Slalom will not succeed without a kit.
Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2010 11:19 am
You can skip down a bit if this seems familiar.
Okay fellows, as I haven’t posted anything in a long time. And I guess there’s a reason for that. For the most part a lot of the challenging slalom racing has been buried, mostly because many of the courses and venues have not become increasingly more challenging and difficult on the national and international levels, but instead they have become easier in an attempt to accommodate everyone.
That is not the way it should be.
In fact, I think it’s kind of ridiculous. But I’ve said all this before. I don’t really have any interest to aspire to winning any championship where any intermediate skater can make the course.
Also, I think a lot of the speed has been stripped from the course.
But I’ve said all this before–I think there are exceptions, and my hat is off to the guys who run the Texas Sizzler and Oregon, and The Colorado guys.
But for the most part–the way I look at skateboarding, and the way I look at most extreme action sports, is that the top guys at the very top of the game–do things that intermediate level competitors think would be impossible for them to do.
For instance, just how popular would NASCAR racing be… If all the cars were limited to racing on a track with engines that limited the cars top speed to 80 miles an hour?
Sure, for a while, a lot of people would be into that. Just not me.
I always feel I have to state this, because I check back every now and again just to see where were are at.
Anyhow… On to NEW things.
The main problem with slalom skateboarding can be summarized in a single word.
FRAGMENTATION.
What do I mean by this? Well it’s pretty simple. Everything is so fragmented that is very difficult to get a hold of what’s happening.
It’s difficult to buy the slalom gear, there seemed to be no decent complete setups. It’s difficult to find a place to practice and there’s a tremendous amount of variation in the types of courses that are set, as well as constant debating of the rules.
Okay, let’s take a look at this.
I think that rules should be subject to change about once every four years (perhaps 2 at most) . I think you can debate about changing the rules, but rule changes really shouldn’t change our sport midseason.
It seems, you have to read every single thread to figure out what’s going on. It’s simply ridiculous.
Even when it comes to buying slalom cones that can be difficult.
So let’s imagine, soccer, initially it probably originated in several places at once… I don’t really care about the true history, but I think it would be reasonable to postulate this. Probably people played with soccer balls of varying sizes varying construction, they had different rules about touching the ball, what to do when the ball went out of bounds, and rules for goalies.
So probably for a while, several different leagues existed, and all of them had slightly different rules.
That’s a real problem. Eventually people agreed upon things- and the network of the game of soccer grew.
The value of a network is proportionate to the square of its size. This may not be a completely accurate statement, but if you think about it for a moment there is a value there. The MLB,NBA, NFL all are networks of teams. We need to fix our Slalom Skateboarding network.
So let’s take a look at how different companies competed as networks. MySpace, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Napster, eharmony, Match.com, Ebay , Skype, AIM , iChat, Paypal and so many others….
We are not so different. We communicate between members, we have common interests, and like dating sites…we have events where people actually meet.
So who won the network wars? Clearly, Facebook is the leading network at the moment.
It has the highest Market Cap. Everyone is onboard. Personally I dislike facebook… but that is another topic.
Facebook won for a number of reasons.
1. Rules were simple
2. Little spam
3. Photo scrapbooking
4. Consumer commitment in “invested time”
5. Very little framentation. One stop shopping.
Simple rules and limited layouts… Facebook looks stable- pages have similarlity (like contests should have similarity- perhaps beyond ISSA rules alone- like maybe lodging too- free airport shuttle schedules etc.
We need more photo scrapbooking.
People vest time in the Forum threads, but INSTEAD it should be in their neighborhoods getting others involved (not just racers, but sponsors, cone marshals, Street sponsors (Yes I mean asking a street to support racing!) Most importantly lobbying your local city council for a place to do slalom based on its safe track record and the benefits for fighting obesity.
One more thing…
One stop shopping. Lets look at some minor failures..
Look at iChat (before you can sign up for iChat you need an AIM address or a .mac.
Before you can get verified for paypal you need a bank account
Before you can do match.com you need to subscribe with a credit card.
