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Originally Posted by northwind
For me, there were 5 obvious issues
1) It being too much my show- that was for good reasons but I didn't start getting other people in to help til the last minute, and that was obviously a mistake. Even on the day I tried to keep it too much in my grasp, not clever.
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A lot of this was borne out of different expectations at the beginning of the planning.
I made the same mistake with the breakfast. When I planned to do breakfast I planned roll, sausage and coffee for 20 people and I was just going to treat you all instead of charging 2 quid for it. Then Tiger made a comment about "how do I want paid for the breakfast?" Only then it dawned on me (as it had obviously dawned on him) that we had to feed 55 people two mornings in a row. We were going to need a lot of meat, bread, litres of boiling water and lots of charcoal.
It was KG that realised that this had got bigger than our planning allowed for and jumped in at the last minute to fill the gaps - namely lunch and taking workload off me with the breakfast.
KG did 75 quids worth of shopping for the breakfast stuff in advance to save me midnight trips to Tesco's, had it all frozen and packed in cool boxes. He saved me a lot of work 'cos he knew he had the time during the day to do it. OYB was a god send in doing the clearing up as well, or KG and I wouldn't have caught the rest of you until lunch, we hadn't really thought about that either (I still haven't cleaned the BBQ, it looks like it cooked a very fatty pig!)
We just didn't realise how big the event would become. We treated it the same as organising any other big Ecosse rideout.
Hindsight is golden. Next time we know to delegate individual tasks to a team of people. I still think you need one man who has overall control though and knows whats going on with each task. You can't expect a team to function without a leader, otherwise you'll end up with 6 organisers and 6 different weekends all going in different directions, so a certain amout of dictatorship is good.
Though it being your show made your life difficult, I really didn't notice any detrimental effect to our guests.
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Originally Posted by northwind
Communication. I decided at the last minute that though we didn't need markers, having 5 or 5 trail bosses just to communicate and generally herd cats would be good, but it was too late. This naturally happens anyway, people with a good brain and group experience will always take over, but it should have been formalised. .
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Trail bosses are good, but I don't think we need to formalise it too much, because trail bosses can get have thier plans scuppered too! I left Pete and Lissa marking Dalmally and raced on with the intention of passing the bulk of the group and getting to Connel first to mark that left turn. I got chaperoned by a copper all the way along Loch Awe, so I got to Connel almost last. Luckily KG had it marked and nobody went the wrong way. So even with zero organisation of trail bosses nobody got lost. Just identify those who know the route as trail bosses and let them get on with it.
I think it's a good idea to have trail bosses identifiable though, maybe a different colour Hi-Viz. There were a few times I blasted past people and rode straight to the front of traffic queues, and I'm sure a few folk thought "what is that
'er doing?".
Well I didn't really care what they thought anyway, and they would see me marking at the next junction and realise why I was cracking on, but at the time I just hoped that my ST06 scottish registered bike gave away the fact that I was one of the minority in the group who knew the roads and exactly where we were going and I was making my way towards the front. There were a couple of occassions I couldn't overtake or filter through the group because I knew people weren't expecting it and it wouldn't have been safe, but when people see a hi viz come up behind them, they move over and make room.
Dean was busy doing his job keeping the pace up at the front, sometimes the fastest 5 or 6 riders were way ahead of the main bulk of the group who were travelling at steadier speeds. There were times when the main group lost sight of the front runners and it only took one of those front runners to forget to mark a junction and we'd have a problem, so you need a team that you can trust to make thier way safely to the front of each group to fill that gap. Unless you organise one marker per junction it has to be people with the confidence to overtake, make progress and do that job, otherwise all your trail bosses end up together at the back having marked all the junctions and departed last.
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Site-wise, I want a mix of accomodation to cover budgets and preferences
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Agreed, we had a few folk who dropped out this year due to cost. There's a lot of fuel and food involved. A tent may not be a lot of peoples preferred option, but it a necessity for some, simply because it's 6 quid a night, so I think we always need to have at least one accomodation option below (say?) 15 quid a night, be it bunkhouse, tent or whatever.
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NOT TOO FAR NORTH! If people can't hit us in one day from most of the country, that's a mistake I feel.
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Agreed, I didn't go to AR08 because it was too far for me. I know for a fact accomodation requiring a significantly longer ride than we did this year would put people off, because it would put me off. For a lot of folk riding bikes is about finding good roads and enjoying them, not sitting on a motorway for 10 hours. For me bike miles should be quality, not quantity. A week or two week biking holiday is great, but if I had to go south of Birmingham for a biking weekend, it would be in the car with the bike on a trailer! Getting a sore butt and squaring off a set of tyres just isn't my bag!