Does your Club need more Gen X & Gen Y members?

[davidmorr]

This data is flawed in my opinion - it depends where and how it was gathered.... If it is only collected from clubs it is biased as it will not show true ages of all who bushwalk. It may lead to some huge errors in your conclusions if it is relied on too heavily.

Firstly, did you even read the report that Bush_Walker got the figures from? It was linked from the same posting.

Had you done so, you would have seen that the report was done by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, an organisation not known for using flawed figures. It was produced by interviewing a large number (>32000) of randomly-selected Australians and asking them a series of questions.

You would also have seen that it was a report on "PARTICIPATION IN SPORT AND PHYSICAL RECREATION in Australia", so not at all focussed on bushwalking.

You would also have seen that clubs were not involved at all. And when it says "organised" that does not necessarily mean bushwalking clubs either. Commercial operations would also be included, as would walking organised by health or other groups.

So on what basis are you calling the data flawed?

[Liamy77]

Exactly that: this data as a broad generalisation and should not be used to infer relevance to specific isolated activities such as bush walking popularity / particip[ation and is therefore kinda irrelevant .... IMO

the figures are just figures.... their use and appropriateness for this particular application in the individual situation is what I considered flawed portion....

[Bush Walker]

There is a new thread to help us get some more information about Forum members and perhaps put our discussions in context.

POLL: Your Age Range and Years of Club Membership.

You don't need to give your exact age and can vote anonymously, so give it a go!

[Gusto]

I am Gen Y and I am not in a bushwalking club.

With information so readily at hand from websites and forums such as this one there is little more that can be gained from having a formalised club. Clubs do only really offer a social benefit as they connect you with people that you can walk with. But for many people, they aren't actually interested in having to make many new friends from within a club. All many people want is to try something new with their current mates or their mates of mates etc. This can be more easily done these days as knowledge is more easily obtained.


If a bushwalking club did want to target a younger demographic then I'd suggest they try to target some of the current Clubs in Unis and try to offer somthing for their graduates to follow on with. I doubt much would come of it as graduates are usually very busy with then new jobs etc. But you never know until you try it.

[Gusto]

I may be repeating what has already been said. But it would make sense for clubs who want an online presence to request there be an enitire section in this forum just for their club. I see that as an efficient use of resources. Saves a club from having to create it's own website for a forum etc. and doesn't require the same level of commitment as facebookas does of it's members.

[Bush Walker]

I may be repeating what has already been said. But it would make sense for clubs who want an online presence to request there be an enitire section in this forum just for their club. I see that as an efficient use of resources. Saves a club from having to create it's own website for a forum etc. and doesn't require the same level of commitment as facebookas does of it's members.

Yes a Forum does require a much lower level of commitment and is certainly better than nothing, but they don't offer as many options as a website , MeetUp , Google + or Facebook.

Son of a Beach has previously offered private Forums within Bushwalk Australia for any Clubs who want one

[Bush Walker]

Thanks Gusto

If a bushwalking club did want to target a younger demographic then I'd suggest they try to target some of the current Clubs in Unis and try to offer something for their graduates to follow on with. I doubt much would come of it as graduates are usually very busy with then new jobs etc. But you never know until you try it.

Yes its a good idea to target those exiting from Uni bushwalking Clubs. Some have suggested that a similar close liaison with Scouts would work.

[Son of a Beach]

I may be repeating what has already been said. But it would make sense for clubs who want an online presence to request there be an enitire section in this forum just for their club. I see that as an efficient use of resources. Saves a club from having to create it's own website for a forum etc. and doesn't require the same level of commitment as facebookas does of it's members.

Yes a Forum does require a much lower level of commitment and is certainly better than nothing, but they don't offer as many options as a website , MeetUp , Google + or Facebook.

Son of a Beach has previously offered private Forums within Bushwalk Australia for any Clubs who want one

It's true that bushwalk.com certainly does not offer anywhere near the same level of features that those huge 'social networking' sites offer. However, most of the functionality that many clubs would require is here.

If you combined bushwalk.com's groups, private forums, meetup tool and RSS/Atom feeds, you'd have a fairly good online system to suit many groups' needs. There are already two groups at bushwalk.com who control their own group membership, have their own private forum, and at least some of the group members use RSS/Atom feeds to automatically receive notifications from their private forum, and I think people in one of the groups uses the bushwalk.com meetup tool.

I don't expect this to meet every groups needs, but just wanted to point out that some groups may find this combination of tools to be quite useful.

(I don't know anything about the other "meetup" site that people have mentioned, but should go and check it out some time).

[Bush Walker]

If you combined bushwalk.com's groups, private forums, meetup tool and RSS/Atom feeds, you'd have a fairly good online system to suit many groups' needs. There are already two groups at bushwalk.com who control their own group membership, have their own private forum, and at least some of the group members use RSS/Atom feeds to automatically receive notifications from their private forum, and I think people in one of the groups uses the bushwalk.com meetup tool.

It's good to hear some social media suggestions for those who want to organise a bushwalking activity but don't have time to meet physically.