Facebook only required signing up. You didn't ahve to chase all over cyberspace to do it. There are rewards to one stop shopping.
Imagine..you want to go doa different type of fishing from surfcasting or fly fishing ...Slalom (salmon spelled weird) fishing- but You find that Pocket Pistol Fishing rods has a 2 year waiting list, you can go to nearly any sports stores to get fishing line- but you have to go online to order special hooks, then try to find some race discontinued reel bearings on Ebay, and then order some Rod eyelets from another country. You'll need special bindings to keep your hands on the reel which you'll have to fabricate yourself or find someone to fabricate them with a CNC machine. Or you can put together a set up..that will work ok alone, but you won't catch any fish if you are with people with better rods. sounds familiar?
So lets look at Soccer.
1. Head to nearly any sports shop brick and mortar or Online.
2. Buy a ball, cleats, goals
3. read the rules, and you can be sure they won’t change tons in 4 years.
4. Practice, play, win.
Let’s look at slalom skateboarding. REALLY. and this is greatly simplified...
1. Scratch you head and wonder what to buy- fearing buying an outdated or uncompetitive set up. (Do you worry that your soccer ball is outdated when you buy one from a shop?) Do you worry about your cleats being slow?
2. Prepare to spend about 20 hours online trying to figure out the rules and possible rule changes coming up.
3. Try to figure out how to pump. 5-30 hours to get any skill level.
4. Wonder what wheels, bearings, decks and bushings to use for each event.
5. Try to figure out which races to attend…not knowing who is going to what. Not knowing which venue is good as there is no offical review (For instance …even though I don’t play Golf I bet I could find a place that rated the courses)
6. Wonder where to look for this info. NCDSA,com, Slalom Skateboarder.com, Silverfish.com (odd since it doesn’t have slalom or skateboarding in its URL- even as an abbreviation.. hmm did you find the answer?? No...did you miss a website to check.. was it on freecarve.com under summer crosstraining by PSR?
It’s a mess.
But that fact that people go through this to skate...well it shows it must be really fun if we have this many people doing it when it is this hard to get started... WHAT IF IT WAS EASY TO GET STARTED?
So here’s what I propose we need to do.
We need to market this properly. It’s just far too difficult for any of the millions of skateboarding kids to figure this out without being personally brought into it by another slalom skateboarder.
A kid needs to walk into a sports Authority, sports chalet, Quicksilver, billabong, Maui and sons, and be able to pick up a starter kit.
There should be a race kit, and a decent starter slalom skateboard.
The starter kit should have 20 slalom cones, chalk, permanent markers–paint pens, a list of suggested courses that would be guaranteed to be available to run at a local competition, an inexpensive timing system, the rulebook, and perhaps a membership form–and the Internet URL for joining ISSA.
The starter slalom skateboard should be rated for weight, there should be a number of different bushings, two or three sets of wheels, a truck key, and a sheet with recommendations of roughly how much to turn your truck tensioning bolt to get a desired turn for your weight and the type of course you want to run.
There should be a list of URLs that have videos showing kids how to pump.
This should also be a website where kids can post their courses locally. And there should be a way to tell when those courses are active. So for example you could post that you skateboard every Monday at 123 Main St. from 2 PM to 4 PM in October. Or you could be more elaborate and list your twitter account, so you could send out a tweet to let people know when you were going to go skating.
Also on that sheet of paper would be a list of skateboard competitions and dates, with a reminder to check the URL to confirm them. It should explain that you have to do certain slalom contests in a certain order to make it to a national level.
People should be able to post photos of the slalom courses, and videos of their ability, in hopes of being able to attract the people to come race.
This simple slalom kit could cut down on a ton of the fragmentation that will forever doom slalom to being an oddball sport.
There would also be a petition form that people could sign to ask for permission for regular road closures. As well as suggesting what is important when deciding what roads were good candidates for road closures.
For instance.. A "through street" is a bad candidate. Where as a road that t-bones into another road so that people don’t use the road for through traffic much is a better candidate (no they don’t have to be dead ends.. but ideally not straight commuter shots either.
A Link to a URL showing a video of how hill hunting is done would help.
