Basejumper.com - archive

I will hold a BASE First Jump Course on October 29th, 30th and 31st (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) in Twin Falls, Idaho. Course will begin at 8am Friday and conclude at 6pm Sunday.

There will be no charge for this instruction. The course will focus on basic BASE skills, with an additional emphasis on the history and ethics of BASE, and the teamwork necessary to many BASE jumps.

I will also allow a maximum of two non-jumping auditors in the course. If you want to audit the packing and discussion segments, I will also ask you to help out with some of the other parts of the course (such as ferrying cars). Auditors should be people interested in BASE who have not yet sufficient skydiving experience.

Course requirements:

1) Gear: I have some spare gear I can loan out, but it’s best if you can come with your own. Contact me for help finding gear, if you do not own it.
2) Mentoring: You must make a reasonable effort to find an experienced jumper local to you, who can help you with your jumping when you return home. You must provide me with contact information for this jumper, so that I can talk with them. If you cannot locate someone, I will assist you in doing so. This requirement will be waived for jumpers in an area where I am unable to locate a suitable mentor.
3) Skydiving prerequisites: You must have appropriate skydiving experience, as evaluated by me. I will ask for details of your experience when you contact me, as well as contact information for jumpers able to verify your experience.


Course Syllabus:

Day 1: Packing

Discussion: The risks of BASE
Exercise: Letter to family
Packing
Discussion: Differences between skydiving and BASE cultures

Day 2: Exits

Exit Training
Discussion: Logging jumps
Landing Area Preview
Discussion: Jumps, landing, flight patterns
PCA BASE jumps
Discussion: BASE History

Day 3: Deployment

Discussion: BASE ethics
BASE jumps: Hand held, delay nomination
Discussion: BASE community
BASE jumps: Delay nomination, stowed

Space is limited, so I will accept the best prepared applicants. If you want to come, you must contact me via PM here or via email (tbaiello@mac.com). If you have any questions, post here, or PM or email me.

Also, if anyone would be interested in a "refresher" course, for those with limited BASE experience, email me or post here. After talking with several people, I'm considering offering such a course.

Tom,

I'm curious if you've gotten any negative comments from anyone who charges for their FJC? What you are doing is very admirable, to say the least. I also can see that the other FJC instructors are probably not too thrilled that their business is being taken away. Keep up the good work.

Cya in 11 days.

Tom, your post looks suspiciously like advertising to me whether or not money is changing hands!

I thought you had 'no leeway' to allow advertising. In our case especially, when any money made is farmed back into the sport.

So does this mean I can now advertise the 'free' stubby holders as no money is changing hands for them. And this way, because no 'filthy lucre' will be made, not a penny will go to Geoff Ollis, Slim, the website hosting fees or to a new roll of rescue rope.

Cheers,

Ken

http://www.basejump.org

offering to train, to 'give away' knowledge is not advertising. There is no return for Tom other than the personal satisfaction of knowing he is doing his part to make the sport safer, unless i'm completely mistaken Tom does not have any BASE products out he is 'pushing' by offering this course...

handing out products (even free) with logos etc on them has the benefit of name recognition and product exposure and serves to promote a business rather than the cause of safer jumpers....

apples and oranges..

You are correct. Tom 'pushed' no product upon us last weekend. However, he did impart a considerable amount of knowledge.

Jeff

To be fair, I'm not completely sure that I'm not violating the DZ.com policy. There has been some discussion of this in the moderators forum, but no clear conclusion reached on advertising "no cost" things.

I'll ask Sangiro to clarify for us. Should his decision be that this is advertising, I will, of course, remove both of these threads.

As I said to you in PM, advertising BASE related things, both for free and at prices, is allowed on BLiNC, so we can always advertise there.

Other options for advertising include the classifieds here on DZ.com, the classified forum on BLiNC, and the events calendar here.

At this point, until Sangiro clarifies, feel free to posts announcements of any free products or services here.

Actually, the only person to have said anything was Jimmy, and he was quite positive. No negative comments at all.


Me too.

