Mid Europe quick access to trips

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76_overlander

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Hi guys!

So my idea is to have a list of those thumbnails so people visualize where and when it happens without having to deal with rally points or struggle to find the original posts in the forum. Maybe it helps them to say "oh this is happening / oh people are driving long distances to visit such places, we are not that far away, we could meet them there". Just a test. So it's not super accurate, just like a visual title of a chapter and if you want more maybe you post a message or read the forum.

Then of course this first quick try is related to trips happening in Mid Europe, so why do i post this in Europe? Because the point is of course to emulate everyone to bond and attend meetings. Things happening in any region of Europe should be posted in Europe section : i mean the final mapping of Europe is great and useful but from my experience, those sub-forums can also have a dark side : some of us will stick to their region when posting and/or reading whereas we should all have an eye on what is happening :)

Organizer : @76_overlander


Organizer : @Robert OB 33/48


Organizer : @Robert OB 33/48


Organizer : @viveen4wd


Organizer : @Robert OB 33/48


Organizer : @Empe Overland
 
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76_overlander

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Yeah I like the idea
I’d like to know if any trips are on I could tag on to, not knowing anyone else in the ‘overland’ world
All the info i crunched to create these thumbnails are public and posted on OB forum so i think (hope) most members did post informations so others know where and when they travel, and could meet other members so i think if something looks interesting you should not hesitate to contact the people you see in the lists. I'll edit my first post and credit organizers.
 
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76_overlander

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I think we could/should keep first post always updated, getting rid of past events and adding new ones, and it should list all event for the whole Europe. A simple where, when, who, very effective, and would break the mental boundaries some have.
 
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76_overlander

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Well that was kind of a "sociological" test. And statistics tell me it is not working. 73 persons came here to read, that is not "that" bad as we have roughly 230 registered members in the Europe Region so if you eliminate those who never use the forum and those who left the building... Only 2 people left a message. On those 2 people only 1 was reacting to the "idea". I'd count 3 using the "like" system. Note to myself : comfort zone still intact / keeping on prioritizing posting in main Europe region rather than in sub forums :tearsofjoy:
 

Constantin

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Hi guys!

So my idea is to have a list of those thumbnails so people visualize where and when it happens without having to deal with rally points or struggle to find the original posts in the forum. Maybe it helps them to say "oh this is happening / oh people are driving long distances to visit such places, we are not that far away, we could meet them there". Just a test. So it's not super accurate, just like a visual title of a chapter and if you want more maybe you post a message or read the forum.

Then of course this first quick try is related to trips happening in Mid Europe, so why do i post this in Europe? Because the point is of course to emulate everyone to bond and attend meetings. Things happening in any region of Europe should be posted in Europe section : i mean the final mapping of Europe is great and useful but from my experience, those sub-forums can also have a dark side : some of us will stick to their region when posting and/or reading whereas we should all have an eye on what is happening [emoji4]

Organizer : @76_overlander


Organizer : @Robert OB 33/48


Organizer : @Robert OB 33/48


Organizer : @viveen4wd


Organizer : @Robert OB 33/48


Organizer : @Empe Overland
That‘s a good idea. It would be a nice source of what‘s going on and where to join. Because that’s also what I’m interested for. But I must confess, I did not fully understand how these entries can be made, where they would appear and where exactly they can be read. Are they collected under one topic or do they appear one by one?
Greetings from Nuremberg!
 
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76_overlander

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Hey @Constantin thanks for your input.

Those can not be generated automatically : i went on the forum and looked at the posts talking of trips, i gathered the basic informations, making sure to have the most up to date details and located the trips on a map and added a quick brief. Then i would create this post and ask people if they can find interest in this. It takes 10 minutes to create any "view" so i can do the work but if nobody thinks it's useful, i won't :) I know there are the rally points, but the idea was to be able to see what was going on in the area in 10 seconds.
 
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Polaris Overland

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Rally point should be the preferred section for listing trips.
These can be shared then to Facebook and thus resolves the issue of having to post trips in different forums etc.
A lot of thought and time was spent getting rally point and the forums set up and this is the automatic location members should be looking for events.
The thumbnail map photos can get used as the rally point photo.
 

Polaris Overland

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The attached helps with how to set up a new meet.
Hopefully it will help you to get the best out of Overlandbound and assist with some ideas.
Summary below

STARTING A RECURRING OLB MEET-UP
If this is a one-time meet-up, and the location and time is known, go directly to Creation of a Rally Point.
TO GAUGE INTEREST IN YOUR AREA

Figure out the geographical center of your target area. This is the area you want to send a message to in order to gauge interest in a meet-up and the area you’ll base your Rally Point on.