That’s it.
We need a kit.
Okay fellows, as I haven’t posted anything in a long time. And I guess there’s a reason for that. For the most part a lot of the challenging slalom racing has been buried, mostly because many of the courses and venues have not become increasingly more challenging and difficult on the national and international levels, but instead they have become easier in an attempt to accommodate everyone.
That is not the way it should be.
In fact, I think it’s kind of ridiculous. But I’ve said all this before. I don’t really have any interest to aspire to winning any championship where any intermediate skater can make the course.
Also, I think a lot of the speed has been stripped from the course.
But I’ve said all this before–I think there are exceptions, and my hat is off to the guys who run the Texas Sizzler and Oregon, and The Colorado guys.
But for the most part–the way I look at skateboarding, and the way I look at most extreme action sports, is that the top guys at the very top of the game–do things that intermediate level competitors think would be impossible for them to do.
For instance, just how popular would NASCAR racing be… If all the cars were limited to racing on a track with engines that limited the cars top speed to 80 miles an hour?
Sure, for a while, a lot of people would be into that. Just not me.
I always feel I have to state this, because I check back every now and again just to see where were are at.
Anyhow… On to NEW things.
The main problem with slalom skateboarding can be summarized in a single word.
FRAGMENTATION.
What do I mean by this? Well it’s pretty simple. Everything is so fragmented that is very difficult to get a hold of what’s happening.
It’s difficult to buy the slalom gear, there seemed to be no decent complete setups. It’s difficult to find a place to practice and there’s a tremendous amount of variation in the types of courses that are set, as well as constant debating of the rules.
Okay, let’s take a look at this.
I think that rules should be subject to change about once every four years (perhaps 2 at most) . I think you can debate about changing the rules, but rule changes really shouldn’t change our sport midseason.
It seems, you have to read every single thread to figure out what’s going on. It’s simply ridiculous.
Even when it comes to buying slalom cones that can be difficult.
So let’s imagine, soccer, initially it probably originated in several places at once… I don’t really care about the true history, but I think it would be reasonable to postulate this. Probably people played with soccer balls of varying sizes varying construction, they had different rules about touching the ball, what to do when the ball went out of bounds, and rules for goalies.
So probably for a while, several different leagues existed, and all of them had slightly different rules.
That’s a real problem. Eventually people agreed upon things- and the network of the game of soccer grew.
The value of a network is proportionate to the square of its size. This may not be a completely accurate statement, but if you think about it for a moment there is a value there. The MLB,NBA, NFL all are networks of teams. We need to fix our Slalom Skateboarding network.
So let’s take a look at how different companies competed as networks. MySpace, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Napster, eharmony, Match.com, Ebay , Skype, AIM , iChat, Paypal and so many others….
We are not so different. We communicate between members, we have common interests, and like dating sites…we have events where people actually meet.
So who won the network wars? Clearly, Facebook is the leading network at the moment.
It has the highest Market Cap. Everyone is onboard. Personally I dislike facebook… but that is another topic.
Facebook won for a number of reasons.
1. Rules were simple
2. Little spam
3. Photo scrapbooking
4. Consumer commitment in “invested time”
5. Very little framentation. One stop shopping.
Simple rules and limited layouts… Facebook looks stable- pages have similarlity (like contests should have similarity- perhaps beyond ISSA rules alone- like maybe lodging too- free airport shuttle schedules etc.
We need more photo scrapbooking.
People vest time in the Forum threads, but INSTEAD it should be in their neighborhoods getting others involved (not just racers, but sponsors, cone marshals, Street sponsors (Yes I mean asking a street to support racing!) Most importantly lobbying your local city council for a place to do slalom based on its safe track record and the benefits for fighting obesity.
One more thing…
One stop shopping. Lets look at some minor failures..
Look at iChat (before you can sign up for iChat you need an AIM address or a .mac.
Before you can get verified for paypal you need a bank account
Before you can do match.com you need to subscribe with a credit card.
Facebook only required signing up. You didn't ahve to chase all over cyberspace to do it. There are rewards to one stop shopping.
