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Chapter 5 – Horse Riding and fires don’t go hand in hand

oscarboult — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:21:01 +0000

All updates can be found on www.sportingconnections.com

There was a period sometime between the age of 6 and 9 when we were taken to horse riding lessons. I am not sure if it is because of the flies, the heat, or the bouncing up and down for hours at a time, but I don’t have too many memories of the horsey period. The couple that stick are somewhat interesting though.

We were out on a ride through the bush one day with about 8 other kids and the instructor when my brother’s horse decided to bolt and pretty much just disappeared off down the dirt track that we were following. I remember pulling on the reins of my own horse as hard as my little arms could pull to stop it careening off after my bro. As there was only one instructor with us she had to keep us all together and just hope my bro was ok (obviously no suing was going on back then!); about 20 mins later we came across my bro walking back down the path towards us, pretty bruised and battered. He’d managed to hang on for about 10mins at full gallop and finally got flung off and landed stomach first on a tree trunk… how he never broke anything is one of the wonders of the modern age. He got to double up with the instructor all the way home where we found his horse happily chewing away at some cud.

Another day after a marathon ride through the bush mum made the mistake of arriving late to pick us up; my brother had somehow managed to find a box of matches so we wondered off into the bush and thought we’d start a little fire behind a large rock. After piling up a bit of grass (the long hip length dried out brush that is found around Africa) and a few twigs, we threw a couple of matches on it and were thrilled to watch watch it spark up and build into a nice little fire… we were somewhat less thrilled to watch the wind pick up a few sparks and send them into the dried out brush just slightly downwind! Within seconds the brush was ablaze and spreading rapidly through the brush toward the stables; we did the only thing that two young, honourable and mature kids would ever do, we bolted and ran as fast as we could to get around the other side of the stable area to make it look like we had nothing to do with the fire. It didn’t take long for one of the farmhands to spot the smoke and fortunately the 10 or so farm hands managed to put it out using wet sacks before it did any real damage, other than destroying an acre or so of dry grass. Although I am sure we would have been the prime suspects, we never got into any trouble as no one could prove anything. Oliver had bailed the matches long ago and we were the picture of innocence.

Chapter 4 – (My Sporting Life) Swimming and Tennis

oscarboult — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 05:37:22 +0000

Latest postings can be found at:

http://www.sportingconnections.com/component/option,com_portal/Itemid,67/

I will never forget the day we got the first television in our little house in Botswana, it was so exciting. Although I had watched TV at a friends house on the odd occasion, and had also watched it on the occasional trip back to the UK to visit the grandparents, it was super exciting seeing those multi-coloured lines show up (anyone older than 30 knows what I’m talking about, no auto-tune and Hi-Def on these puppies) in our own home. We spent the first night watching it for hours, realised it was crap and boring, and got back to what made us tick… being active. I was 8 years old at the time! My parents held off from getting a TV long enough for us to realise what a wasted of time it was when we could be outside doing “stuff”.

Botswana was a truly wonderful place for a rug-rat to grow up; our life was focussed on being outdoors and active and, with mum’s businesses going from strength, we were truly spoilt. As I mentioned previously, we spent a lot of time in the swimming pool trying to stay coolish (the pool water itself would have hit 30C regularly); we also spent time in swimming lessons, diving competitions, doing swim survival badges and competing in school galas. Mum has started sending me some of the things that she kept from my childhood and I was surprised at the number of swim badges (that’s right, everything was recorded in those days including the first 100m swim, 500m etc. right up to 3000m which I apparently completed at the age of 7), first place certificates (more through the other swimmers not being fortunate enough to have their own swimming pools at home and swimming like “Eric the Eel” than any brilliance on my part) and medals that she had kept.

Having so little competition at a young age (other than from my older bro) led to me being pretty confident in my own ability and thinking I was a good swimmer for many a year. I ended up in Lanzarote (Canary Islands, just off Morocco) in 1998 training for an Ironman. I happened to ask one of the pro tri-athletes there by the name of Ben, who I worked with, to come down and give me some tips on swimming… I was 23 years old by this stage and training for my first ever triathlon. Although I thought he might help me improve a bit, in truth I thought I would impress the hell out of him. He asked me to swim a straight 2km so he could watch my stroke and when I got out the water 35mins later I was thinking “who’s your daddy, how good was that?”… At which point he said “Mate, that was so bad I’m not sure where to start!”.

I was crushed to say the least, but it was at this point I started learning how to swim and will ever be thankful to Ben for being so brutally honest. Without his help my day out in the Ironman a few months later would have been more hellish than it was… more about that when I’m old enough to tell you.

