FAI, soaring and Olympic Games

College Soaring is an AMAZING idea Gregg!

We could help create a virtual engine (with careful care and feeding) that would give high school and college kids a focus. Learn to soar, learn cross country, get your CFIG to teach other youth, learn to race and compete and win in College on your College Soaring Team.

If the SSA actually pursued any of this ideas with any focus (rather than recreating their own rules, for example) we might have some growth.

Meanwhile, we look forward to the upcoming US rule changes which provide ZERO measured (or other) value to our sport.

College Soaring Teams in the USA? I truly love this idea. Did I bring this up before? ;-) Just like College sailing, the local club that hosts these teams will get a huge boost. I am thinking of Sandhill hosting the University of Michigan near my home. Imagine 100 American colleges with active soaring teams (with instruction, coaching, fun social activities & social networks surrounding them) and a network of contest, competitions, championships and ultimately a College National Championship.

Why not high school too?

It just take 5-10 to start...in 20 years, this could be really big.

Sean

On Friday, November 4, 2016 at 7:32:28 PM UTC-4, Sean wrote:
College Soaring is an AMAZING idea Gregg!

We could help create a virtual engine (with careful care and feeding) that would give high school and college kids a focus. Learn to soar, learn cross country, get your CFIG to teach other youth, learn to race and compete and win in College on your College Soaring Team.

If the SSA actually pursued any of this ideas with any focus (rather than recreating their own rules, for example) we might have some growth.

Meanwhile, we look forward to the upcoming US rule changes which provide ZERO measured (or other) value to our sport.

College Soaring Teams in the USA? I truly love this idea. Did I bring this up before? ;-) Just like College sailing, the local club that hosts these teams will get a huge boost. I am thinking of Sandhill hosting the University of Michigan near my home. Imagine 100 American colleges with active soaring teams (with instruction, coaching, fun social activities & social networks surrounding them) and a network of contest, competitions, championships and ultimately a College National Championship.

Why not high school too?

It just take 5-10 to start...in 20 years, this could be really big.

Sean

How about making it the Collegiate Soaring Association?
UH

On Wednesday, November 2, 2016 at 11:59:32 AM UTC-4, Sean wrote:
Marketing success is, at its most basic level, measured in terms of "exposures." In other words, how many times is your brand, product or company "exposed" to the eyes and ears of your target audience. Soaring is a general thing so IMO our audience is everyone. Next there is the "meaningfulness" of the exposures. Somewhat more subjective but worth considering. It is far more cost effective to focus on basic exposures than it is to try and target. Especially when you have little or nothing to start with (our situation). Trying to target from the beginning is like trying to land on the centerline after your rudder has fallen off the glider. Especially true when the sport is so amazingly obscure (almost hidden from the public) here in the USA. That and the fact that our demographic is 55+ (perhaps 65+) and needs to be equalized or exceeded at the teen and twenties demographic if we are to grow again (or even survive).

What I am talking about is basically regularly leveraging free exposure as a matter of practice. Employing the media and other marketing engines to work for us as normal operating procedure. It only takes paying attention.. For example, every SSA contest (or any soaring event for that matter) should be writing press releases and calling local media outlets (TV, print, web) to visit. Media loves invitations. The exercise of inviting media can be automated and tuned. Media involvement is very rare in the USA, even at Nationals or SSA Conventions. It should be absolute at every event. Particular attention should be paid to sports media. As a sport, we are sitting on the ground with the engine off in terms of marketing. We have few youth members to leverage for help as other sports do (paragliding). Quite embarrassing. We need to work harder to make up for this unfortunately.

The Olympics is important and valuable. Shrugging it off because you have watched curling and not picked up curling is fairly dumb (sorry). Imagine an average Joe seeing 10 minutes of the Olympic glider race event similar to some of the better SGP coverage you may have seen. Now imagine 1.8 Billion people (Olympic viewership in Brazil this summer) being potentially exposed to glider racing. The Olympics have very, very strong youth demographics. They provide sports with a certain legitimacy as well. It might be hard for some of you to get your heads around, but I am thinking 10-20 years down the line here. If we want to have a great, thriving sport then we need to get our heads out of our butts and shamelessly expose the sport as much as possible. Why not? Or should we just keep standing around with our hands in our pockets? This conservative, tip-toeing around alone has gotten us where we are today. It cannot be allowed to continue.