Using the member map on the Forum, filter out everything with the exception of members. Then, using the zone feature, create a circle and expand it till you reach the desired amount of member invites. Members have different invite limits so this is where the ambassador can help.
At the top right hand side of the map there is an icon to create a message. Use this to bring up the message page.
The message will already have the invites attached so all you need to do is type in a title and the body of the message.

Sample;
“Who wants to meet-up in City or location? Get together with like-minded people to talk about our sport of overlanding. Our meet-ups can include the following;
1. Rig walk-arounds - learn about different vehicles and various equipment carried.
2. Education component - either a presentation or actual hands on learning such as tire repair, recovery, winching, and so on.
3. Trail runs with a concentration on Comms/Nav training and practice. Trying to get everyone very proficient with both. Promote the use of Ham and/or GMRS in the Overland Bound West Region per the OLB Comms standard.
4. Have the meet-up on the same day and time of the month so people can plan on attending in advance.

Remember all meet-ups are different it depends on the members, so let's get together and discuss how to proceed.”

Once you send this message, just wait for replies and analyse them to figure out if you want to proceed and if so what day, time, location would work best. (Remember you can't please everyone.)

The location is critical to the success of a new meet-up. Make sure it’s a good place for a group meeting so you can have a good discussion and that there is plenty of room to park the number of rigs you expect to show up. Look at the meet-up page on the forum to see what other groups are doing. Don’t make the mistake of holding your meet-up in a grocery store parking lot on Saturday morning when people are doing their weekly shopping. Choose a location that will be mostly unused for other traffic during your meet-up day/time.

CREATION OF A RALLY POINT
Now you need to publish a Rally Point. First, watch Michael’s video about creating a Rally Point (Welcome to Rally Point! - Overland Bound). If you still need help, contact your ambassador.
Once the Rally Point is published you will receive email and forum responses.
You can post this Rally Point on the regional OLB Facebook page as a comment with a link directly to the Rally Point, but DO NOT create a Facebook event. You don’t want people giving their RSVP anywhere except on the Rally Point. Limit your comment to a link to the Rally Point and include a note to the effect “RSVPs will only be accepted on the Rally Point site.””

HOW TO SET UP A RALLY POINT
Go to the forum and click on the rally point, then create an event.
Picture - Add a picture that is 800 x 390 Something that represents what the event will be. A generic OLB picture can be provided. Pictures taken with a smartphone work well as far as sizing.
Title - Choose a title for the meet-up. Pick something that will be descriptive and catch people’s attention. Be sure to include your city & state - there is more than one “Bay Area” in the country. Example: “Meet-Up in (your city, your state) on mm/dd/yy”
Description of the event - Add text to include repeating the date, time, location. Add a brief description similar to this example: “We can meet each other and talk about setting up recurring meet-ups where we can discuss overlanding rigs and equipment, set up overlanding trips, etc.”

Additional rally point notes - You can input more specific details about the location. Include whether this will be an indoor meet-up (restaurant) or an outdoor meet-up (parking lot). Indicate whether there is food or drink available for purchase.
Real Name - Use your name here, not your forum name.. Phone number - Optional
Rally Point Location; This is a Google map feature. Type in the address; the meet-up location will be the center of the invite zone. Use the red bubble to narrow down the location. For example, if your meet-up will be in a mall parking lot, but the address you used is for a specific store, you’ll need to drag the red bubble away from the store and into the section of parking lot where you want to meet. If you have the exact GPS coordinates, you can input those instead of using a street address. This is useful if your meet-up is on a trail or out in a field.
Rally Point Details;
● Comms channels need to be added, identify types of comms and frequency or channel.
● Additional comms can be added such as Ham, GMRS, CB.
● Start date and time
● The repeat box is for a recurring event such as a monthly meet-up. Don’t add a repeat
until you’ve met with people and made a decision to hold recurring meet-ups
● Overland Bound Region pull down box; choose the region in which your meet-up will be
held.
● Add Admins.; optional, this makes it possible for additional people to edit the rally point.
● Number of rigs allowed: make sure the location can handle the number of rigs expected
● Pull down box for degree of difficulty
● Distance box: Requires a number, so for meet-ups put 1 mile.
● Miles or Kilometres: check appropriate
● Vehicle requirements: check all that pertain to the type of Rally Point you are publishing.
● Terrain type: check all that apply
● Tags:optional; can be added and will help advertising the event.
Map files - Files can be added in KML, GPX, PDF. Very helpful for the actual event.
Attendees - Enter RSVP limit here. Your regional ambassador can help you estimate this number.
Now it's time to generate invites. Drag the indicator to the right to populate the invite list. Remember invites are from the central rally point location. The member invite might be restricted to a certain amount, if this is a problem contact your regional ambassador for help. You can add individual members by typing @forum name.
Once you are done, agree to terms and publish.
 

