ATBA-UK priorities
I need to focus what little time I have on the project that is going to have the biggest impact on achieving the objective of getting more people into mountainboarding. I’m very clear that the problem is caused by not enough infrastructure in the mountainboarding industry/community, so the question then becomes what should I do to contribute to building sustainable and effective infrastructure. My options range from top-level projects that to get more people to the existing Mountainboard Centres to bottom-level projects that create local infrastructure.
The options are:
ATBA-UK Marketing
I have offered to help mountainboard centres with marketing before but they don’t seem to want the help. I could try this again. Or I could focus on marketing the UK Championship. I’ve tried that before too. It’s lots of work for very little return. This is more of a top-level project and I don’t think it can achieve the objective.
ATBA-UK Membership
I could focus on improving and growing Membership as a way to get more people into mountainboarding. This would include getting more people to sign up, delivering value through emails. It could involve special deals from mountainboard centres and shops. It would mean changing what the ATBA-UK email newsletter is about but it isn’t really working as it is anyway.
ATBA-UK Instructors
I’m part way through rewriting the Instructor Manual and building the Instructor Training programme. The issue is that as there aren’t many mountainboard centres, there isn’t much need for instructors or training. But of course without a robust instructor training programme we’ll never get the instructors that we do have teaching well enough to give those that do go to centres a lessons a good experience.
Mountainboarding.uk.com
The beginners guide to mountainboarding website is a resource for people looking for information about how to get into mountainboarding. It’s a little out of date, needs a new look and some more articles, but improving it could be done at a slow pace whenever I have the time as it doesn’t have any dependencies. The question is, if no one is looking for information on how to get into mountainboarding then working on the website in isolation could be a waste of time. I can look at Google Analytics to get some idea of traffic and search intentions, and I could do some SEO/marketing work so that the site is easier to find for people that are looking for info.
Thames Valley Mountainboard Club
TVMC has the best prospects for getting people into mountainboarding by providing equipment to borrow, free lessons and regular meets. The issue I have is whether I have enough time to make it a success. This project fits my assertion that the problem of not enough mountainboarders requires a bottom-level/on-the-ground/grass-roots solution, not a top level national promotion campaign as getting more people to want to have a go at mountainboarding is pointless if there is no where for them to do it.
I wish I had time to do all of these as they would all compliment each other and help all of the projects to be successful. Unfortunately I don’t have time so I need to decide which I think will have the greatest impact and fit with the time I have available.