Ringo**I wrote this at the end of December 2020 and never got around to posting it till now. Since then some conversations have happened that make me rethink whether I would want to take on these, particularly other people launching or revising projects to cover some or all of the goals outlined below. Still I wanted to post it as a discussion piece and also as an example of where my head has been at recently**
I’m very interested in building a better bohurt scene domestically. I am less interested in building a better international scene as in alot of ways that already seems to be in hand and also it is not something I am in a good position to do. However in North America, particularly in the North East US I have a strong voice and the ability affect change. So in the interest of that I have some projects I’m going to propose and if I can get some support, start to build. The first is a site dedicated to listing all events, both domestically and international, and where to watch them. The second is a website dedicated to collecting every steel fighting video in one place or at least links to all the videos in one place. The third is a league/fighter tracker system for North America. I will also likely try to sponsor a set of prizes for the ACS chapter wars Summer Season, need to look into the legality of that as I probably cant just put money up as a prize. My final project is far more ambitious and probably not feasible. Something I’ve been talking about for awhile. Start an organization for Referee certification here in America. It would be separate from either HMB certification or IMCF if/when that happens. Ideally to me, this would be something the AMCF would handle but that doesn’t seem to be one the goals of the org and therefore their energies are directed elsewhere.
Making these projects come to life, particular in one year, is beyond ambitious. It’s straight up impossible. But that’s ok. No single project is the goal, they are easily tracked actions that achieve the goal. The true goal is a thriving North America Bohurt Scene that does not rely on overseas travel and provides fighting for all levels that match the demand. A sport that feels authentic, fun, and is as devoid of bullshit as is possible for any sport to be. I want to give a short high level plan to achieve this goal via these projects here. My hope is that this will gather some interest and people looking for a way to contribute will step up to volunteer to help, whether with time, money, supplies, expertise, whatever.
NOTE WHEN I WROTE THIS IT WAS PRIOR TO A CONVERSATION IN THE ACS FACEBOOK GROUP THAT COVERED THIS TOPIC. The ACS calendar appears to trying to solve all these issues.
The Armored Combat Sports website was once close to the calendar I’d like to see but recently has seen fewer updates, likely due to covid. Further while it was somewhat league agnostic it never hosted ACW events or a few other things. It is my hope that this website will list events of every type and league, including perhaps HEMA harnisfecthen. If this turns out to work I would even love to see it grow to be a calendar of all sword based activities in North America. However Larp, SCA, and HEMA all have decent version of this at the moment.
Pulling this off shouldn’t be too hard, and doesn’t actually require buy in from organizers though that would certainly help. Instead a simple word press or other WYSIWYG website, with a calendar as the basic. Front page will contain a single post with a list of the events coming up in the next 30 days, plus event from the past 7 days. Each event will be a link to a separate post about that event with all known information, including streaming links, FB event link, registration, ruleset, location, whos running it, etc. Getting that information as a single person would be hard, but a group of 3-10 individuals actively patrolling facebook groups and any other online space should be able to collect information on every domestic event easily. The site could also have a event submission form, so anyone following it could submit details to an event. As long as a moderator checks the site every 3 days or so to approve events or add information to already posted events, or reject duplicates, the total man hours per week would probably be less than 5 and if spread out, could be less than 1 hour per person per week, to maintain a simple, easy to use resource.
The second is a bit harder. I don’t really know what I want the indexing system to look like, but ideally a place for people to post and discuss fights. The back end should include a tagging system allowing to highlight videos by type, league, country/team, and perhaps more flavor things like 1 shot drop. There should also be a search fucntion and both these are beyond my basic programming ability. Luckily there are definitely solutions to this already handled and I just need to find and adopt them. That is still non-trivial and will take at least 20 hours, probably closer to 100 or more in set up for me, since I dont have experience with this tech.
Beyond that there is the labor in searching for where old videos are posted and create an entry in the index…and ideally saving a back up copy to the archive incase the original is deleted, moved, or hidden. That gets into some copyright issues, but I’d rather figure those out later than try to solve them early. There is an argument this is fair use for educational purposes, and I will operate under that assumption for now. Also ideally there would be a way to host videos as they come out, like rebroadcasting live broadcasts or simply play them later. That is more questionable as a practice as live views are often used as an indication of interest and if on something like twitch/youtube part of the monetization. Still having a central watching location rather than 1000 random channels would be helpful.
Third project? Stats of Steel. If you follow pretty much any sport, you know that with a little effort you can get the record of every team and player. For many sports you can get stats per game. This is becoming true for fighting and is where I would like to go. Create a central repository and record every teams record, regardless of league or type of competition. Get each fighters records as well based on who was on those team. Get singles win loss records and post them. And…take down and fall stats per match ideally.
Making this happen is beyond labor intense. In my experience grabbing stats for one team for a tournament takes approximately 1 hour. So for a 16 team tournament thats two full work days to get all the stats. Now things can be sped up by recording teams in parallel but its still ALOT of work and time. Getting that set up and managed would be a monumental effort and really requires at least 10 dedicated volunteers, possibly with occasional additional others. This one will also take some time to set up as make the front end look nice and easy to use is not something I have any skill in. Similar issues to the last one.
Basically I want to make the Sherdog of Steel and think this is accomplishable with a small team, if we focus on a smaller problem than the entirety of bohurt. Getting a central location like that can do a lot to alleviate the communication problems we’ve had, as well as elevate the skill level as basic information becomes shared much easier. This is beyond me to make myself though. I would possibly be able to do it if I had no other job but even then I don’t think I would have enough cycles to make it possible. Its a burden that needs to be shouldered by more than one. But if it is, I think we can take this sport to the next level very easily, and also move the center of the sport from Russia, to this side of the Atlantic.
Hopefully the ACS will be running Chapter Wars this year….I’d be more than happy to put up some cash as a prize for the winner of the Summer Season. I’d love to get people to donate and I’d match up to 2k, probably in gear for the team. Whether training or fighting gear I’m not sure. Perhaps pay for a new list for the winning team. Or travel vouchers perhaps as so much of the cost of this sport is travel. Similarly for the prowess singles tourney if they happen I’d be more than willing to sponsor a set of longsword, arming sword, and polearm(perhaps painted shield too). I also hope someone steps up to run a championship for knight fight pro fights. I’m willing to sponsor belts, tabards, and weapons/helmets as prizes champions. This would be a big dip into my personally money. We’re talking some potential of 5-10k, which is ….alot. But also like, getting it going is important to me.
I would not be able to keep this up year after year, but I also wouldn’t think that has value. Some of these will see increases in participation from the incentive and others will not. Or perhaps they all will,(or all wont) but regardless there should be one that gets more community engagement. And like that is the one we as a community should spend time and effort on.
AS for the ref one? Well I’m gonna leave that for another post.