Attachments

Constantin

Rank IV
Launch Member

Pathfinder III

1,234
Nuremberg, germany
First Name
Constantin
Last Name
Alecu
Member #

3769

The attached helps with how to set up a new meet.
Hopefully it will help you to get the best out of Overlandbound and assist with some ideas.
Summary below

STARTING A RECURRING OLB MEET-UP
If this is a one-time meet-up, and the location and time is known, go directly to Creation of a Rally Point.
TO GAUGE INTEREST IN YOUR AREA

Figure out the geographical center of your target area. This is the area you want to send a message to in order to gauge interest in a meet-up and the area you’ll base your Rally Point on.

Using the member map on the Forum, filter out everything with the exception of members. Then, using the zone feature, create a circle and expand it till you reach the desired amount of member invites. Members have different invite limits so this is where the ambassador can help.
At the top right hand side of the map there is an icon to create a message. Use this to bring up the message page.
The message will already have the invites attached so all you need to do is type in a title and the body of the message.

Sample;
“Who wants to meet-up in City or location? Get together with like-minded people to talk about our sport of overlanding. Our meet-ups can include the following;
1. Rig walk-arounds - learn about different vehicles and various equipment carried.
2. Education component - either a presentation or actual hands on learning such as tire repair, recovery, winching, and so on.
3. Trail runs with a concentration on Comms/Nav training and practice. Trying to get everyone very proficient with both. Promote the use of Ham and/or GMRS in the Overland Bound West Region per the OLB Comms standard.
4. Have the meet-up on the same day and time of the month so people can plan on attending in advance.

Remember all meet-ups are different it depends on the members, so let's get together and discuss how to proceed.”

Once you send this message, just wait for replies and analyse them to figure out if you want to proceed and if so what day, time, location would work best. (Remember you can't please everyone.)

The location is critical to the success of a new meet-up. Make sure it’s a good place for a group meeting so you can have a good discussion and that there is plenty of room to park the number of rigs you expect to show up. Look at the meet-up page on the forum to see what other groups are doing. Don’t make the mistake of holding your meet-up in a grocery store parking lot on Saturday morning when people are doing their weekly shopping. Choose a location that will be mostly unused for other traffic during your meet-up day/time.

CREATION OF A RALLY POINT
Now you need to publish a Rally Point. First, watch Michael’s video about creating a Rally Point (Welcome to Rally Point! - Overland Bound). If you still need help, contact your ambassador.
Once the Rally Point is published you will receive email and forum responses.
You can post this Rally Point on the regional OLB Facebook page as a comment with a link directly to the Rally Point, but DO NOT create a Facebook event. You don’t want people giving their RSVP anywhere except on the Rally Point. Limit your comment to a link to the Rally Point and include a note to the effect “RSVPs will only be accepted on the Rally Point site.””

HOW TO SET UP A RALLY POINT
Go to the forum and click on the rally point, then create an event.
Picture - Add a picture that is 800 x 390 Something that represents what the event will be. A generic OLB picture can be provided. Pictures taken with a smartphone work well as far as sizing.
Title - Choose a title for the meet-up. Pick something that will be descriptive and catch people’s attention. Be sure to include your city & state - there is more than one “Bay Area” in the country. Example: “Meet-Up in (your city, your state) on mm/dd/yy”
Description of the event - Add text to include repeating the date, time, location. Add a brief description similar to this example: “We can meet each other and talk about setting up recurring meet-ups where we can discuss overlanding rigs and equipment, set up overlanding trips, etc.”

