Category: Outcomes

Is Live Orienteering Dead?

I did not plan to write another post this week, but my attention was called to a new development that may be of interest of the delegates to the General Assembly meeting in Prague this weekend.

Live Orienteering.com redirects to Cleeng, a commercial video streaming provider for live streaming and to the event website for results, all with a somewhat cryptic message: “due to the problems with payments and access to the IOF LIVE Orienteering platform”.

The core functionalities of liveorienteering.com do not work: the pay per view and the one-stop result services, that is, the objectives why it was built and then completely rebuilt after 2 years with high expenses and lots of management time involved.

After all the above, it is just a little added colour that the “free of charge” event costs €6 per day if you want to see it.

LiveOrienteering - FootO WorldCup Round 4

Problems with Live Orienteering are nothing new. Last year it struggled with the WOC and the first round of the World Cup. This year I did not follow its performance, but I heard various comments about its non-reliable performance.

All this makes you wonder: is this the beginning of the end for Live Orienteering? Will the IOF Leadership abandon its venture into the money-sink of IT platform development?

In any case, here are some cornerstones for the Obituary of Live Orienteering based on Council minutes:

  • January 2014 (Point 23, Council minutes #168) – Leho presented the idea of the IOF LiveCentre to the Council as the platform for pay per view services. The cost of development was not mentioned, but rumour says that it was in the tens of thousands of euros with hundreds of hours of management time added.
  • October 2015 (Point 27, Council minutes #176) – the proposal to create a new digital platform (that is to replace the recently developed LiveCentre) with a hint about “cost-of- ownership issues, i.e. support and content management costs”.  In plain English that means that the original development was not thought through beyond the initial enthusiasm.
  • June 2016 (Point 28, Council minutes #179) “A beta test version could be expected for JWOC and WOC internal testing. […] The contract with the vendor of the current LiveCenter had been extended until November 30th, 2016 to guarantee a functioning LiveCenter for WOC.” – sounds like unexpected delays in development.
  • July 2017 (Point 7 and 20, Council minutes #185) “LIVE Orienteering had been released and it was noted that quality still needed to be improved. […] Council briefly discussed LIVE Orienteering status and noted that investments needed to continue and primarily to improve the reliability of the platform.” (that is, the platform still did not work, see also some screenshots here)
  • January 2018 (Point 10.3, Council minutes #187) “Investments were to be made in the development of Eventor, LIVE Orienteering and an update to the IOF webpage.” (that is, even more money was required)
  • June 2018 (Point 7, Council minutes #189) “3 issues were found during the use of LIVE Orienteering at EOC. 2 of the issues were solved early in the week, but one issue in the livestream.com platform remained unsolved. Focus now is on securing the performance for WOC.”  (sounds like more money needed)
  • October 2018 – Live Orienteering does not work at all as a platform for pay per view live streaming.

 

Looks like the perfect showcase for the IOF’s workings and an explanation for the financial performance of the IOF. It looks like lots of money and lots of management time (also an expense)  wasted with very little to show for.

Will there be questions from Member Federations on the General Assembly about how much money and human resources were spent on Live Orienteering, and the reasons that it looks like an abandoned venture?

World Orienteering Day – fewer organisers in 2018

This was a busy summer. I had no time to write proper posts. I had to help more than expected to organise the European and World Masters MTBO Championship, went to the World MTBO Championship, and also spent lots of time mapping and then organising the Isle of Man Orienteering Championships (and even done some proper work on the side).

Now it is time to get back to this blog, as there is a long list of topics waiting to be published from concluding the WOD quatrology to a more in-depth look into the history of the IOF Leadership’s Olympic ambitions.

*  –  *  –  *

The announcement on the IOF website on the final numbers of the World Orienteering Day is rather subdued compared to in previous years. Not only the “World record” focused communication is gone, but there was little celebration compared to previous years. For good reasons.

The overblown targets of 500,000 participants on 5000 events in 100 countries set by the IOF leadership were missed by a wide margin from 19% to a whopping 56%. In 2018 over seven days there were even fewer events organised than in 2017 on a single day!

The Council, unsurprisingly, did not flinch in the face of defeat. There is no hint in the Council minutes #189 and #190 that they tried to understand the reasons for missing their own targets by a wide margin, figure out why organisers were not interested in WOD activities, or alter their approach other than setting the 500,000 target now for 2020 in the strategic directions (see the congress binder). As a reminder, “Let’s reach together half a million participants during WOD in 2017!” was the call of Leho for a single day event. We could get nowhere near even over a week in 2018.

One may even get the feeling as if IOF volunteers are expected to behave like Boxer, the  hardworking naive horse, who would never question the direction set by Napoleon, but believes that any problem can be solved if he works harder. In the meantime, the numbers suggest that there is a yawning gap between reality and the ambitions of the IOF leadership.

WOD countries -3

WOD events -3

WOD participants -3

WOD by country

The targets were missed by a wide margin. Even these numbers are hinging primarily on Turkey that delivered almost quarter of all participants, just a little bit less than the next three countries, Norway, Russia and Sweden combined. Unfortunately, Turkey does not have the orienteering traditions that could make these impressive numbers sustainable without strong central will. If Turkish organisers lose interest, WOD numbers will collapse.

Continue reading “World Orienteering Day – fewer organisers in 2018”

Live Orienteering in action

If you ever wondered why IOF online ticket sales were lagging far behind expectations, here is a series of screenshots from today’s Sprint Final live session on Live Orienteering.

Price: €6 for one day only, and €20 for 5 days, but you learn about it only when you try to pay.

Apparently the chat box was removed. I guess due to unfiltered comments about the service. You may read on Attackpoint some honest reaction of enthusiastic orienteers who were willing to pay to watch the action real time.

This happened 5 weeks after Live Orienteering’s flop on the first round of the FootO World Cup. Some comments are here on facebook where people were demanding their money back.

Liveorienteering 4

Liveorienteering 1Liveorienteering 3Liveorienteering 2