video: episode 8, bringing back the i in IUF

[leo]

During last "I"UF meet I proposed to discontinue the "I"UF and continue within the UCI, as a very serious proposal, not just some provocation. A commitee "Dissolve IUF into UCI" was founded and I promised to put the video at uniconnews.com.
It turned into a 45 minutes video, with not a single frame of unicycling in it, devided in 5 parts:
- part A intro
- part B Joop Atsma (UCI boardmember)
- part C Mat Hoffman (BMX legend)
- part D John Foss (IUF director, former IUF president)
- part E Leo Vandewoestijne (pro unicyclist since 1996)

Please watch them in order, to see things in the remained timeline. Also because the non-unicyclist interviews are the most interresting.

- Transcripts are available
- comments can be made here

[leo]

Linux users can use the M4V URLs in the RSS

[Unitik908]

That was a very informative watch. Thanks a lot for posting. I don't really want to say my opinions on it because after watching that they are pretty biased, but I think it is a very good idea. I agree with you, there is no reason to keep this awesome, wonderful sport to ourselves and keep it super underground.

Chase

[dudewithasock]

Interesting thoughts, but too much politics for me. I'd rather just ride and enjoy myself than worry about all that.

[Spencer Hochberg]

It was interesting...what what up with this guy?

[KlownLife]

I'm 100% with you on this Leo. I would love to see unicycling progressed e.g. more funding, bigger events, sponsored riders etc. I do enjoy the personal touch that most unicycling events have and it would be ashame to lose, but I live for the sport I would love to ride professionally.
I think this could be a step in the right directions.

Good Work Leo, a very interesting watch.

Jas

P.S. Congratulations on putting John Foss on the spot!

[olarf]

A very interesting hour of video stuff about the possible future of unicycling without one unicycle in it !
I recommend it to everyone.

[johnfoss]

Originally Posted by Spencer Hochberg

It was interesting...what what up with this guy?

The one on the left or the one on the right?

We taped the interview in front of the well-lit display window, down the street from Markthalle, the central Unicon location. At that time there was music and dancing in the building, and it was dark! So there were cars, people, unicyclists and that guy passing by.

[johnfoss]

Originally Posted by KlownLife

I'm 100% with you on this Leo.

The IUF awaits a proposal. What was offered at the IUF meeting in Langenthal was, to paraphrase "Dissolve the IUF, because it has done nothing for 20 years" which didn't go down so well. Certainly the IUF can do more, and better. All it takes is energy, people, the will, etc. We are, perhaps, too focused on Unicons, rulebooks and little else. The Unicycling Society of America has a similar problem. So much I would like both organizations to do, but nobody seems to want to do it.

I would love to see unicycling progressed e.g. more funding, bigger events, sponsored riders etc.

Most of that can be obtained without the IUF. Funding, for the most part, will come from private corporations (depending on the country). I don't expect the UCI to lavish much on unicycling if they get no return on their investment. Certainly the UCI (or IUF) does not sponsor riders. That is a business proposition between people or companies that expect to mutually benefit from the sponsorship.

...I live for the sport I would love to ride professionally. I think this could be a step in the right directions.

Leo rides professionally. I used to. This is something you need to do on your own, by developing a "product" someone wants to buy. We are entertainers, and I assume you want to do it more from the sport side.

So maybe the sport needs to go somewhere, or move faster, for this to work. The IUF's model is great for Unicons (every two years at least), but has not been successful for much else. I'm definitely open to new ideas and willing to try things. This UCI thing may have something to it. But will UCI deal directly with us, or do we have to become members of our national cycling unions? Most don't recognize us. Each country may have to work that out on its own. The IUF should encourage and help with this in any case, but it will be harder for some countries than others. In the meantime, we want to keep having championships.

P.S. Congratulations on putting John Foss on the spot!

That he did! By suggesting Unicon 11 (2002) was railroaded by me, the new president, in 2000. To clarify, in 2000 we had exactly one proposal for Unicon 11. The representatives for Japan, Switzerland, Denmark and Australia all spoke excellent English, so there was no problem there. But none of them offered to host a Unicon in 2002.

