Get to know the Orienteering Elite!

Who is this Alexey Bortnik who did several very good runs in the Mediterranean Open Champs two weeks ago? I wondered about this when I read the results two weeks ago, and now I know more: A Russian fast running and talking upcoming man, aiming for the Top 10 in the WOC in Ukraine this August. If you look at the 10 minute Spring Cup report below, you get to know Alexey better – as well as David Andersson, Matthias, Merz, Holger Hott Johansen and several more. It is really different to see and hear a person than to read his thoughts in a blog entry. – and I hope and think we will see a lot more of this the coming year with woO-TV. This way the orienteering sport can build their profiles, sponsors can get their visibility – and people within the orienteering sport can in the longer run hopefully themselves produce some content which can make it up into the “real” TV channels

Amateur content
This is clearly amateur content – not at all to be compared with productions like the one at WOC 2006. However, I think that this type of content from many of the major competitions would become very popular among viewers, and help getting to know the orienteering elite better – and also positive for sponsors, even if it is very clear that this is amateur content from the way the filming is done etc. My first experience with a video camera was about a month ago – so I hope to improve. And the sound is muffled due to a problem I had in the conversion process, but these kind of problems will be solved in the future.

It is, as I see it, however no problem that the filming is not perfect as long as the story told is interesting, and one gets to know the people who are important in international orienteering. So all of you out there: Start generating interesting content! Elite runners: Start making interviews with each other when you are at a training camp and submit it to woO-TV. I am sure this will increase your possibilities to get sponsors in the long run!

More to come
In addition to the Spring Cup video shown here, I have also material for several interviews and a short documentary about the TracTrac system which I will publish the coming month.

Spring Cup 2007 report
I would recommend to use the Veoh player application on your PC for viewing this, giving you much increased viewing experience as you can then view in full screen with a much better picture quality. But still – viewing it in the browser is also possible. Enjoy!

(29/3/07 0800: Veoh is currently down for maintenance – woO-TV won’t work now)

You can also easily embed this video or any other videos at woO-TV in your web page. Click the video above, and you get to the video page, where you press the “Share” button to get a few lines of html code which you simply paste into your webpage. If you have problems with how to do this, just send me an email at jan@kocbach.net, and I’ll guide you.

A small note about advertising
As you know, nothing is for free – so there might be advertising included by Veoh in conjunction with videos shown at woO-TV in the future. According to the Veoh blog: – We will be experimenting with all kinds of ad units (Pre-roll, Post-roll, Mid-roll, Overlays, Curtains). The future will tell, but this is nevertheless an excellent opportunity for the orienteering sport!