The social graph of the mountainboard community

Admin on 25/02/2017

I’ve always believed that the mountainboarding community follows the laws of networks and so benefits and suffers from network effects. Networks are made up of nodes (people in the mountainboarding community) and edges (the social connections and relationships between those people). Understanding this helps us understand how the connections between people in the community work and what effect changes have on the entire network.

Understanding the problem

There aren’t enough people mountainboarding often enough. That is the problem. Looking at the problem from the perspective of the social graph of the mountainboard community, we have people (nodes) who are either active (riding regularly) in the community (network) which means that they have existing connections which are continually renewed and reinforced, or inactive (not riding regularly) which means that those preexisting relationships have lapsed. There are also dormant nodes but for the purposes of this we would say that they have dropped off the graph.

If a node becomes inactive it weakens the edges and has a knock on effect on the other nodes. If a node is active it can affect the activity of nearby nodes but may not be sufficient on its own to keep them active.

The social graph of the mountainboard community

If node A in the diagram above becomes inactive, nodes C and D become disconnected from the rest of the graph, and the connection between node B and the rest of the graph is weakened and so weakens the connection of nodes E, F and J to the rest of the graph.

That’s why understanding the mountainboarding community as a network is important, because it shows us what happens when a single rider stops and how it takes more than a single rider to build up the community. We can use this understanding in order to help keep the active mountainboarders riding and reactivate the inactive riders. This will follow the same network effect rules as the weakening of the network and exponentially strengthen the community. So, how do we do it?

Towards a solution

We need a plan. If we want to solve this problem we need a plan, people, resources, etc. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but I think with the right things in place, and the right understanding, it is possible.

  • Identify active and inactive (and dormant) riders. Knowing this will be essential for targeting the right riders. Luckily the ATBA-UK has a database of mountainboarders across the UK. They could all be assigned an activity score (5 for most active, 1 for least active) and then their postcodes mapped onto Google Maps using TableFusion.
  • Focus on active nodes for retention. We want to keep the active riders riding as if they become inactive the network effects will multiply. So we look for areas on the map that have the highest concentration of active riders.
  • Then we establish regular scheduled meets in the areas where the active riders are, doing the type of riding they like to do. If there is a cluster around a centre (as we could expect) then we organise a meet at that centre. The meets need to be at least monthly and planned in advance so riders can know about them and plan to attend.
  • The meet-ups then need to be promoted across the community. This could be done using the ATBA-UK email newsletter, group chats on messenger (segmented by area), various websites and Facebook groups.
  • Doing this would require quite a commitment from someone, and probably some funding from the ATBA-UK, but it would help turnaround the decline of mountainboarding in the UK.

ATBA-UK priorities

Admin on 20/09/2015

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.

ATBA-UK Marketing, review and reflections

Admin on 12/09/2015

I’ve been heavily involved in marketing and communications for the ATBA-UK over the past five years During that time we’ve used many different platforms, strategies and tactics to try to communicate and engage with the UK mountainboarding community. We started with a website and used email newsletters and facebook posts to drive people to the website. As the email metrics dropped and fewer people visited the website we switched to a ‘Social front and centre’ strategy which included putting the content we wanted people to see in the email newsletters and facebook posts so that the reader didn’t have to click through to read the message. The numbers continued to fall. 

Now, with so few mountainboarders engaging with the ATBA-UK through competitions, instructor training, and membership, and with fewer mountainboard centres doing fewer events, there is so little to talk about. Not having much to say means people stop bothering to read anything, which means it is no longer worth the effort to write facebook posts, send email newsletters, snap instagram pics, or tweet. 

So what to do for the best for the future? That is the question. When things get down to nothing it’s often hard to get them going again. Like a mountainboard getting to the bottom of the run, it eventually runs out of momentum. Do we call it a day, or do we pick it up and go for another run?

Working for the ATBA-UK

Admin on 21/03/2015

Riding around on a quad, eating chocolate chip cookies, playing roadkill bingo, scaring bikers, planning for the future, and scratching my freeriding itch. I love working for the ATBA-UK.