Finally an Olympic bid is not that big of an undertaking for us here in the USA. The good news is that the US so separated from the FAI and Europe (the big boys) that we would not have to move a muscle. They would lead that effort because FAI is relevant and US rules are irrelevant. We should all be absolutely begging the FAI to build an Olympic bid for soaring. All upside for us and zero work.

Olympic Sailplane Racing. Sounds great to me! What is there to lose?

Sean


"Marketing success is, at its most basic level, measured in terms of "exposures."""

Marketing success is based on ROI of the marketing budget. We have data that tells us where we are likely to find new pilots, to ignore that and go broad reach is silly and a losing proposition. As to the exposure .. being in the Olympics and getting exposure is two different tasks. Networks pick what they cover based on mass appeal, soaring leaves little to the viewer and after NBC took a bath on the last Olympics what makes you think they are going to want to take valuable viewer time on a difficult to follow unknown sport like soaring on their next run?

"Trying to target from the beginning is like trying to land on the centerline after your rudder has fallen off the glider."

Goes against standard strategy. Have you ever directing a company’s marketing function? I have and I would not have lasted using your logic. Rudder allows for direction... broad reach by definition lacks direction.


Dennis

DC

DC, yes, as a matter of fact, I have. Highly successfully, several times in entirely different markets. But you can disagree. I couldn't care less. No harm, no foul.

If the SSA stays it's course (same people, same mindsets, small moves) it will die. Fairly soon. In several ways it is already dead. Sad to watch. But hard to deny.

It needs a total reorg. A major shake up. Complete disruption. Chaos. It has been the same for far, far too long. In numerous ways. "And that's the way we like it!"

I am so bored of these discussions. Like trying to motivate sand.

It could even be something like this: http://www.coloradosoaring.org/ssa/coll/home.htm

Why is this called the Colorado Collegate Soaring Association? Something driven by the Air Force Acadamy?

Why not the US College Soaring Association? Why was this not owned by the SSA?

College soaring clubs/teams sound great, other than thr fact that this is literally the first that I have ever heard of them. I have never seen anything about this on the SSA website, Social Media, or heard about it in conversation.

What a great place for the SSA to help focus a local SSA clubs efforts on developing a college soaring club (and eventually team). This ticks a lot of currently challenged SSA growth "boxes" if you think about it.

But as with all 2nd tier college "sports" clubs or teams, without active competition, good marketing and GREAT social fun for the college kids, it is doomed to fail quickly. And, as with all things new, this effort would take a good amount of care and feeding from a number of established clubs and SSA leaders to create a self sustaining/growing new segment of US soaring participation.

I would definitely be willing to work on University of Michigan or Michigan State University, if, 20-30 other major Universities had equal commitments from other pilots to seriously explore found clubs/teams ;and the SSA put a plan together to develop something for college). it needs to be a national effort that can feed of itself to succeed. One or two at a time would fail.

A great first target would be a "Big 10," "PAC 10" and "ACC" college soaring team series.

Who's with me? ;-)

https://youtu.be/6eX3fiQLo84

Sean,

If nothing else, you are entertaining.

Busy with work this evening, but in a nutshell... The Collegiate Soaring Association has been around for 30 years. It is an affiliate of the SSA. It was founded by Dr. John Campbell in 1984 who was a post-doc at Princeton when I was an undergraduate. The two of us, along with several others, spent years working very hard to revive college-based soaring activity. John was incredibly passionate about the project, and spent countless hours promoting, cajoling, and driving this. We obtained 501 C3 status, we received a few donations, we even hosted competitions. I personally drove around to Penn State, Ohio State, RIT, and several others with John to conduct workshops, help with recruiting drives, etc. I drove the 1-36 which was donated around to several sites as a loaner to help drive activity.

