RUNNING THE BUSINESS

Importance of having facts at your fingertips

I don’t like starting with an ‘I got it wrong’ statement, but it gives me an opportunity to raise the matter of having facts about Orienteering and orienteers at one’s finger tips. My error was in saying “Julian Dent’s 22nd in the Middle Distance final was a best ever by an Australian on debut” in one of my ‘elevator’ speeches in the December 2005 edition. I had used the statement previously and as nobody challenged it, I assumed that it was correct. Then when Blair Trewin produced a list of first WOC first appearances, I suddenly realised that Tom Quayle’s 14th in Norway in 1997 was the best ever debut by an Australian.

Orienteering is one of those rare sports which does not collect a plethora of statistics about its competitors and competitions. I never cease to be amazed these days, when commentators and journalists are able to drag out the most obscure statistic. As I am writing this column, to prove my point, the Channel Nine sports presenter says, “NSW cricketer Phil Jaques has just blasted a record score for an Australian opener on debut in a one day international match....”

What Orienteering needs is the equivalent of a Miller’s Guide, which is produced each year before the Melbourne Cup. It has most of the information that you are likely to want to know about horse racing and a number of other sports. One of my many long-term goals is to produce such a publication and when I start on it I will be seeking help from everyone who has something to contribute.

Participation Database

One of my other goals is to establish a national participation database. Now, with the work that Andy Hogg is directing in regards to a national results database on the Orienteering Australia website and the work that Kay Grzadka has done over the past five years in creating and developing an OACT participation database, I might be getting a little closer. The OACT database now has over 7,000 names recorded, with many of those names being interstate and international orienteers who have participated in one of the four major carnivals staged by OACT since 2000, ie OzE2000, Oz2001, SnowE2005 and 2005 Snowy Christmas 5-Days, as well as numerous other major events. The key data maintained on participants is: • PID (personal identifier) • Given Name (some are only initials) • Family Name (usually accurate) • Sex (mostly blank) • YOB (mostly blank) • Club (mainly accurate for ACT participants) • Postcode (mostly blank) • SI card (mostly blank)

OACT is able to extract some useful data on the total number of participants in a year, etc and a variant of the Pareto theory (80/20 rule) on the number of participations by the highly active orienteers, eg in 2004, 26.6 % of participants, ie 378 of the total of 1,420 who participated in the 76 events staged: • attended six or more events, and • made up 78.6 % (6,037) of all participations (7,678).

However, the much more important data cannot be extracted until most of the key data on participants has been entered. With OACT acquiring a new computer and the Participation database remaining on the old machine, I will be seeking volunteers to go through the vast paper and electronic records maintained by OACT to populate and purify the participant data records. The main purpose of the database will be to enable better analyses of the profile of Orienteering in the ACT and as more data becomes available, in Australia.

Another interesting fact is that an analysis of the postcodes in the OACT membership database reveals that around 53% of memberships have postcodes in the Belconnen and North Canberra, but the total residents in those areas would be nowhere near 50% of the total population of the ACT. It does, however, explain why events held in the northern suburbs of Canberra always attract a much higher number of participants. It will be interesting to see, when most postcodes are in the participation database, whether the same distribution applies.

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