2022 skating announcement

Hello Bladers! This is the 2021 assessment and 2022 plan.

Despite covid19 derailing the opening of the skating season in March 2021, the year was still nice in regards to events and skaters attendance.

During 2021, feedback was also received from skaters that skated with us, emailed us, chatted with us or simple voiced their ideas around. In addition, some time was spent on reading about group organization from larger group skates out there in Europe and the US as well as professional sports entities.

Hopeful some things are now improved.

2022 Season

March 22 to November 30

Types of events that are planned to organize again:

• Bladers day (on a Sunday afternoon, perhaps in July since August may be too hot)
• Light up Toronto – Luminous Roll (luminous wheels only and no exceptions – October)
• Halloween – October if practical to organize.
• Endless blades (endless/rockin wizard frames type only – summer)
• Slalom events
• The usual trail skating activities in Toronto, GTA, Hamilton, Burlington, Mississauga, Milton and hopefully more

As usual the weekly event will continue, plus speedy hopes to be able to organize additional events during spring/summer days. Saturdays are considered and Fridays may become more active than Tuesdays due to skater availability as per survey responses.

New events planned to start:

• Nightshift: These events aim to exclusively gather LED/Luminous wheels skaters and will take place at night.
• Freetstyle games: Aimed to gather inline skaters on fixed locations for fun activities
• Marathons: Long distance group skate events.
• Speed skating: Form practice that can be used in any type of event to take place in school tracks
• Inline geocaching: Still in thoughts to figure out how to do it.
• Sweepstakes for sweet skates: May depend on sponsoring
• Ice blades: Bring your blades to the ICE

Organizing platforms

For 2022 some of the following organizing platforms may be used. However they are not planned to be used in 2023.

Kommunity remains in effect until the end of 2022. How much we will be using it, depends on the developers addressing my requests and solving reported problems. We may hold on until, fixes are done or not. It all depends on the developers. The platform has a lot of potential but also needs some improvements done for organizers to manage groups better and in this matter I have been reporting and recommending some changes to be done on the platform as well as features that should be implemented. If you are on kommunity, remain on it as it is still the default platform. No guests, skater invitation will remain upon skating with us first for intermediate and advanced skaters only.

Eventbrite: Will continue to be used for main events such has bladers day, halloween, luminous roll, United wizards, etc in order to try to reach more skaters that are not in any other Toronto bladers platform.

Strava private invitation group, exists and is complementary to the main organizing platform. But currently there are no big plans for it. If you are on kommunity, feel free to request strava invite. Only skating activity is allowed to be posted there and you must be part of kommunity to be on strava group.

Facebook group: Although there is a Facebook Toronto bladers group, the use of Facebook in 2021 to organize the bladers day, revealed itself a massive failure. 10000 skaters were contacted with paid ads. Rough numbers indicate that only 250 were interested in going, of which 180 said they would go. None actually showed up. This is not a surprise because the roller skater group has over 3000 members but on their events, but never seen with more than 30 skaters on an event.

New group platform

• In 2022, we will be using the meetup platform to help organize events.
• Kommunity members should NOT apply to join that platform unless we move completely to it because it is planned to be a secondary platform to complement kommunity and with the following goals:

• Find more competent and skilled skaters
• Temporary platform during 2022 until further assessment
• During 2022 there may be a migration from the users from one platform to the other. Decision will be made upon member usage results.

Other news

In order to improve and create more events that skaters like, forms and voting pools will be created where the inline skater will be able to give feedback about preferences and or ideas. It should be noted that the larger a group is, the harder will be to please everyone 100% of the time, but hopefully it will also help to diversify event types and hopefully have everyone have a moment with the thing they like most. Knowing the skaters preferences, equipment, and skill avoids creating an event that will have no one or 1 or 2 people.

Skater profiles will also be used based on skill, equipment and preferences, with the objective to create events where the skill and equipment will help creating activities best suited for the inline skater.

These forms and pools will be posted on events description and or emailed to the skater. Some will be emailed along other notices.

• Politics, activism, narcissism, flamboyance, drugs, bad behaviour, and poaching skaters: Zero tolerance.

Event guests

Due to skill and equipment requirements, surprise guests are not to be brought to the events unless the event states it. This has happened last year and although for most events there was no problem, there was two cases where the skaters felt out of place right away due to skill and equipment and talked to me about it. Both cases, never came back even tho they were invited to the group.

Note the organizing platform event description to see if guests are or not allowed and RSVP there and or notify an organizer and or host. At the time of this writing the Kommunity platform does not have a guest feature but it has been requested.

Waiver changes

Changes in this article are due to a few concerned skaters. In order to address their concerns these are the changes.

1. The guest participation was brought to my attention in regards to the waiver coverage.
2. In respect to age change, we have had younger skaters that skated with us or messaged me, that specifically asked me about meeting up with skaters of the same age as they are, as well as some older skaters found inappropriate skating and spending time with other skaters far to young for them. Other reasons included generation gap and not having things in common. Some confided their thoughts in private and others during events. All of them had little attendance during 2021.

The age number of 18 was initially established due to legal reasons and then bumped to the current number but may change in the future. This way, no one will be mislead.

