First off I've got to thank our outgoing P&I officer Jane, who some of you may know on this forum. She did a good job at trying to make the BCA look like something vaguely modern and had some really good ideas about reaching our membership. It's why I (Rostam Namaghi) stepped into the breach to try and carry on what she started so that we can create a national organisation that can really do something on behalf of the whole community.

So I need minions volunteers to help with the following projects:

Digital:
Website updates & Document checking
Writing Surveys & Collating Feedback
Demographic updates on our membership

Graphics:

Logos & Digital Stationary
creating a BCA Photo Library
Permissions and help for photographers
Filming (an ad campaign for British Caving!)

Media:
Interviews and requests
Social Media Posting
Print Advertising

Services:
Proof reading & Publication
Journal club & Surveys
BCA publishing

Hopefully over the coming months we can put a little more detail under these headings but if you feel like you can help or are interested then drop me a line at publications@british-caving.org.uk or pm me.

PS Feel free to comment with other ideas!

what is digital stationery?

nobrotson said:

what is digital stationery?

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Letterheads for pdfs, digital logos to out on documents, document templates etc.

Like stationery but for those computer things

Ah. I thought stationery was "Pauline's Pens" etc.

As regards a lot of this outreach stuff, there was a good debate on here about a year ago:

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=24442.25

Summed up here are my thoughts on it all, very well put by Peachey:

ian.p said:

even if getting that photo on Instagram is the most important thing for 90% of the population that's not the 90% we are interested in and its not the fraction of a percent we need to create a long term caving community.

I think it's important to remember that throughout cavings history it has always attracted outsiders - those that don't fit in anywhere else and aren't really that "cool". These are the people for whom caving will become the most important part of their life, these will be the life long devotees and these are the children who will use that lifeline to survive their adolescence if they are thrown it.

We need to have a much broader discussion then just how to use social media if we really want to improve our sport for young people.

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In terms of the video you were on about making to promote caving, I thought this video was really good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZLZetn0UmE&t=6s

Maybe spreading this video a bit more widely would be a nice start to the 'digital push'...

I enjoyed rereading that thread, it helped me realise that what I have in mind is different. I want to highlight the community aspect of caving - something I've not seen in many videos beyond that scene in the Hill Inn in the Longest Dive. The idea of this is that someone sees an activity that's fun, sees that there's a great community around it and is given a gentle pointer towards their most convenient group.

Saying they'll be a touch more tongue in cheek and light hearted will have some people already rolling their eyes.

Incidentally a lot of the 'strategy' around it I'm basing off the very large questionnaire the BCA did last year and haven't really used...

If you want to highlight the community aspect of british caving there are better ways than a video to do that I think. If you consider the climbing scene in the UK, I would say the a good digital representation of that is Jam Crack Podcast from Niall Grimes. He interviews different people from the UK's climbing scene and also gets climbing writers to tell their stories, read poems etc. Maybe something similar could also work for us? It's much lower tech than making videos and the fact it is a podcast means it can respond to changes in the scene and stay more relevant.

The thing about a project like that is you can't force it, there needs to be a genuine passion from those involved to make it otherwise it will be shit.

A podcast is also in the works Rob 

I'd say I have passion for an ad like that.

Also - thanks for the offers of help everyone who's been in touch so far!

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting you didn't have the passion, more commenting that me just prescribing it maybe isn't very helpful!

Thought I'd unashamed bump it 

nobrotson said:

If you want to highlight the community aspect of british caving there are better ways than a video to do that I think. If you consider the climbing scene in the UK, I would say the a good digital representation of that is Jam Crack Podcast from Niall Grimes. He interviews different people from the UK's climbing scene and also gets climbing writers to tell their stories, read poems etc. Maybe something similar could also work for us? It's much lower tech than making videos and the fact it is a podcast means it can respond to changes in the scene and stay more relevant.

The thing about a project like that is you can't force it, there needs to be a genuine passion from those involved to make it otherwise it will be shit.

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I've been slowly working on a podcast, but living abroad for a bit and Covid slowed it down significantly. In fact one my recorded episodes is actually with Rostam - although fear it may never see the light of day, or will need to be heavily censored!

A podcast would be ace

Ian Ball said:

A podcast would be ace

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I was hoping to build up a bit of a bank of interviews before starting to release them, but I may kick on and get the first 3 that I've got recorded published (not including Rostam's), and see what interest that gets, and try and get some more done.

A podcast would be a very good idea, it doesn't have to be regular, just as often as it needs to be.

Listening to the BCL Audio Archives is fascinating and inspirational. More of that would be excellent - a mixture of prominent historical and contemporary cavers telling their stories.

I was recently lamenting that there were no BCL audio interviews with John Beck and Ben Bentham, as they held answers to many questions I have about Derbyshire exploration, and I was only able to make the pilgrimage to visit John once in my time as a caver. It's important to document a lot of these people, and an podcast/interview is a very good way of doing it without giving the interviewee too much work to do. It's hard to convince a lot of people to write down what they're doing when they just want to crack on with doing it!

At the moment the BCL Audio Archives are looking for someone to take this forward and begin a new round of recordings to load onto the system.

If Josh W does have some recordings that would be great.  What we seemed to lack at present was someone with the interest to go out and find interestng people to interview.  I agree, it's a crying shame that we don't have anything from Doug Nash or John Beck on the system - they would have been brilliant.

If you are interested, please PM me and I can put you in touch with the right people.

Jenny, there is the recording of Doug that Eyam Museum made - might be worth asking them if the BCL could have a copy?

There's a recording of Doug Nash to go up on the BCL audio archives, thanks for raising the topic Jenny.

AR said:

Jenny, there is the recording of Doug that Eyam Museum made - might be worth asking them if the BCL could have a copy?

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OK, thanks.  We're onto it now and hope to have it on the Audio Archive website before too long as permission had been obtained for this back in 2016.