Grandpa’s layout

Guest bloggers wanted

Bar do Peixe 2006There is lots of stuff going on on the beaches around the world. In Portugal last weekend there was the 10th edition of the Bar do Peixe tournament, Wildwood in New Jersey is aiming to have 196 (!) teams this year, and in Belgium there are 2 new Beach Ultimate tournaments this year… We need more people writing reports, uploading pictures and videos…
Who wants to blog twice or 3 times a year on the BULA Blog? Contact me at patrick @ beachultimate.org if you are interested.

Beach 2.0: The influence of the Internet.

(This is a reprint of the article that appeared in ‘Roar’ the Paganello magazine)
You‘ve heard of Web 2.0? What about Beach 2.0?
flashflight.jpgThe World Wide Web (the name almost sounds old) is, or was, a network developed and run by ‘techies’ (in the broadest sense of the word). To make anything available on the WWW you needed to have at least some knowledge about server configuration, FTP, and of course HTML.
A few years ago this started to change and it became much easier for non-techies to publish pages and communicate on the web. Blogs led the way… Simply put, blogs are like high tech diaries with picture and video possibilities. The big difference is that everyone can find and read them. (A type of exhibitionism that seems to fit well within the Ultimate community: a search on Google for “Ultimate Frisbee” + “Blog” revealed 1.000.000+ entries! 🙂
The media took notice of the rising popularity of blogs and soon the term “Web 2.0” was coined. Yet Web 2.0 is much more than blogs. Take Wikis for example (or is it Wiki?). Wikis allow anybody to publish content on the web and others to collaboratively modify this content. Wikipedia – the people’s encyclopedia – is a huge success (the 18th most popular website in the world).
The recently launched Wikibook of Ultimate Games and Cheers (WUGC) is another worldwide collaboration. This time to create a digital book full of cheers, photos, games, and ”after game” tips. This was not possible a few years ago and will certainly have an influence on the evolution of Beach Ultimate.
I won’t go into why I think Beach Ultimate will evolve differently from grass Ultimate, but no one can deny it is a young sport and is still developing its roots. The very first Beach Ultimate tournament – Death on the Beach in Texas -was only 20 years ago. Paganello, the longest running tournament in the world, started a few years later in 1989… Two years later, the world wide web was born….
In “Beach 1.0” all tournaments had a website (usually run by one of the techies) as well as a mailing list. This was a great way to get the ball rolling, and I can’t imagine running a tournament without it, however technology has evolved and we have now entered the era of Beach 2.0. Power to the players!
Blogs, wikis, photo sharing websites, you name it… More and more players are publishing online and contributing to the growth of Beach Ultimate. Take for example “Vamos a Parlee Playa con Pedro”, a short film by the Mauvaises Herbes Ultimate Club. The video was created as a bid for the Parlee Beach Ultimate Tournament in Canada. After showing the video to the tough judges of the Parlee Beach registration and castration committee, they put the video on video.google.com. This was free and only a few minutes of work. Now players from around the world can enjoy Beach Ultimate silliness from Quebec City by simply searching for “Beach Ultimate” on video.google.com.
Gotta love technology… 🙂
Here is another example: Using the free Google Earth download, and no programming, an online fly-over of the Guarujá beach in Brazil was created in less than 10 minutes. Now everyone can see where the World Championships Beach Ultimate will take place in 2007 🙂
The Beach Ultimate community is taking advantage of Web 2.0: almost half of the tournaments have published their Google Earth locations on the BULA site. It is really cool to see all the beaches where people play: the beach of Magic Maggia in Switzerland, Acapulco, Guarujá, New Zealand, you name it.
It will be interesting to see how Beach Ultimate will co-evolve with new Web 2.0 applications such as Flickr, 30boxes, Ning, and Platial. There are over 10,000 Beach Ultimate players worldwide, 52 tournaments, and a hand full of Beach Ultimate leagues. All of us play hard, play to win, and always have fun. At the end of each game, we get together with our opponent to celebrate the game just played. With new technologies, anyone, in their own creative way, can show how they feel about the sport, and share this with like-minded people. With the help of Web 2.0, Beach Ultimate can be a worldwide sport where the rules are clear and the spirit doesn’t get lost.
Share the joy and keep ‘em flying!

Spirit of the Game trademarked by UPA!

I just found out, to my great horror, that the UPA has trademarked the phrase “Spirit of the Game”. This must be the greatest oxymoron in Ultimate history!
Discraft resellers have already been told that they can not put the phrase “Spirit of the Game” on discs unless they have approval from the UPA. That is insane! Is this Ultimate? Is this the Spirit of the Game?
I have asked the UPA for clarification but so far they have failed to respond to my emails. Is this patent trademark worldwide? Can you actually do this? Take a phrase that has been used since the beginning of the sport and trademark it? What about the name Ultimate? Is the next step to trademark our game and we all pay the UPA for playing it? Or lets trademark the stall count: stall one™… stall two™… stall three™…
I can’t believe this. I am shocked!
—
UPDATE: reponse from Sandie Hammerly (Executive Director UPA)

The Ultimate Players Association does own the US trademark registration on the mark “Spirit of the Game” (since 1997), as well as SOTG, Ultimate Players Association and UPA.
While I was not a part of the UPA when this process was started, I can assure you that the organization’s goal in doing this was not to keep players and organizers from using the marks, but to protect our sport and players from commercial entities and business who might acquire the mark and prevent us from using it unless a licensing fee was paid…or possibly not at all.
When organizers have asked us for permission to use the mark, to the best of my knowledge, we have never said no.

Any coverage is good coverage?

Did you see the news? The BULA beloved Flashflight disc got an award 😉
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=1485159

“Really Useless Product Award: Nite Ize’s Illuminated Flying Disc takes the prize. Imagine a Frisbee with LEDs that costs $20. Now if it only came with a built-in MP3 player… ”
—Steve Bass (PCWorld)

I am a ‘techy’ and love gadgets… but Steve…. have some non-tech fun too…
Flashflights are great at night. Not every night, but when you are with a bunch of friends on a beach. Couple of beers (you can still do that in Europe 😉 and a Flashflight… I think it is worth $20!
And you know what? When you layout to catch the disc in the sea (a wonderful feeling you should try some time)… the disc still works. Something you can’t say about most MP3 players…

Sweet & Sour Ultimate?

Being Dutch and living in Portugal is probably not the same feeling as being a man in a woman’s body but it is an interesting experience nevertheless ;-).
I grew up with Nordic Ultimate: grass, field shortages, rain, indoor season… The spirit was almost always great but when there were ever any spirit problems on the field they were dealt with more a ‘rational’ approach. Less ‘passionate’. This is how grass Ultimate developed from the start. The first Ultimate evangelists came from the US, Canada, and Western Europe. The style of play, the way most Ultimate players behave (good and bad) is very Western, very Nordic. Intellectual hippy-jocks, someone ones told me…
PlinioBeach Ultimate will eventually have more Latino players than Nordics. It is inevitable. In Portugal we play 52 weeks a year on the beach. The lifestyle is more inviting to go to the beach and play disc. The future World Champions will come from the relatively insignificant Ultimate countries such as Spain, Italy, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico or Portugal (no offense to all the already existing great players/teams in those countries!)
How will the spirit evolve? No doubt the beach puts players in a great mood. The sea is calming, that sand feels great to walk on, and it seems the disc was made for the beach… 🙂 Mix in the more relaxed attitude towards life and a bit of hot Latino spirit and what will we get? Will the future spirit of Beach Ultimate be like a Mexican spicy dish? A Brazilian samba? Or more balanced Chinese sweet and sour soup with distinct Ultimate overtones?