Anyone in the group bellow the established change, is grandfathered. These changes do not intend to exclude anyone that is part of the group. For large annual events we may just stick with 18 for random skaters outside the groups.

1. Voluntary Participation 
      I hereby state, acknowledge and agree that:
      (a) I am at least 25 years of age
      (b) Any guests I bring, are my responsibility.
      (c) I am the legal guardian of any minors that may bring.
      (d) My participation and or guests I may bring to the event, in whole or in part, is completely voluntary and of our own free will.

Toronto Bladers chat

During 2021 the Toronto bladers chat was very active and while that is appreciated, it can also be overwhelming at times for some skaters, therefore a set of guidelines was put in place to alleviate the load of messages that we can produce. Please see the guidelines and when possible always address the person that posted a message, in private, unless the subject is of everyone’s interest. The idea is, to post publicly and receive feedback privately when the matter is not of general interest. (sale, trade, deal, question about someone stuff, etc)

In the future, the chat may just be for an organizing team and or the most active skaters.

Group membership changes

Keeping and maintaining a group, has costs, both in time and money and being part of an outdoors group means to be outdoors with the group therefore in order to justify time and money invested by the maintainers, organizers and or hosts, some adjustments started to be made at the end of 2021 and will remain during 2022.

In order to be part of the group, the skater is required to skate 3 times a year with the group. (Basically the main annual events such as bladers day, luminous roll, halloween, united wizards, etc.

Unused accounts, ghost skaters, dormant and or idle parked accounts are removed. 3 no shows (when a skater RSVP yes) and don’t show up will result in removal from the group for the season/year and depending on the case, permanent. (it is pointless to prepare and go to an event where 6 people rsvp but only 2 show up.

• Group and account maintenance

Rules and guidelines in effect

• Group and account maintenance

The chat will remain active until the end of 2022 to support the group events discussion and gps live share. The possibility of the chat becoming just for the most committed skaters, usual skaters and or organizers will be considered during 2022.

Meetup Rollerblading group

As it can be seen, in 2021 the group was not much used due to it’s ongoing problems. In 2022, not much is planned for this group for 2022, with the exception of bladers day, luminous roll, halloween, United wizards and perhaps a random unplanned fixed location skate event.

The group has been dead and neglected for over a decade. In 2019 Carlos organized a few events, then speedy picked up on it but it is not possible to manage a group with 600 accounts when speedy do not have permissions to do so and the only person that can do that, only logged in 1 time in 2021, after many attempts of mine to reach out to him. The rest can be read here:

• Reasons to move away from meetup Toronto rollerblade inline skater group

Covid19 protocols

Are to be followed within the Canadian rule of law and city bylaws. The rest is about individual responsibility, be respectful and mindful of others is expected and appreciated.

Social media

Share, like, subscribe and advertise, brings attention to the group and potential new skaters. Please consider helping out that way and advertise the group which will benefit you and everyone else.

• Instagram: https://twitter.com/torontobladers
• Twiiter: https://instagram.com//torontobladers
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC7Zj9qgcU8dHEmg8JyN0H9w/videos

GPS accounts

Anyone wanting one free account to use for your activities, message me and feel free to request one.

Requirements: Android platform only.

• https://torontobladers.ca/wiki/Hauk

Deals sales and trades

Personal items are always welcome to be advertised in the group. Post your message publicly in the organizing platforms, chat, forum, wall, etc and address the interested person in private. Once the deal is done, please remove the advertised message in order to maintain the communication light, clean and avoid others to go looking for something that is not available anymore.

Store publicity and advertisement

Over the years we have all met skaters that have used different local stores for their skating needs and many have have good and bad experiences in both stores. Feel free to recommend a store or product another skater, use the store merchandising and talk about your experiences but we would like to kindly ask to do it outside of the Toronto Bladers platforms (chat, wiki, platforms, social media, etc) in order to keep the group neutral towards these business and avoid ongoing politics and store rivalries.

During 2021, a few things were brought to attention:

• One person joined us with the intention to bring business to a local store and not to skate with us.
• One store manager said that a competitor store tried to literally poach/steal one employee skater from their store to go work for the competitor. (Some of us know who are these stores and skaters and have skated with them)
• We have skaters that had issues with both stores, service and or products.

Therefore, being neutral in these rivalries seems the best course of action at the moment. In addition, looking to see if someone would advertise or sponsor us has been tried, and so far no replies to such request. Should we ever get some sort of sponsoring, this position will be reviewed. All sponsor achievements will be used towards maintaining the group costs and activities.

2021 Recap

• Kommunity group grew with more active and skilled skaters
• We found more skilled skaters to join us
• We had skaters around the GTA and beyond, that joined us.
• Events organized on kommunity had more attendance than any other year on meetup rollerblading group.

• At a given moment, the bladers day 2021 counted with 29 skaters which made it the biggest attendance that we had so far.

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• The luminous event had 10 skaters and all skaters using luminous wheels in October. This was a first for this number of skaters at this time of the year. This was a success above expectations.

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2021 videos

• Published videos here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1fOo48rLAaY&list=PL3UTpe1MupSX8Ox_A6yOmZ_or5GENxmq5

You made it happen! Thank you!

This was the first year of using kommunity as an organizing platform which was more successful than any other year on the Toronto rollerblade inline skater group.