2010 Sport Unlimited Cape Classic

doclach
March 2010
Have to say I've been way impressed with the set-up of this event right from the start, totally pro and the emphasis and action on environmental factors and save our seas has been a world leading move in BB.
since seeing it written up here http://www.sixty40.co.za/newsitem.php?i=773
and on the riptide front page i've been pretty keen to see how it goes.

Then this morning i wake up to the cape classic twitter giving a great account of the action. I was trying to work out what was so appealing about this twitter ( just as a note, the Saffa lead the way totally in using up to the minute online media) and i realised it contained more of the heat 'action' rather than just raw results, things like:
"Sixty40 Mag Ed - Ian Kruger with a nice barrel to clean flip in his heat. Super fun wedges coming through now"

"Good vibe on the beach though - With the music jamming and a sweet development clinic just been run its good times at Cape Classic 2010"

give a surprising amount of atmosphere at 140 characters.

and heat calls like:
"DK - Hitting the water now. Shmo, Potts, Mccarthy and Trilivas"
Meant dudes like Craig (I assume that's you from the forum Craig T - woot!) get a shout out in amongst the 'big names', which I reckon is really important and we get to find out Ian campbell was smoking it.

and then i can rock over to the results and have some feel as well as the raw numbers.

My twitter comparison is to the 2009 Reef SA champs feed, which was more orientated to results, but personally i frothed on the vibe of the cape classic tweets. Considering these are directly tied into the main webpage http://www.sixty40.co.za/capeclassic2010 and other online facilities (FB/Mypsace/digg from what i can see) adds to the depth of availability.

Compared to any other contest i can think of, the up to the minute coverage has been outstanding to say the least - I just hope the rest of the boog world takes a leaf out of both your environmental awareness and media communications book

Stoked - and it isn't even wrapped yet

PS - foaming to see the shots, if someone could give me a heads up when the pics are online , that would be rad

Bodyboarding 937 views

3 Replies

Kelly
March 2010
Thanks for the feedback on the coverage Doc I'll be sure to make sure the guys see it.

I'm not really involved in the updates themselves but have provided the service for it and the guys are just getting on with it. On Thursday night I did a little more work to polish it off a bit more and hope to make it accessible to more contest organisers. Not quite 100% but it is starting to work well enough providing live updates through the social networks and take advantage of these outlets to promote the contests.

A basic run down of the "Contest Updates" is as follows:

1. The contest is set-up on Sixty40.co.za with Twitter login details which are required to use the Twitter API.
2. User on the beach accesses a mobile web page to post the updates.
3. The update is posted to Sixty40 and Twitter.
4. Hourly the last 5 posts are sent to Facebook using the RSS feed.

Ideally there should be a post of heat results after every heat and then in-between the "vibe" posts which you refer to. It's not a lot of effort required and no real skills required, although a bit of skill with the pen would help.

Each update gets distributed to the following:

http://www.sixty40.co.za/capeclassic2010?v=updates - Sixty40 contest pages host all media from the event.
http://www.twitter.com/capeclassic - a Twitter account was set-up for the event. It would be better to post to an account with more followers, so suggestion would be to rather post to the Twitter account for SABA (http://twitter.com/SABAonlinecoza)
http://www.facebook.com/sixty40 - for the SABA events we're posting to our Sixty40 fan page on Facebook which has close to 4000 fans.

If anyone is interested in using this system for any contest - I'd be happy to help and they can contact me on [email protected] (at some point I'll be making it self help).
Billybuster
March 2010
Any heat sheets with updates kelly or just twitter..?
doclach
March 2010
Cheers for the detailed reply Kelly.
I got my froth beard on when I read it and sent a big email out to those involved with NSW BB (New South Wales is the state I live in in Australia), including a good mate the state prez Barney Ryan, as well as Terry (IBA). the mail included a paste of your post from "a basic rundown of the contest updates" to the end of the post, including your contact, offering intro's if they need them.

Terry McKenna has already written back tonight after a trip away saying:

Quote:
Hi Doc
This sounds awesome mate.

and goes on to some further details. (I'll forward the email to you)
we're having the state comp at soldiers the days immediately prior to the IBA leg of the tour at the same place and i'm on a mission to get this implemented, thanks to the inspiration of you and the 6040 lads - we have needed this for so long and now it is offered ready-to-go virtually 'on a plate'.
Just wanted to say thanks heaps for the offer and inspiration. If anyone ever says that South Africa hasn't made significant contributions to the world scene of BB - tell 'em to come have a 'talk' with me

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