Post
by boyle » 05 Jul 2020 02:50
After all I did have something to say on the topic. This is what I wrote in response to the video in the Facebook comments. I'll just copy it straight in here, it's quite long. Formatting may come out a little weird.
Thank you Arthur for these videos. I am not so sure everyone would want their conversations shared through this kind of platform, I hope you made sure it was OK with all of them before sharing on that.
Tournaments like Berlin and Copenhagen Worlds had a good mix of indoor/outdoor. With Berlin, if you didn't have the indoor section , we would have lost time in the schedule because there were heavy rains.
In Colombia, there is plan for spending key parts of the day indoor/outdoor, all in the same area. It's the same venue. I went there in 2012 for South American championships, that's exactly what we did there.
The main reason for this "golden era" in those early 2000s, was people putting serious time and their own money into things. Look at things like Footjam. That kind of thing is awesome, but you can't just keep doing that. There also seems to be more interest in people going to jams rather than tournaments. There have still been some really cool tournaments in the last few years, and we are seeing some growth, particular in Japan and China. The South American scene (Colombia and Venezuela) has actually been strong for a really long time, but they seem to be having more of an impact on the world stage now.
There was something mentioned about shoes. Shoes is not a barrier to entry, you can kick in any shoes. In fact, I've done most of my Worlds entries in other shoes aside from Lavers.
I also think there is not enough credit for Ikka and others who have really upgraded the official footbag channels, particularly on Instagram and Youtube. Yes, this is work to do on the website, but I actually think at the moment having the content on things like Instagram and Facebook is more important, because people are already there.
There was also mention of going into schools. This one is an interesting one - and you mentioned some of the issues. Do we want people to just go in for free, and reach more people. Not really, because you want people to get paid, otherwise they will only do it for a short time. Schools have limited amounts of money, and now there is less option for people to go into schools due to the pandemic. These are issues for local clubs. I think the local club scene is not as strong these days, because people can just get straight online and find out all the information they need. The international body can then give recommendations for what you can do if you are running something like this.
Someone also mentioned that the IFPA should be running pro teams and sending them around the world. This would be nice, but something like that really needs to come from outside. Think of this "Orange" company tour that was done in Europe long ago.
I think footbag has actually done really well in terms of the pandemic. We have been able to have an online competition, with higher numbers than the last few years. We've also got more people in the intermediate and women's categories, and a few older players making comebacks.
There was mention of non-IFPA volunteers - most people who are doing footbag stuff - let's say social media, or this online worlds, plenty of other things - they are working together with people from the IFPA. Footbag is a small sport, so it's more or less the usual people working together.
This is really long, but there were a lot of points brought up. One last thing, a lot of the term limits, director positions are set in place because of the status as a not for profit organisation in the USA, and any change to them would cause issues.