Events, ruffled feathers and my attitude towards longboarding.

So I've run/cobbled together quite a few events in the past (2 outlaws, 631 series, hogtoberfest, and numerous XSS things), and one thing I've noticed is you will ALWAYS ruffle some feathers, stand on someone's toes, piss someone off, find naysayers, call it what you will.

As far as I can tell from chatting to other event organisers, and indeed anyone who's run a session bigger than 10 skaters, someone always comes away with a grumble. I'm guilty of session grumbles, but now I know what it's like organising something big and feeling the heat of a number of grumbles all at once I'm doing my best to be positive and constructive instead of rashn-frahsn-mutter-mumble. If there's an issue, it can be addressed through positive feedback and politeness rather than passive-aggressive behaviour and snide remarks. The sport [longboarding] is growing, but there's definitely a few people out there who'd do well to remember it's roots - groups of friends skating for the love of skating, people just cruising because when it comes down to it, it's fun!

Event organising is a sliding scale of difficulty, and in a way as easy as you decide to make it. Make it financially easy, and someone will grumble about cost or profit or quality/value-for-money. Make it suit everyone ever and run it well and you will have a hugely difficult event to run, but no additional stress from people grumbling. Balance it - normally grumbles happen during/after an event. Can you better deal with problems before or after? You can do a lot to improve an event by advertising it accurately as well - Advertise widely and you need a more generic advert, and you will attract people who don't realise the hill is only 130m long and only really good for hard wheels, and thus get a grumble. Advertise carefully, with more info and you'll attract the right crowd to suit your event and you'll reduce niggles significantly.

To use my own event as an example, I tried too hard to do everything in a short period of time on an outlaw hill  this year, and, although the event was a success and everyone had fun, I didn't meet all the hype as the boardercross didn't go ahead, and the grom race didn't happen. The decision on the day was that placing ramps on the narrow path would lead to a lot of people being not happy/not racing (they were difficult obstacles for a majority of the turnout), and that the event would get shut down for blocking the path. Because of this, more experienced riders felt cheated out of part of the event.
The main issue I had here was I had to weigh up essentially total customer satisfaction levels at the end of the day: ramps, and 1/4 people race, with a higher risk of being busted, or everyone race, less chance of being busted, but have some of those riders complain.
Total satisfaction level puts (in general terms) everyone equal in value, so to simplify
scenario 1: 25% people @ 90% satisfaction + 75% people @50% satisfaction = 60/200 satisfaction
scenario 2: 90% people @ 90% satisfaction + 10% people @50% satisfaction = 131/200 satisfaction
This view is very utilitarian in it's application, see wikipedia for more info on it but then again I have a relatively utilitarian view towards longboarding: I try to put the what's best for longboarding first. Getting 20 odd riders who have never raced and have never ridden in big groups to go down a hill together all wearing helmets counts for a huge amount - stoking the next gen of riders and involving them in the scene in an organised and saftey conscious way outweighs the need to provide an event that can only test the skills of the top 5-10% of longboarders. Market-wise as well, there's more less experienced riders and a much bigger potential customer base. But I digress.

I believe someone said aim low, and you will lead a happy life achieving all your goals. It's true, but aiming low achieves very little in the grand scheme of things. Break boundaries, pioneer things, do more, innovate, and be nice, friendly and reasonable throughout throughout. Don't get disheartened if someone decides to get a hump about what you're doing - if you've been reasonable you have nothing to worry about.

Now go do an organise!