement. However if people want to do this for charity as an optional addition, I have no problem. I just won't take that option.

 

[Garz]

I don't see this event as being at all expensive to run. Each regional organiser can provide a support vehicle for their own section of the route, and if the route sheets are compiled and maintained on-line, each rider can print off their own.

There is drawbacks to this, one being you might frighten off people organising if there is a massive onus to run their patch in a military fashion, the other being like myself that I cannot offer a support vehicle simply cos I drive a works van which is unusable for personal benefit (yes they tracker it and have fired people for misuse).

You can try penny pinch on some stuff, just highlighting that if we can get some help whether it be sponsorship or funding then it can cater for stuff like petrol/spares that type of thing.