Imagine..you want to go doa different type of fishing from surfcasting or fly fishing ...Slalom (salmon spelled weird) fishing- but You find that Pocket Pistol Fishing rods has a 2 year waiting list, you can go to nearly any sports stores to get fishing line- but you have to go online to order special hooks, then try to find some race discontinued reel bearings on Ebay, and then order some Rod eyelets from another country. You'll need special bindings to keep your hands on the reel which you'll have to fabricate yourself or find someone to fabricate them with a CNC machine. Or you can put together a set up..that will work ok alone, but you won't catch any fish if you are with people with better rods. sounds familiar?
So lets look at Soccer.
1. Head to nearly any sports shop brick and mortar or Online.
2. Buy a ball, cleats, goals
3. read the rules, and you can be sure they won’t change tons in 4 years.
4. Practice, play, win.
Let’s look at slalom skateboarding. REALLY. and this is greatly simplified...
1. Scratch you head and wonder what to buy- fearing buying an outdated or uncompetitive set up. (Do you worry that your soccer ball is outdated when you buy one from a shop?) Do you worry about your cleats being slow?
2. Prepare to spend about 20 hours online trying to figure out the rules and possible rule changes coming up.
3. Try to figure out how to pump. 5-30 hours to get any skill level.
4. Wonder what wheels, bearings, decks and bushings to use for each event.
5. Try to figure out which races to attend…not knowing who is going to what. Not knowing which venue is good as there is no offical review (For instance …even though I don’t play Golf I bet I could find a place that rated the courses)
6. Wonder where to look for this info. NCDSA,com, Slalom Skateboarder.com, Silverfish.com (odd since it doesn’t have slalom or skateboarding in its URL- even as an abbreviation.. hmm did you find the answer?? No...did you miss a website to check.. was it on freecarve.com under summer crosstraining by PSR?
It’s a mess.
But that fact that people go through this to skate...well it shows it must be really fun if we have this many people doing it when it is this hard to get started... WHAT IF IT WAS EASY TO GET STARTED?
So here’s what I propose we need to do.
We need to market this properly. It’s just far too difficult for any of the millions of skateboarding kids to figure this out without being personally brought into it by another slalom skateboarder.
A kid needs to walk into a sports Authority, sports chalet, Quicksilver, billabong, Maui and sons, and be able to pick up a starter kit.
There should be a race kit, and a decent starter slalom skateboard.
The starter kit should have 20 slalom cones, chalk, permanent markers–paint pens, a list of suggested courses that would be guaranteed to be available to run at a local competition, an inexpensive timing system, the rulebook, and perhaps a membership form–and the Internet URL for joining ISSA.
The starter slalom skateboard should be rated for weight, there should be a number of different bushings, two or three sets of wheels, a truck key, and a sheet with recommendations of roughly how much to turn your truck tensioning bolt to get a desired turn for your weight and the type of course you want to run.
There should be a list of URLs that have videos showing kids how to pump.
This should also be a website where kids can post their courses locally. And there should be a way to tell when those courses are active. So for example you could post that you skateboard every Monday at 123 Main St. from 2 PM to 4 PM in October. Or you could be more elaborate and list your twitter account, so you could send out a tweet to let people know when you were going to go skating.
Also on that sheet of paper would be a list of skateboard competitions and dates, with a reminder to check the URL to confirm them. It should explain that you have to do certain slalom contests in a certain order to make it to a national level.
People should be able to post photos of the slalom courses, and videos of their ability, in hopes of being able to attract the people to come race.
This simple slalom kit could cut down on a ton of the fragmentation that will forever doom slalom to being an oddball sport.
There would also be a petition form that people could sign to ask for permission for regular road closures. As well as suggesting what is important when deciding what roads were good candidates for road closures.
For instance.. A "through street" is a bad candidate. Where as a road that t-bones into another road so that people don’t use the road for through traffic much is a better candidate (no they don’t have to be dead ends.. but ideally not straight commuter shots either.
A Link to a URL showing a video of how hill hunting is done would help.
That’s it.
We need a kit.