Degrees of separation

Many people will start an article/story with how wonderful hindsight is. However, the truth is, they are probably just telling you that they didn't know enough about something at the beginning before doing what they did. If I knew, for example, that I would be stood frozen in a hail storm with my hands welded by frost to a camera for 2 hours (having convinced someone else to do the same with me) and that the following evening would be spent hunched over a laptop learning more about editing and compressing video for the web than I ever cared to then, I suspect, I would have zipped my mouth closed many months ago when I had this "great idea".
The result (not some of the the match scores which have often equalled the bad weather) was actually quite impressive if I do say so myself and there are few clubs in the UK that can say they broadcast matches live on the Internet - but Biggleswade United is one of them.

It is frustrating that we did not reach 5000 members by Feb 08 but we may simply have had a target too high for such a club and project. What we have got is something to build on and all through the efforts of a few peoples spare time - the essence of what the project was always about.
We have had a match where the membership picked the team (though last minute unavailability meant 2 changes), we have a library of video matches, team profiles, wiki knowledge base, a new voting system ready to go and a large group of people involved in the club that weren't previously - now THAT is a solid foundation. There have been some frustrations voiced about the speed of the process but as I have often said, there are still far more positives than negatives.

We are preparing for the new season now and I think everything will be in place for a new board made up of members and existing committee. It will be a club like no other and the "hand over" season may prove to be a big plus for us.
myFC are showing some growing pains and, again on reflection, I wish we had separated ourselves more from the scheme in terms of ideology as they have always been very different. However, the tortoise and the hare may prove to be a useful parallel - we have the opportunity to be steadily developed and take time in bringing the mix together rather than the frenetic pace that could have occurred.

So I am pleased I do not have hindsight and, for the most part, will let the flame of blissful ignorance lead the way. It may be bitterly cold on occasion and it can, potentially, lead to some God awful decisions but life is supposed to be exciting not a numb wander into the heavily explored.

Match anyone?

It's a ... live!

As posted on the forum, we are going all out for the last big push for myBUFC and commencing LIVE broadcast of some home matches over the Internet.
There are one or two commercial issues to arrange but essentially all of the technical details have been sorted out.
[NERD ALERT] For those interested, we will have our TV grade camera (with aux microphones) linked by firewire to a PC laptop, edit suite is Wirecast which compresses and sends via wireless network and broadband to our Windows Media Server then out to you over the 40Mb line [/ END NERD ALERT]

It became obvious during the trials, email, forum and general feedback that there is no substitute for actually watching the team play. Therefore, with a bit of help from the club, I have dug deep and will be arranging scaffolding (or similar - to get the right camera angle), ensuring that the right equipment is available at the ground and doing some tests over the coming couple of weeks.

The monies paid by members to date is still unspent (until we go live) and awaits the decisions of the members on what and when it should be spent on.

All being well, we will be broadcasting 1 game in January and at least 2 in February. This will lead us up to the closing date at the end of February when the committee will decise how and if to proceed should we fall slightly short of the target.

Blimey time flies...

Off to Philadelphia for a long weekend so the press releases will go out on Tuesday but the membership will be choosing the team and tactics for the first time on December the 29th (London Colney).
Nick (BUFC manager) has just sent through the player profiles which will go online tomorrow and I have the last edits to do for the video footage which will be up ASAP.
It is then important to get as much match information up from now until the first selection date.
There is now a Wiki on the site so that everyone can join in with the input of information.
Following that, we are hoping for one other in January for the membership but we will see how it goes.
Had an interview with a reporter at the Wall Street journal which was good and it will be great to see how things go over the next few days.
See you after the Christmas shopping!

You pick the team - date to be announced soon

It's still difficult to know where to put updates on what's happening but I guess this is more "behind the scenes" type info so here is the best I have for this past week...
80/20 rule is dominating my match reports as the thing came together really quickly but the finer subtleties have taken a while to sort out. Just got player set-ups to do and its all finished.

myFootballClub have announced the takeover of Ebbsfleet United which is a great choice for them - a small progressive club with potential and a very agreeable board. Manager seems a little grey on issues to do with the team but I can understand that. I see one of the Kimble twins is the assistant there which is great - I used to see them play for Cambridge United many years ago in the Beck era.

All of this has focused us a little more and we still want to be the first team to let the members select the team online in the UK. For that reason, we are trying to line up a match where all sign-ups (paid and unpaid) will be able to join in with the decision making.
This won't affect the membership payments to date - it is all "ring fenced" - but will allow everyone to give it a go for free.
This will not only allow us to test things out for the future but to get a lot more exposure than we might otherwise have done.

One aspect that is clearly different between myfc and mybufc is that mybufc will be far more reliant on the efforts of members to have an input to the direction of the system as a whole.
I have to take my hat off to YorkFox, GlassEyes and Goal to name just a few who have all contributed an enormous amount so far for which we we are very grateful!

FaceBook, MPs, texting and voting...

Since the forum opened on the site, this blog has been sadly neglected. I never was one for diaries so it is quite an achievement to get this far!
To catch up..
Had photos done with our local MP, Alistair Birt, who is now a member (he paid privately and in full I should add and there is no indication it went through the office expenses!) and a true football fan. The video interview with him would have been perfect for the site had one of the team not decided to "moonie" in the background!
The story ran in a few publications which was great but one thing has become obvious - we need national coverage - BBC 5 Live, Talk Sport, National Papers and local TV are my next target to get the word out about the "social ownership" impact on football.

On to bigger things, myBUFC has been FaceBook-ed and there is now a group and application any FaceBook member can join and add to the page. Look up "mybufc" if you want to join and I'll see you there!

Match reports
Sometimes scores and detailed match reports are a little slow to get back to members and site visitirs SO... we are adding to the information one can get. I wrote a little application that allows someone to provide live reporting with the simplest use of a mobile phone.
Minute by minute text commentary, match stats and score will then be available whilst we all wait for the detailed reports to follow a day or so later.
Look out for the trial run this Saturday!

Player profiles
We are ploughing ahead with the team database which Chris and I hope to have available within a few days and will link to the match stats from above. It could also be the basis of scout reports in the future.

Voting
We need to encourage many of those who have subscribed to take part in this early stage so we are having some fun votes and will continue to feed team suggestions through to the management via the forums.

Right - just need another 4000 people now.

Forum open for business

Been in Milton Keynes all day but just checked through the forum and all seems fine. Come and join-in before the crowd finds out.
http://www.mybufc.com/ibb
Must work on that newsletter now...

Off the field catch up

Just spent 3 days with no Internet (in sunny Lancashire) which goes some way to explain the apparent lack of activity with myBUFC. However, lack of activity there isn't - we have the "Official Launch" of the project on Saturday and local MP Alistair Burt (a keen footballer himself) will be there to cut the most fantastic football cake I have ever seen.
We have a completed the certificate that everyone can print off and FINALLY, we are able to login to our own Forum again which WILL be open in the next 24 hours.
Sign-ups have slowed down so we really need a good push to get things re-catalysed.
A newsletter will be going out tonight (slightly delayed - how suprising) and another with the launch photos on Sunday. YorkFox reported an issue with Hotmail which we hope is sorted out for the next run.
Aside from that, we managed to gather a couple of highlights from the last match and have put the thumbnail up on the site.
The team lost at the weekend (including a red card) so we desperately need a win this saturday. Biggleswade Town are top of the league which is great to be honest but it really could/should be us.
More as it happens...