I do have concerns about that. I don't want to take food out of the mouths of folks who are working hard to make a living doing what we all love. At the same time, I think BASE training is stagnating a bit, and I'd like to change that (look for me to hold free courses [symposiums?] next year on things like object strike avoidance--unless someone else steps in and offers them at a reasonable charge, in which case I'll likely match that cost). At some point post BD, I'll likely try to write up a "why the heck am I doing this and what the heck do I hope the impact is" and post it.

 

Honestly, I see Ken's point. I recently removed an advertisement he'd put on this board.

The thing is, I don't think he was making any money personally. It was all slated to go to maintaining the ABA site, buying rescue gear, etc.

It's a slippery slope. The question is where it starts. The point at which you charge seems like a good one. But perhaps it's even before that. Or perhaps it's after that, when you start to skim a profit. I don't know, and this site does not belong to me. I'll wait and see what the Head Honcho has to say.

Ken and others,

Let me clarify the "no advertising rule". Once you understand the purpose of these rules it's not that hard to connect the dots yourself. The difference between a post like the one Ken made (which I will include again later) and Tom's post becomes pretty obvious.

These forums started off with 4 Rules only. As far as I'm concerned those 4 rules still form the bases of the rule system here. We've had to clarify what they mean and interpret them but you'll see that most all the guidelines tie back to these original rules.

I'd like to explain a little why these rules exist and how I came up with them. I've read a little Complexity Theory and this community like all others is a complex system. Complexity Theory holds that you can create global order (large scale order in complex systems) by applying a few basic rules over, and over again at a local level.

So, these rules were deliberately chosen and I'm hoping (and it seems to be working ok so far) that the dynamics between these four will keep us at the edge of chaos, where complex systems are at their most potent and creative. This is where we'll all learn the most. So the rules are:

1) No personal attacks. None.
By taking this out of the loop I'm trying to suppress what seems to be one of the most common human reactions in conflicts and the one that in my experience of the web kills the most online communities.

2) No jokes about or references to pedophilia. None.
This is a moral boundary. It basically says: "Almost anything goes, but not everything." Few people will disagree that this is the right place to draw the line. This line is pretty far out though.

3) No advertising in the forums
A non-commercial clause, backed by providing a place where people can advertise gear (the classifieds) and events (the calendar) for free. The introduction of money making motives in communities often change the dynamic completely. The purpose of this rule is to remove that dynamic.

4) Post to the correct forum and stay on topic.
A simple rule to prescribe and simple order. Back this with forums (The Bonfire and Speaker's Corner) where people can talk about whatever they want and you actually have an opportunity to cut noise for people to teach and learn. The purpose of this rule is to bring method to the madness.

So that's what I was after. Tom's posts does not even touch on the reason why this rule was created. It breaches it in no manner.

Further, because people have actually split hair about this in the past we've done quite a bit of work to more clearly define "advertising" in the guidelines:


and further on...


That's pretty clear, and pretty easy to understand.

Look at your post:
So the short answer is. If you post something and you have direct or hidden money making motive for whatever purpose (there are many noble causes out there), then it is likely to be seen as advertising and treated as such.

We're not going to go overboard , but without any prejudice to the rules as they stand, there's a simple rule of thumb. If your post has a money making motive, you may bump into this rule.


Sure, tell us right here what we need to do to get them for free. Do not try to get us to go over to your site for "more information". Do not try to get us to "peruse any products or services " Just give them away. Can I PM you my snail mail address and you'll send me one for free? Or is there something more to it than that? I commend the fact that you want to put all the money back into the sport, but for obvious reasons we're not going to open the rule up to go down that slippery slope.

There are other ways to get the word out if you truly have a altruistic cause but unfortunately have to go at it through commercial means. Feel free to PM or email me and I'll help where I can.

Again, let's not split hair. The moment you have to actually "try" to convince us it's not advertising, chances are that it is.

Sangiro, Tom and others,

thanks for taking the time to reply and to clarify your stand.

I can understand and agree the views expressed here.
Tom's words here are spot on which is why I was a little frustrated at first but, at the end of the day I have no problems the judges decision.

Thanks and cheers,

Ken.

I have sent some invitations for this course, and have one slot left. If you have already contacted me and not heard back, I'll let you know either way by Tuesday of next week. If you want to come but have not contacted me, please do so by Monday to be considered.