View from the Editor: Step away from the water - August 2005  

Readers, excellent news for you! A date has been confirmed for Sport and Technology: The Conference 2006, thanks once again to the backing of our favourite client, BT. The conference will be held at BT Centre in London on Thursday, 23 February 2006, and following the sell-out success of our inaugural event in March this year, the event will carry the hottest tickets in town. (Hey, if we can’t big up our own event in our own column, then there’s something wrong with our egos). The format of panel discussions rather than endless boring PowerPoint presentations went down well in the 2005 event and we will be replicating that format in February next year.
As Sport and Technology: The Conference 2006, in association with BT Media and Broadcast, is our conference for you, faithful readers of S&T, we would like to give you the opportunity to e-mail us with suggestions for both panel content and speakers. Of course we have put our noggins together and come up with some ideas ourselves (it’s not all just swanning around the world for S&T you know, or at least Blackpool for the Stan James World Matchplay of Darts), but we’d welcome your feedback. Don’t be shy, send us an e-mail today (editor@sportandtechnology.com) and make your ideas count.

Aussie Football, rules

S&T is recently back from Melbourne, where we joyously had a chance to watch our Aussie Rules boys, the St Kilda Saints, in action both at the MCG and the retracable-roofed Telstra Dome (the latter being controversial for reportedly having a slippery surface when the roof is on due to condensation created by the crowd. Yeugh, we don’t envy our boys skidding through the collective spittle of 45,000 or so folk).
It would have been rude to have trotted all the way to Melbourne and not paid a visit to our friends at the Australian Football League (AFL). So we caught up with Ben Amarfio, broadcasting, publishing and new media manager, to see what’s new with AFL.com.au since we reviewed the site late last year (see AFL - Building global appeal through the web - November 2004). One of the most popular applications on the site during the 2005 season so far has been the Goal Tracker. “Fans can click on scores, see a picture of an oval and then view a virtual tracking of the last goal scored,” explained Amarfio. “The next step will be for fans to be able to track the ball through the entire match graphically which is something we are now working on.” Traffic to the AFL network of sites is up 36% this season to almost 1m unique browsers per month, far and away the most popular sports website in Australia, which Amarfio thinks is thanks to new designs. “We redesigned and revamped the main AFL site at the end of last season so that it is now visually rich. It used to be quite text-based before. The Goal Tracker has also led to increased traffic.” Amarfio revealed that the marketing managers of all the AFL clubs meet on a quarterly basis to exchange ideas, and that the role of club websites in their portfolios is increasing in importance. “Recently, Hawthorn and North Melbourne provided case studies at our meeting to outline what they have been doing with their websites and where they have been successful from an e-commerce perspective in the areas of online merchandising and membership sales. It was great for their colleagues from other clubs to hear that and is one example of how we are trying to be more collaborative off the field of play.”

Crayfish and crocodile-sightings

Meanwhile, following the new S&T penchant for marine-related stories thanks to a Chinese plaice farmer trying to engage our help to export his scaly-produce into Europe (long story), we were shocked to hear of the water-based menace potentially threatening the livelihood of our favourite soccer club Exeter City FC. It seems that a deadly mass of Crayfish, introduced into the UK in the 1970s by our cousins in America (namely Hank and Betty), could be about to take over the River Exe.
Give it several thousand years and they’ll be walking out of the River and taking up all the best seats at The Real St James’ Park. (Hopefully we’ll be back in the Football League by then as well, come on lads!) According to the Exeter-based missive, The Express and Echo, which sported the rather histrionic headline ‘Plan to repel American invaders’, “the regional fisheries, ecology and recreation advisory committee will discuss developing a strategy to control the alien crayfish.” Fabulous, so they can zap us with their deadly rays as well. Bonus!
Following a trout-related incident in Blackpool (you had to be there), slightly nearer ArkSports Towers in London lurks another aquatic-fiend. Believe it or not, a crocodile is thought to be living the life of Riley in the site of the London 2012 Olympics. Merchandisers will no doubt be rushing down to the Lea Valley to capitalise on the story. New London 2012 handbag anyone?

Free WiFi or to not Free WiFi?

Finally, S&T couldn’t slope off to our next destination without sharing our favourite technology-related story of the month with you. According to the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK, a 24-year-old British man has been fined £500 and given 12 months' conditional discharge for using his neighbour's wireless internet connection without permission. In what is reported to be the first conviction of its kind, a jury in Middlesex, England, found the chap - who was nabbed by police for using his Wi-Fi-enabled laptop outside a residential building - guilty of “dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service”. Although S&T of course would never endorse anything less than completely 100%-law abiding, we can’t help but have one tiny thought on the subject. What a fantastic idea! Now all of you get outdoors and start breathing in fresh air while that’s still legal.

Rachael Church - Editor

Do you think people should pay for WiFi if they can access it on the streets? Or should the internet be only use in the privacy of your own home? If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in S&T, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com.

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