After the feedback received from the online High Level Event Seminar earlier this year, the IOF FootO Commission decided to organise an online seminar for the education of Event Advisers and Senior Event Advisers on 13th-14th November. The seminar had 60-80 participants on the sessions and was conducted without any major technical problems through Microsoft Teams. This initial SEA seminar focused on 4 topics: rules, IT, mapping and sprint course planning.
David Rosen, the IOF Rules Commission Chairman started the programme and talked about the latest rules changes in FootO and the challenge in getting correct winning times of the 2021 international FootO season and what the course planners should pay attention to. Further on, he talked about other interesting happenings in our 2021 events and the importance of event reports.
The second block of the programme consisted of two sessions. Henning Spjelkavik, the chairman of the IOF IT Commission gave a presentation about the ambition level which organisers should seek during their event and presented some of the tools which may help the organiser and the Event Adviser during the checking process. The decision about using an external supplier or managing things from internal resources on a voluntary basis was discussed and an IT Checklist was presented as a tool to be used for planning and testing the IT solutions of the event.
The other session of the IT block was presented by Henrik Skoglund, who is responsible for managing the IOF Eventor, IOF’s event management system. Henrik talked about what and how the Event adviser needs to pay attention regarding Eventor. He gave a great insight to the whole system and how organisers should utilise its functions.
The programme continued on Sunday with Christer Carlsson, the IOF Map Commission Chairman’s very interesting presentation about the current challenges in orienteering mapping. It included advice for the Event Advisers in map checking, generalisation, depicting barriers on sprint maps, printing quality and approved print shops. He also introduced a new guideline for mapping multi-level structures in sprint maps (i.e. tunnels, bridges, etc.).
Finally, Ivar Maalen (one of the most experienced SEAs from Norway) shared his presentation about sprint course planning, which included a lot of examples from recent competitions. He used some time to discuss how difficult can route choices be and what is the optimal use of artificial barriers in sprint. Calculating winning times and rating route choices for the different course legs was also mentioned. Ivar ended his presentation specifying seven areas, which the Event Adviser should check just before the competition.
All presentations and the link to the videos from the seminar can be found on the IOF website, in the FootO Event Adviser Clinics and Seminars section:
The online seminar was very productive and should be offered every year for the FootO event advisers, concluded Áron Less, chairman of the IOF FootO Commission. Next up in the education calendar for FootO is the High Level Event Seminar in Budapest, on 5th-6th February 2022. Invitation to the High Level Seminar can be found at the same link.