I stood to gain nothing from having a fourth Unicon hosted in my country, other than the opportunity to drive to it. Hopefully you will believe that I base my decisions on other things. Unicon should visit as many countries as possible, perhaps never being in the same place twice. They just have to be ready. Even the folks in Washington were not 100% sure about doing it in 2002, and many questions remained to be answered.

I don't think the 2002 location was set in stone at the end of Unicon X in China, it was tentative. We made it tentative because they were the one group that volunteered to host it. Any questions?

In that section of the interview, part of the discussion was edited out, but it was mostly me repeating the above, which is still in the video. The interviewer was fishing for controversy. I think there's plenty of it out there, but that wasn't it. Our IUF meetings are public affairs, open to anyone. If we're in China and 50% of the attendees are American, or otherwise all speak English, good for them. Those meetings are not run purely in English, though we lean too heavily on it. Other languages are welcome.

Last words:
In the omitted part of the interview, the suggestion is made that the other "future" Unicon hosts were ignored or passed over. There is no record of any of them communicating this to the IUF board.

I spent a little bit of time trying to dig up a copy of the minutes from that 2000 meeting. I don't think I have a copy, but if it exists (there was a problem with getting them from audio tape to paper), our current secretary has it. That should be a matter of public record. I am currently not on the IUF board.

Last words for real (this post):
This is a great discussion. We need to talk more about this stuff and less about the relative merits of 29er vs. Coker (people can look that up). I encourage more discussion about building the sport, promoting it, and how to make it better.

[Lutz]

I think there is not other chance then talking English in the meetings and this is not a problem because everybody can speak a little bit English.

I agree with Leo but as John said riders must search by self for there personal sponsors. And I am a bit scared that a big organisation like the UCI don’t care what the unicyclists do, like the BDR (don’t know if it depends on the unicyclists who are involved in the BDR or because the BDR don’t want to do much for unicycling).

[tadaniels]

I know that anti-US conspiracy theories are currently all the rage, but there have been far more, "international," officers elected to serve the IUF, Inc. (especially since 1990) than Leo's taped interviews would lead one to believe. I unsuccessfully tried to post the complete list (complete through UNICON XII in Tokyo, that is) to this thread last night; it is available upon request.

There have only been five different Presidents of the IUF, Inc. In the 20 elections held since the founding, the President has come from the US eight times (one person six times, the other person -the current President - twice); from Israel and Puerto Rico five times; and, from Germany twice.

For those of you who are keeping score, here is the history of the location of UNICON:

UNICON I - Syracuse, New York, USA
UNICON II - Uniondale, New York, USA
UNICON III - Tokyo, Japan
UNICON IV - Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
UNICON V - Hull, Quebec, Canada
UNICON VI - Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
UNICON VII - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
UNICON VII - Surrey, United Kindom
UNICON IX - Bottrop, Germany
UNOCON X - Beijing, People's Republic of China
UNICON 11 - North Bend, Washington, USA
UNICON XII - Tokyo, Japan
UNICON XIII - Langenthal, Switzerland
UNICON XIV - Denmark
UNICON XV - Australia

The first two UNICONs were organized by the founders of the IUF and were held in New York in the US, near their homes. SInce then, only two UNICONs have been held in the US (three if one counts UNICON IV - which the organizers from Puerto Rico would not); two in Japan; two in Canada; and, one each in Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Germany, China and Switzerland.


Tom Daniels

[gossi]

Wow, that was very interessting.

