Post by The Chubbster™ on Jul 19, 2013 12:58:46 GMT
Afternoon all, I mentioned this in another thread, but it's probably more relevant right here.
One of the things that I think our game needs is a place on the web that better describes what Bar Billiards is and how it's played. We of course have a lot of great websites maintained already for various leagues and associations, and they hold a lot of important and relevant information for the players themselves. However, it came to my attention that there is nowhere for the "new" player, nowhere that explains what Bar Billiards is for someone who has never seen or heard of the game before. One question I've always asked of people is "how will the game grow if nobody has the ability to quickly know what the game is" Other games like Darts and snooker (once small little communities like ours) don’t have that problem, yet it's a big problem we still face.
A good example would be this. A couple of guys go into a pub somewhere in England, and see a Bar Billiards table not knowing what it is. So they Google it on their phone, and they can probably find mention of it, but not how to play it. How better would it be if, for example, one of the first things they saw was an instructional video on Youtube showing them clearly how to play. They may be inclined to give it a try.
That is how I believe this game will survive. It's not the only solution, but it's a start. Our game as a whole (I believe) is too closed off. We are (for want of a better phrase) hard to find out about, hard to discover. That's not having a go at all the great websites we already have, it's just that they in the main are there for players who already know about the game.
But of course, it's very hard to reach out in this way. After all those people who do so much for the game.... well it's unfair to ask anymore of them, they do enough to keep the game going as it is.
So with that in mind, on my return I started working on this....
barbilliards.jimdo.com/
This was my original intention, as this forum was only half of a plan I started all those years ago. I actually came up with this idea first, but I started the forum thinking I could get a few people interested, and it just took of faster than I imagined it would... became a full time thing, and this project never saw the light of day.
It was intended to be a general portal about our game, it's history, where to play, and this forum. The how to play page I was indenting to make a (fairly professional at least) YouTube instruction video, so that rather than wading through a rule book and trying to guess at how the game is played, and how best to play it. People could see it themselves. Give the short attention span of people today with there phones etc, I thought it best to show them quickly, rather than asking them to read the rules lol
One important thing I considered in the design of this website, was that it had to be as easy as possible to maintain and run. So I signed up with an excellent service called Jimdo, and everything you see here is simply a case of dragging and dropping various elements. I thought it would be better that way so that we as a community are not reliant on the more "technically gifted" so to speak to maintain various functions and services that we could in the future end up relying upon.
You can probably understand better now why I’ve been asking some of the questions and looking to do certain things through this forum. It wasn’t me just throwing out random ideas with no intention of doing them, they had a purpose, and this was the project I had in mind.
So I'm now offering this website to anyone out there who feels they would like to take the idea forward. I myself will unfortunately not be carrying it forward. For a few reasons I've decided to take a step back from this community and my commitment to trying to improve the game, and the best support I believe I can now offer to to just be an active player and leave the future of the game to more experienced and level headed people lol Not only that, but I have a feeling that someone like me and the personality I am is "time limited" to start with so to speak lol. So I would rather focus my attention on actually being a better player so to speak with the time I have left before I either self destruct or get bored of being everyone’s laughing boy! (only joking, well partly anyway!)
If your interested, then please just throw me a PM and I will switch the account over to you. I've not done much with it, but I think it's a great website service as a whole and takes a lot of the hassle out of "running a website". If nobody is interested then no worries, I'll shut it down. But I still think it's a great idea, so if anyone is interested, then please do let me know. One thing I might (and it is a big might) still be persuaded to do in he future is an instructional video purely because my career is branching out that way anyway. So for anyone that does fancy taking a bash at this website, then we can always talking about that one aspect and I might be able to help you out (although I would reply upon a top established player to do the instructions, I would just be the commentator/producer and editor so to speak)
Thanks guys.
One of the things that I think our game needs is a place on the web that better describes what Bar Billiards is and how it's played. We of course have a lot of great websites maintained already for various leagues and associations, and they hold a lot of important and relevant information for the players themselves. However, it came to my attention that there is nowhere for the "new" player, nowhere that explains what Bar Billiards is for someone who has never seen or heard of the game before. One question I've always asked of people is "how will the game grow if nobody has the ability to quickly know what the game is" Other games like Darts and snooker (once small little communities like ours) don’t have that problem, yet it's a big problem we still face.
A good example would be this. A couple of guys go into a pub somewhere in England, and see a Bar Billiards table not knowing what it is. So they Google it on their phone, and they can probably find mention of it, but not how to play it. How better would it be if, for example, one of the first things they saw was an instructional video on Youtube showing them clearly how to play. They may be inclined to give it a try.
That is how I believe this game will survive. It's not the only solution, but it's a start. Our game as a whole (I believe) is too closed off. We are (for want of a better phrase) hard to find out about, hard to discover. That's not having a go at all the great websites we already have, it's just that they in the main are there for players who already know about the game.
But of course, it's very hard to reach out in this way. After all those people who do so much for the game.... well it's unfair to ask anymore of them, they do enough to keep the game going as it is.
So with that in mind, on my return I started working on this....
barbilliards.jimdo.com/
This was my original intention, as this forum was only half of a plan I started all those years ago. I actually came up with this idea first, but I started the forum thinking I could get a few people interested, and it just took of faster than I imagined it would... became a full time thing, and this project never saw the light of day.
It was intended to be a general portal about our game, it's history, where to play, and this forum. The how to play page I was indenting to make a (fairly professional at least) YouTube instruction video, so that rather than wading through a rule book and trying to guess at how the game is played, and how best to play it. People could see it themselves. Give the short attention span of people today with there phones etc, I thought it best to show them quickly, rather than asking them to read the rules lol
One important thing I considered in the design of this website, was that it had to be as easy as possible to maintain and run. So I signed up with an excellent service called Jimdo, and everything you see here is simply a case of dragging and dropping various elements. I thought it would be better that way so that we as a community are not reliant on the more "technically gifted" so to speak to maintain various functions and services that we could in the future end up relying upon.
You can probably understand better now why I’ve been asking some of the questions and looking to do certain things through this forum. It wasn’t me just throwing out random ideas with no intention of doing them, they had a purpose, and this was the project I had in mind.
So I'm now offering this website to anyone out there who feels they would like to take the idea forward. I myself will unfortunately not be carrying it forward. For a few reasons I've decided to take a step back from this community and my commitment to trying to improve the game, and the best support I believe I can now offer to to just be an active player and leave the future of the game to more experienced and level headed people lol Not only that, but I have a feeling that someone like me and the personality I am is "time limited" to start with so to speak lol. So I would rather focus my attention on actually being a better player so to speak with the time I have left before I either self destruct or get bored of being everyone’s laughing boy! (only joking, well partly anyway!)
If your interested, then please just throw me a PM and I will switch the account over to you. I've not done much with it, but I think it's a great website service as a whole and takes a lot of the hassle out of "running a website". If nobody is interested then no worries, I'll shut it down. But I still think it's a great idea, so if anyone is interested, then please do let me know. One thing I might (and it is a big might) still be persuaded to do in he future is an instructional video purely because my career is branching out that way anyway. So for anyone that does fancy taking a bash at this website, then we can always talking about that one aspect and I might be able to help you out (although I would reply upon a top established player to do the instructions, I would just be the commentator/producer and editor so to speak)
Thanks guys.
