Big Footbag Ideas

[boyle]

What is something you would like to see happen in footbag? Maybe you are working on a certain project or need someone to collaborate with. Maybe you have some idea to ride the wave of this current hack circle momentum or spread the sport further around the world.

[g]

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic..

But most of my ideas/plans simplify to improving the unification of the footbag community, and engaging better with the newer generation of players.

I think IFPA linking to Modified and endorsing it as the main forum for the footbag community is a great start. I think we should have a news + blog platform thats a collaboration with IFPA and other members of the community that people can subscribe to keep up with whats going on in the world of footbag, and the regular email notifications will also help keep people engaged with footbag. Perhaps reviving the modified blog site and make it more of a collaborative effort with IFPA and other members of the community. Then I think the community should agree on some chat app for chat style communication and encouraging everyone to join there. (I'd probably suggest discord)

Then I think we should work on providing tools to help with the issues that newer players are facing. Such as how to find a good footbag, finding good shoes, guides for learning new tricks, and how to find a group of people to play with.

I made this page to try to answer the question about where to get a good footbag.
https://newyorkfootbag.com/#stitchers

I am planning on making a web/mobile app to help players find people to play with, hopefully in the next month or two.

[boyle]

I think the challenge across the board in regards to that idea of unification is that most of the hotspots for people to go to are things they use for something else (Instagram, Facebook you are probably just using for day to day social interactions) some people, quite reasonably don't want anything to do with some of these mega corporations.

Lots of people use Discord for gaming etc but for someone like me who doesn't I don't really like the format. It also has the same small crew (somewhat overlapping with here) who are posting to that small audience. I hadn't actually thought of it in a year or so and there were not that many new posts.

I like the idea of the interactive map/app - I have had an extra thought in recent days and maybe something could be done to build more interactions between chinlone/takraw/jianzi/freestyle football players and make a "Kickers Map" that has things like regular sessions, places where important tournaments have been and classic kicking locations.

I am a bit intrigued to see where the Hacky Sack brand involvement goes. They have already shown they can get footbag on TV but I don't really think they went about that so well considering that there was access to a big venue etc.

I would really like to see footbag involvement in festivals.



I know the Danish crew used to do a lot at Roskilde and even back here the day here in Australia we had footbag as part of the Homebake festival and then the Big Day Out (there were literally competing footbag providers).

I set up this tour through Europe some years ago - https://sportslashlife.com/sportlife-eu ... ur-videos/

It would be cool if others did some sort of mix of school visits, competitions etc.



World Footbag recently put up a post about how they used to do two man tours back in the day.

https://www.facebook.com/WorldFootbag/p ... HHjqkKVKDl

I put in a simple response to the post.

Do it again.

I would really like to see some of the footbag companies build on this wave of hacky sack getting into schools etc.

I've personally been doing some short lessons on footbag in our PE sessions in school and did a demonstration at our assembly the other day that went quite well. I've been thinking how I could expand this into other schools etc and I might look into that in the coming years.

[g]

Ohh interesting ideas about the tours and PE sessions!

So a good alternative to discord is Matrix chat, which is open source, we can self host it, I could set one up in an evening, and the data wouldn't be owned by discord. But the friction for users to adopt discord is a bit lower because many people already use it, especially the younger crowd. But it would be great to get the community to agree on a plan, and then make some moves! I think the existing discord kind of died out because we need to keep putting energy into it and funnel new people there. If we get everyone on board with some solution for chat then actively endorse it we can build a great place for footbag chat. (Which I think is synergistic with forum style discussion)

[g]

Another project that I'm working on is https://paneler.app/
It's an open source project for designing footbags.
Contributions are always welcome!

[Nathan8]

I think most players who spend many years in the sport gravitate towards one or two big ideas. The promotion/online community chat is a big one. It's an absolutely important one, but not the one I've ever been particularly drawn to.

To me it's the rules and structure of freestyle competition. I find it very interesting how rules are written, definitions are written and communicated, and how different competitions and events are structured. I've been competing in freestyle events for over 10 years now, and I've even had the opportunity to be a judge in many instances. This year at worlds, and anytime I see the opportunity, I join in the judges meeting before events or judges deliberations afterwards. I've been trying to soak up all the info I can about freestyle rules and judging because one day - my big footbag idea is to clean up the rules of freestyle competition and unify the sport around a set of rules and judging practices for freestyle competition. I think the definition of our world champion has become fuzzy and our players who put in a lot of time preparing for competitions and are being disserved by unclear/inconsistent judging.

I want to be super clear about one thing - do not for one second take my words as criticisms towards the current or past directors of rules, competitions, or judging. They have done their absolute best work for entirely not enough pay, and for that we are all grateful. They probably have said the same things I'm writing here.

I guess the most likely way for me to take action on this would be to become the freestyle rules director one day. But until them, I am going to keep learning everything I can behind the scenes.

[boyle]

This is something that Mikko has been working on in the background for a year or two and I think it's absolutely right. That clarity is really important and also the enforcement. I think the written circle contest rules and what actually happens in a circle contest is a great example of that.

[Derek]

Still think Discord is one of the best middle grounds for Footbag. Facebook being the largest collective is such a disgrace. The main issue is the lack of utilizing bots and things that make discord so dang useful. As well as general weird organization, since when it was established Kemmer and myself seemingly had little knowledge on building a useful server. Right now it looks like data entry vomit and has a poor ‘introduction phase’. I’ve been playing around with making a new one (which could easily be implemented in the one we have now), and have been waiting for the new .org to drop to make it more public. It could also easily act as a lite tournament info notification/live update for players at tournaments. Know a few niche sports that use it as such, or in tandem with other apps since it’s easy to set up/link. The paywall access for boosts is a limiting factor, though. With enough boosts you can post 3-5 minute clips directly to the discord. Whereas now I think it’s capped at like 10-15s. Don’t know anything about issues backing up or keeping the data.

Will have to look into this Matrix chat thing, as that sounds intriguing.

Interested in the idea of .org and fizzied being more directly linked up, as that’s essentially what I would wanna do with discord. Very grateful for G stepping up so much and getting modified back in action, but I can’t help notice how clunky and dated it is. Other than the sheer amount posts/info that’s been established over the years, think a lot of the connection to fizzied is nostalgia. Doesn’t help that a lot of peeps that get into Footbag are fairly neurodivergent and very resistant to new and different. Though, I wouldn’t doubt with time G-money could fix all that if it’s not too cumbersome (dude’s becoming the GOAT).

[boyle]

I think another part of the idea of forums is just not being linked to any algorithm - it just shows you what got posted in a chronological order.

Back on the judging - a good way step to fix this would have a head judge for Worlds - maybe they get there flights paid or actually get paid and they do everything to do with judging - get more judges, set up the expectations for rules before and during the event. That saves the event director to simply run the event. This event is on at this time, thanks to the head judge we have enough judges.

In terms of the various threads I am thinking of archiving some areas but I'm just going to leave it as is for the moment.