As you pointed out the situation in Germany. There exists a parallelism between here (in Germany) and the IUF wordlwide. I will explain the situation here with just a few words out of my point of view to the others here to understand the of what i'm saying: Our head organisation in Germany is the BDR (Bund Deutscher Radfahrer) where unicycling is a department of it. The BDR don't complain much about the unicycling. The BDR has a lot of funds but just a little bit is floating into the unicycling department, what unicyclist get from it is laughable. Another point is the organisation within the unicycling department. There is a president (I don't know how this person is owning this position but it seems there is no possibility to change it as we grup through all rules we can found on). Further on there are representives for each county (actually 5(?) out of 16 have representetives). This team meets 2 times within the whole year. Communication is a real big problem here in Germany as we have to fight on our own to get some information. There is no official board but rules no one knows about. The BDR also limps the time. They introduced the 1998er skill-level last year, as there are new under development still better for the use here instead of the old ones. And another major problem is that the BDR has only ears for freestylers (well I can't complain, I'm one) but neither do I respect their development nor I'm uninteressted of other disciplines (as I do, but my focus is on freestyle). Ok I stop here, as well as I could follow this list...

!Before I go on I DON'T compary the BDR with the UCI!

As you read by you might have encountered some similarities between the BDR and the IUF. So, communication is a problem. The website of the IUF is old and outdated. The rulebook commitee is the only place where I can read something new (As I remember correctly). I would happy to read what the IUF concerns next (I better won't read what the BDR concerns next, as it doesn't meant to be a good thing ).
Another major or at least the most important point is a structured organisation with rules (and stuff) that is passed to every club all over the world. So, I can only talk from Germany, but there exists the IUF rules by the IUF Commitee. And the BDR Rules (That are the IUF from 1998 - there are still present in Germany as well as there are 2 newer versions of it). So we ride after the old rules at nationals and the new rules at internationals - does that make sense? NO! And even if there we would adopt the IUF rules there would be made some changes to make this german rules - absurd (German bureaucracy :/). I don't know how this is handled in other national organisations (USA, JUA, ...). But that can't be that every country has its own rules and they drift apart in different directions.
So, I don't judge at the Unicon (I wanted to watch all the freestyle routines). But I participated in the workshop by Connie who presented the judge system that is used at the unicon and was worked out by the IUF commitee. The system was pretty similar to the german system but has defined exactly what to judge. Which points to give for the different areas. I recently talked to somebody who judged under this system at the unicon and that person was highly impressed how exactly a judgement can be measured. He also let me know that there are some little leaks in there but those were forseeable and would be kicked out by further proposals after the unicon (or I hope so - hopefully this is not too naive). In general this system is developed by the IUF so it might tram his way to all national organisations... :]

I have another two examples of the development of different rules in two different disciplines in multiple countries:

1) New Skill-Levels. There are new skill-levels under development for ~2 years now. I heard of it some weeks before Unicon (they were proposed there by John Foss, would they?). Hey cool, so I talked to Carol (the project leader) and I'm happy to see those. The development is mainly done in the states (as I can derive - maybe I'm wrong but this is what I read). But the development is now covered by more people of other countries.

2) Hockey rules. In Germany there is the worlds biggest unicycling hockey league. The rules are under development there and the development process is more advanced than the rules in the IUF. (So the hockey player are not part of the BDR, this is why the development there rushes fast and the hockey league grows while the freestylers are damaged by the BDR -_-).

Anyway, these are two examples of 2 'projects' that are not controlled by the IUF and living beside the development of the IUF. So bring them into the IUFs boat that EVERYBODY benefits from that work.

When we treat this project (becoming an olympic sport) which has the blast off at the unicon because of leos proposals. This project consists of many sub-projects and only when they are finished we come closer to our goal. So, the development process should be done on a central place visible to everybody, contribution by everybody, comments and suggestions by everybody and so on (Like the development of an open source software). The right place would be the IUF website. There are enough systems which cover the development of such projects to use it as a webfrontend.

There you go: Bring a lot of people in the boat. Gather the requirements, respect the stakeholders, define projects and get this shitty thing DONE!


Sounds to easy as I know what huge efforts are needed for a project with that kind of scope. But I'm happy Leo is on the way to push unicycling.


But for my understanding:

- UCI
`- IUF
`- national organisation (USA, JUA, etc.)

Would that be the targeted constallation?

P.S. The IUF should cover all different unicycling disciplines and should have a commitee for each one!

