Going Around the World in 2 Weeks and Saving 5000 Litres of Petrol

James, Me and our web experience business have for the last few months been working really close with UK based NZ social entrepreneur Tom Stokell designing, developing and operating a cycling community that gets more people cycling by getting organisations to compete with each other, and with 33,930 miles biked in just the last 2 weeks, I’m proud to say its been a huge success!

Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge

Getting Real Results

The first customer who financed this first Challenge the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenege was the UK’s Cycling Touring Club and the Swindon Council in the UK, and the first challenge is just wrapping up now and I’m very happy to say that in just 2 weeks we’ve got the following results: There are a total of 41 organisations signed up for the Challenge. Within these 181 departments have been registered. 888 staff members are registered and of these 136 hadn’t cycled in more than a year, but 126 have since cycled for the Challenge! 815 people have logged 3,708 trips, equating to more than 33,930 miles! Thats 1.3 times around the world, over 5000 litres of petrol saved, in one small community, in 2 weeks! (reduction in heart disease saved coming soon! Quietly quite happy with this!

Getting user generated content to drive the site

This entire community has been designed from the first scruffy wireframes scribbled out at Visat Cafe on a quiet Sunday afternoon on Oriental Parade to be all about user generated content an active and successful community will grow - the people, organisations, miles and cycling trips that together are an active cycling community. The mission for the business is clear: If you can get more people and organisations cycling more trips and more miles, then, we’re getting more people cycling, and the world is a better place. So the site is all about promoting people who get others cycling, organisatins who get more of their staff cycling, and peopel who just get on their bike and ride! So theuser generated content strategy sticks out to me like ray of sunshine. This is the same as online health community that gets people more active the naked trainer, more on this soon.

No buzz words please… just real communities

I’m going to write a lot more about this over the coming months, as I’m going to be frank and say that while there are a load of people using the words ‘user generated content’ this seems to have more to do with them reading blogs, repeating what they hear and sharing photos rather than actually understanding what a simple user generated content strategy is, as you can apply the principal to any organisation, industry, community, so lets see the live communities!

PlanHQ has started and grown so far with a closed community. The user generated content is extremely private, but now that we’ve got a base of paying customers, its soon time to launch our community strategy, and focus on the content our uses do or will generate in their process of achieving goals and drive a public community around this… more soon.

Using the online community to drive real action on the ground

I don’t really get off on technology or the web, I came into this space for one over arching reason - to make it easier to do more real things in the world. This Swindon Workplace Challenge and the growing cycling community we’re building uses the web to help get people actually getting on a bike and riding to work, something that we need more of. Here some media coverage of the event: Mid Challenge, Radio Review - 3 days to go, Radio Interview with Tom, the challenge completes, Read Toms post on how to get good publicity.

Making A difference - Doing something that actually helps…

I just couldn’t care less about 2nd lives, games or fun things online, the web is a powerful medium that we either choose to use to do something valuable with, and deal with the real issues (the environment, health, sustainable economics…) or leave it to get dominated and turned into an ‘entertainment’ and message delivery machine that neither inspires or drives any real action like TV and other media have largely become.

We make it happen on PlanHQ

We’ve been giving PlanHQ a massive working through building the first stage of this cycling community business. Some quick numbers from the PlanHQ account - 9 months, 18 Goals and 221 actions completed! Now thats making it happen!

More on all of the above soon.