Eventually, we were able to pull together a few Collegiate Championships, but in reality they were just a couple of juniors participating in existing SSA Regionals (I believe Sean Franke won one, though calling it an "MSU Championship" was really a stretch). John managed to pull a "local" competition together in Colorado due in large part to the presence of the Air Force Academy. When John tragically died way too young from brain cancer, the CSA really started to fade away.

In the end, it turned out that College Soaring clubs are very hard to maintain. As an example, the Princeton club was at one point one of the largest campus organizations, with over 70 members. It was started by Steve Sliwa, himself a Harris Hill Junior. We had tremendous advantages, being a university with an active Flight Research program and our own airport. That meant qualified CFIs, towpilots, and even mechanics. But, over the years, the university got out of the Flight Research business, they sold the airport, and the nearest glider operation was an hour away. After a few years, the membership was down to a handful of students, and those students rotate out every 4 years. Also, many recent graduates are challenged by finances, time, and frankly have other passions. So, imagine the difficulty at other colleges and universities that don't already have an active group of students naturally inclined toward aviation.

Soaring is a very quirky sport. If a person with as much energy and drive as John can't achieve critical mass in Collegiate Soaring over 10 years, it's not something that a couple of posts on RAS will change.

Erik Mann (P3)

..

On Sunday, November 6, 2016 at 8:56:43 PM UTC-7, Papa3 wrote:
Sean,

If nothing else, you are entertaining.

Busy with work this evening, but in a nutshell... The Collegiate Soaring Association has been around for 30 years. It is an affiliate of the SSA. It was founded by Dr. John Campbell in 1984 who was a post-doc at Princeton when I was an undergraduate. The two of us, along with several others, spent years working very hard to revive college-based soaring activity. John was incredibly passionate about the project, and spent countless hours promoting, cajoling, and driving this. We obtained 501 C3 status, we received a few donations, we even hosted competitions. I personally drove around to Penn State, Ohio State, RIT, and several others with John to conduct workshops, help with recruiting drives, etc. I drove the 1-36 which was donated around to several sites as a loaner to help drive activity.

Eventually, we were able to pull together a few Collegiate Championships, but in reality they were just a couple of juniors participating in existing SSA Regionals (I believe Sean Franke won one, though calling it an "MSU Championship" was really a stretch). John managed to pull a "local" competition together in Colorado due in large part to the presence of the Air Force Academy. When John tragically died way too young from brain cancer, the CSA really started to fade away.

In the end, it turned out that College Soaring clubs are very hard to maintain. As an example, the Princeton club was at one point one of the largest campus organizations, with over 70 members. It was started by Steve Sliwa, himself a Harris Hill Junior. We had tremendous advantages, being a university with an active Flight Research program and our own airport. That meant qualified CFIs, towpilots, and even mechanics. But, over the years, the university got out of the Flight Research business, they sold the airport, and the nearest glider operation was an hour away. After a few years, the membership was down to a handful of students, and those students rotate out every 4 years. Also, many recent graduates are challenged by finances, time, and frankly have other passions. So, imagine the difficulty at other colleges and universities that don't already have an active group of students naturally inclined toward aviation.

Soaring is a very quirky sport. If a person with as much energy and drive as John can't achieve critical mass in Collegiate Soaring over 10 years, it's not something that a couple of posts on RAS will change.

Erik Mann (P3)

.

Thanks for sharing. Didn't John have a Phoebus C at one time? I believe we had dinner in Chester many, many years ago while we were at a regional. Yes, he was extremely supportive of youth in soaring.

Best. Tom #711.

At 03:56 07 November 2016, Papa3 wrote:
Sean,=20

If nothing else, you are entertaining. =20

Busy with work this evening, but in a nutshell... The Collegiate
Soaring
A=
ssociation has been around for 30 years. It is an affiliate of the
SSA.
=
It was founded by Dr. John Campbell in 1984 who was a post-doc
at
Princeton=
when I was an undergraduate. The two of us, along with several
others,
sp=
ent years working very hard to revive college-based soaring
activity.
Joh=
n was incredibly passionate about the project, and spent
countless hours
pr=
omoting, cajoling, and driving this. We obtained 501 C3 status,
we
receiv=
ed a few donations, we even hosted competitions. I personally
drove
aroun=
d to Penn State, Ohio State, RIT, and several others with John to
conduct
=
workshops, help with recruiting drives, etc. I drove the 1-36
which was
=
donated around to several sites as a loaner to help drive activity.