Thanks Leo for considering so much on our sport and putting so much effort in it - go ahead!

PPS: Thanks for reading my initial comments on the seen interview - I think it now takes me longer to write it than to watch the 'documentary' *g*

Ride on
gossi

[olarf]

add ons to gossis words:

To be complete in that german things there is to say a bit more.
There are two existing German cycle Federations, the BDR (since the second World War) and the Solidarität (since 1920 or earlier). Both of them keep some unicyclist inside and both of them are registered at the UCI. So at least, the german unicyclist are a official Part of the UCI sinc many many years. The Problem is only that they are not representd by BDR or Solidarität and so the UCI still don't know that the Unicycle Sports ist a part of the UCI.
The Unicycle Sports they do inside of the Solidarität is also not based on IUF stuff, its independent. Only the BDR do IUF stuff but as gossi wrote under different rules.
So for Germany we can say that it is not an advantage to be a member of the BDR / Solidarität / UCI for the moment.
As we could hear in Leos great interview, the UCI don't know about unicyclist inside of them. There are still hundreds or thousands a member of UCI.

[Checkernuts]

So after many posts typed and deleted I will try again.

For the last 4 years while I have been active in unicycling, I have seen very little done from the IUF, or the USA (my national orginization) Since these two orginizations are very similar it is often dificult for me to see the difference between where each begins and ends.

It is good to see people's ideas on more short term goals for the IUF but the major problem that I see, like leo has pointed out is that there are few members that represent an international demographic among the board members of the IUF.

Is UCI the answer to our orginizational problems?
no, while other cyclist are more likely to understand that we are seeking to be recognized as a legitamate sport, We are still concidered by most cyclist to be entertainers and not athleats. While joining the UCI may be a goal down the line we have more importaint matters to deal with of defining what we want out of a national and international union.

My Dream List for the IUF
Set a world wide standard for competition. (rule book)
Help national orginizations hold events
money
Press
other basic event coordination.

Support international Riding (Unicycle Alps Tour, and othe Tours)
Hold a world wide compitition (Unicon)


Hopefully this is a spark that will start change.

Cheers
Mike

[tadaniels]

Folks,

From Article 4 of the UCI Constitution: "The members of the UCI shall be the national federations accepted by the Congress as being the representative organization for the sport of cycling in general in the country of that national federation"

Therefore, the path forward would seem to be for the current national organizations, (e.g., JUA, USA, UUU) to work with their respective national cycling federations (e.g., Japan Cycling Federation, USA Cycling, British Cycling Federation) with the ultimate goal of merging with those federations. At the same time, the IUF would have to work directly with the UCI toward the goal of establishing a UCI Commission for unicycling.

There are several considerations to keep in mind in this discussion.

- These people represent serious, world class athletes. They require very strict competitive rules, formally run events and semi-professional officials. If you don't like the competitive events, rules and lack of more, "fun," things at NAUCC or UNICON now, you don't want to even consider the path toward UCI recognition.

- These organizations are able to spend money on promotion, etc. because they collect real membership dues, club fees, event fees, etc. in addition to attracting major corporate sponsors. In my experience, many US unicyclists would not be willing to pay the current USA Cycling, "international rider," membership fee of $150 per year ($60 for a, "domestic rider").

- Anti-doping restrictions are absolutely required and are very, very expensive (and time consuming) to administer.

I've spent a fair amount of time researching the path toward IOC recognition in the past. For example, I've corresponded and spoken with the gentlemen who did much of the work that was required to get snowboarding recognized as a discipline by the national ski federations and the International Ski Federation (FIS). The snowboarding situation in the earliest days of the sport was actually very similar to toiur unicycling scene today.

The bottom line seems to be that we would have to demonstrate to the UCI and the national federations that we can attract (or, better yet, have already attracted) sponsors that are not already part of national / international cycling. In other words, We cannot go into this with the idea that we will be getting money from the national federations and / or the UCI; on the contrary, we would need to demonstrate that our sport is capable of generating its own revenue stream.


Tom Daniels