Additional rally point notes - You can input more specific details about the location. Include whether this will be an indoor meet-up (restaurant) or an outdoor meet-up (parking lot). Indicate whether there is food or drink available for purchase.
Real Name - Use your name here, not your forum name.. Phone number - Optional
Rally Point Location; This is a Google map feature. Type in the address; the meet-up location will be the center of the invite zone. Use the red bubble to narrow down the location. For example, if your meet-up will be in a mall parking lot, but the address you used is for a specific store, you’ll need to drag the red bubble away from the store and into the section of parking lot where you want to meet. If you have the exact GPS coordinates, you can input those instead of using a street address. This is useful if your meet-up is on a trail or out in a field.
Rally Point Details;
● Comms channels need to be added, identify types of comms and frequency or channel.
● Additional comms can be added such as Ham, GMRS, CB.
● Start date and time
● The repeat box is for a recurring event such as a monthly meet-up. Don’t add a repeat
until you’ve met with people and made a decision to hold recurring meet-ups
● Overland Bound Region pull down box; choose the region in which your meet-up will be
held.
● Add Admins.; optional, this makes it possible for additional people to edit the rally point.
● Number of rigs allowed: make sure the location can handle the number of rigs expected
● Pull down box for degree of difficulty
● Distance box: Requires a number, so for meet-ups put 1 mile.
● Miles or Kilometres: check appropriate
● Vehicle requirements: check all that pertain to the type of Rally Point you are publishing.
● Terrain type: check all that apply
● Tags:optional; can be added and will help advertising the event.
Map files - Files can be added in KML, GPX, PDF. Very helpful for the actual event.
Attendees - Enter RSVP limit here. Your regional ambassador can help you estimate this number.
Now it's time to generate invites. Drag the indicator to the right to populate the invite list. Remember invites are from the central rally point location. The member invite might be restricted to a certain amount, if this is a problem contact your regional ambassador for help. You can add individual members by typing @forum name.
Once you are done, agree to terms and publish.
hey, it's easier than expected [emoji6]
 
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Robert OB 33/48

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Dave,

I use Rally point all the time. And do you know how much responce I get from it? Like next to none.
If I had to depend on the info from the Rally points I wouldnt have done one single event since the introduction of the Rally points.
Why? I have no clue?
Could it be that we dont have our own Region to choose for?
Or that the UK has its own region and is shown in the Europe section? Double ads?
Or, or?

You tell me why? As I have done like at least 10 Rally points. And Lucky me, I did it on my FB page as well, otherwise I wouldnt have had no events.
And people dont know what RSVP means. Did you know that I found out by coincidence that you can click on it?
And how do you make a team?
And, If I like to make a Mid Europe event, I cant invite all the mid europe members. If I do an event near Calais, it will invite people from the UK, but not the people from for example Germany.
But they are the main people I like to invite.
So, maybe you should be able to invite people according to a region.

Anyway, from experience, it doesnt work as well as it does in the states.
And, this here wasnt a replacement for the Rally points, just an effort to get things rolling here in Mid Europe.
If we can get things rolling here, then we can help people with using the forum properly.
If nobody visits the forum, well, it wont be used properly.

So, sometimes you need to work with a workaround.
@76_overlander and some others including myself are very very busy to get things rolling. But it just doesnt work well on the forum.
One big reason!!!!! Language. We dont speak, write and read english as well as native speakers.
 

Polaris Overland

Ambassador, Europe
Moderator
Member
Member

Pioneer I

11,171
Newtonhill, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, UK
First Name
Dave
Last Name
Spinks
Member #

3057

Service Branch
Royal Navy Veteran
I understand what you are saying a Robert. However using the rally point share function shares to Facebook. Then anyone clicking on the link in Facebook is taken directly back to the rally point event where all information is available in one location.
The biggest issue is multiple posts for the same event in different media becomes difficult to follow and manage.
RSVP is actually French not English and is used to respond.
The UK region is being removed so there are no sub regions within regions to try and make searching your region threads easier.

The Rally Point point invite function is based on radius miles from the rally point location so a radius of 250 miles will automatically invite all members within that radius so yes a rally point in Calais will include invites to members in the UK and vice versa if the rally point was in the south of England.

We do have some members that do not use social media such as Facebook and only look on the forums. In the same way we have some members who use the likes of Facebook but very rarely visit the forums.

By utilising the rally point share function everyone can see the same information and respond in the same platform.
I simply add a request for all those attending to update the rally point accordingly.
 

Robert OB 33/48

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Well Dave, thank you.
Is there a FB page for Mid Europe made already?
That would be nice.

Like I said, I use Rally point and I hope that others will do as well.
 

76_overlander

Rank VI
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Influencer I

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Biarritz, France
First Name
Angus
Last Name
LastName
Member #

15823

Thanks Robert for pointing out that my idea was not to replace rally points or to create a parallel system : rally points are awesome and i love how it was thought and the result is amazing but, i see very few people (here) using them and wanted to give a general overview, because i still think people want to join groups during trips and don't even know how rally points work or where they can get updates, or even people planning trips but not creating rally points. I'll stick to the rally points with the FB page when needed (when the function is back as since the migration of the forum mac users are still trap in login loop bug...)
 
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