Eventually, we were able to pull together a few Collegiate
Championships,
=
but in reality they were just a couple of juniors participating in
existing=
SSA Regionals (I believe Sean Franke won one, though calling it
an "MSU
Ch=
ampionship" was really a stretch). John managed to pull a "local"
competi=
tion together in Colorado due in large part to the presence of the
Air
Forc=
e Academy. When John tragically died way too young from brain
cancer,
th=
e CSA really started to fade away.=20

In the end, it turned out that College Soaring clubs are very hard
to
maint=
ain. As an example, the Princeton club was at one point one of the
largest
=
campus organizations, with over 70 members. It was started by
Steve Sliwa,
=
himself a Harris Hill Junior. We had tremendous advantages,
being a
unive=
rsity with an active Flight Research program and our own airport.
That
mea=
nt qualified CFIs, towpilots, and even mechanics. But, over the
years,
th=
e university got out of the Flight Research business, they sold the
airport=
, and the nearest glider operation was an hour away. After a few
years,
th=
e membership was down to a handful of students, and those
students rotate
o=
ut every 4 years. Also, many recent graduates are challenged by
finances,
=
time, and frankly have other passions. So, imagine the difficulty
at
othe=
r colleges and universities that don't already have an active group
of
stud=
ents naturally inclined toward aviation.=20

Soaring is a very quirky sport. If a person with as much energy
and drive
=
as John can't achieve critical mass in Collegiate Soaring over 10
years,
i=
t's not something that a couple of posts on RAS will change. =20

Erik Mann (P3)


I was the SSA Youth Education Chair before John Campbell, and
wrestled with the same issues. College soaring goes back to the
1930's with the MIT and Michigan clubs. The biggest problem is
that we soar in the summer when the college students go home to
other places. In spring when we start up, they are studying for
finals. The timelines just aren't conducive to making it work
reliably.

The collegiate soaring thing has gone up and down over the years.
Back in 1971, Pete Silvaggio at Cornell tried to start a collegiate
soaring association. He even organized a contest at Harris Hill
(which I won) that summer. I think we had competitors there from
maybe 4 schools.

My old alma mater (RPI) even designed and built an ultralight glider
as an exercise in design and composite construction. Dr. Francis
Bundy even test flew it up in Schenectady (I believe), but it never
went much further than that. The students were able to work on
the construction over the winter school year part time, but during
the soaring season, they were gone. I think that there were also
insurance issues with flying that glider as well.....

Money is also an issue because most college students don't have
much extra to spend with already having to pay for college, etc..

College soaring sounds like a great idea, and it has been tried many
times. The only consistently successful operation is at the USAF
Academy where the students stay there and fly over the summer as
opposed to going back home like most college student do. The
flying is also free for them, as it is part of the overall USAFA
program.

RO

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'
George Santayana

I like new ideas and without trying to grow I agree we will shrink - just need to be smart/calculating - not all disruptive ideas and Chaos end well or get the desired results.

A Soaring Film is in contention for a Emmy...... Excellent exposure. and a gliders has been in 2 major movies in the past few years - also great exposure. All good all positive and it took no volunteer resources, which are limited.

The hard part is how to best use our limited volunteer resources (until the US Government hands SSA a truck load of cash, just JOKING). Also how to nurture new ideas and help guide them with out seeming like all ideas are old and bad.

You never know what will catch a new glider pilot's eye (like that Disney movie that caught my eye when I was 13) or the person who flew at 14 take and few years off (like 30) and hope to be a pilot for a few decades, and can support the sport and has some time to volunteer a little.

my 2.5 cents.

WH