Outside of swimming we were fortunate enough to have parents that were sport nuts and wanted nothing more than the 3 of us to get involved. Looking around at kids nowadays I realise just how lucky we were to have parents like that and how much those early years still play such a major part in my life. I remember having tennis lessons for years (sometimes being forced to go even though we didn’t want to, although once we got there we loved it) and eventually playing in the under 8’s tournament against Zimbabwe… there was no money in any of the tennis clubs in Botswana but by this stage mum had set up an import\export company that went on to become the largest in Botswana before being bought out by a major South African company when we later moved to South Africa… I will never forget the name of the company, Capricorn Agencies (as we lived in the tropic of Capricorn), as once mum was making enough money she sponsored all the tournaments and made sure that everyone involved got trophies, prizes and Capricorn agencies T-shirts!

At this age, and for a fair few years to come, I may not have been the best loser, actually the term “a little shit!” would probably be more appropriate. Even at the age of 7 I ended up breaking a couple of my tennis rackets on the ground during competitions and could throw away an entire match by getting pissed off to the extent I couldn’t play a normal shot, I would have to slam every ball and keep getting angrier as it either hit the net or the back fence; it is a characteristic that stayed with me into my late teens. To this day I still have the same desire to compete although I have learnt over the years that the competing is the important part and sporting equipment is too expensive when I’m paying for it.

I remember liking one of the girls in the Zimbabwe tennis team and was really keen to impress her. On one of the competition days, while I was planning my move and how to be “the man”, one of my friends was stopping me from getting to the toilet and making me laugh any way he could… unfortunately, as I wasn’t going to fill out and put any real muscle on for at least another 10 years, he was big enough and strong enough to keep me pinned down until eventually I wet myself laughing. He then proceeded to go and tell everyone in the tournament that I had just wet myself and I got chased around by about 20 screaming kids who wanted proof… they finally caught me and she was in the group of 20. This may not have been the highlight of my tennis career but it certainly has stuck to this day!

Chapter 3 – Home School

oscarboult — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:18:37 +0000

Although Botswana would have seemed like paradise to my parents when they arrived, in reality it was just a dust bowl at the time. There were few paved roads in the town and even fewer amenities. Although there were a couple of play schools in town, the teachers at the play schools barely had an education above a play school level themselves which was a little scary as my parents wanted us to progress past playschool before we hit 15 years of age… not to be put off, without any experience whatsoever, mum opened up her own play School and the three of us spent the next 4 years at home!

This would typify the next few years of mum’s life; if it wasn’t there or needed doing, she would find a way to do it. Having left school at the age of 16 to go nursing, and having travelled around the world are so many years at an early age with her father who was in the British army visiting the colonies, Botswana was the perfect place for the entrepreneur that mum was already growing into. The play school soon became a place for the expatriate community to send their kids and became the premier play School in Botswana (not that hard I grant you, but it was a good start and kept the family occupied until we hit junior school).

It appeared at this time that mom was not the only person in the family that had an entrepreneurial streak running through her; the family found that out the hard way that I was a chip off the old entrepreneurial block when I decided to open up my own hairdressing salon at the play School (think Zohan without the skill). My father’s boss, a complete wally, had a son at the play School who was the same age as me; I decided to take him behind the back of the house and give him a new look. It appears that those safety scissors that you give to kids in play school aren’t quite as safe as they might first appear! When the kid’s folks came by to pick up “tufty” (the poor little bugger looked like a tennis ball that had gone through a meat grinder) a little later, the mum burst into tears and my dad’s boss had a right go at him. Although I got a good telling off in front of the kid’s parents, I knew what I had done couldn’t have been that bad as my parents started wetting themselves laughing after the boss had left! That was my last attempt at hairdressing until I started shaving my own head 30 years later!

www.sportingconnections.com

SportingConnections Press Release

oscarboult — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 07:17:24 +0000

Sunshine Coast-based adventure seeker Oscar Boult launched the sports networking

website, www.sportingconnections.com and it already looks set to keep pace with the online trend made popular by Myspace and Facebook.

Tapping into our nature for mateship and our reputation as ‘the great sporting nation’, the website attracted more than 1500 members in its first month, making it one of the fastest growing sites in the world. It seems funny that no-one has thought of the idea before now, but Oscar says while he has travelled the world making new mates, it wasn’t until he was a newcomer to the Sunshine Coast in 2006 that he had the brainwave for a website connecting sportspeople. “I was driving back to Brisbane for a round of golf with friends thinking ‘there must be a better way to meet people’ and the idea of a purpose-driven website specifically designed to connect sporty types just evolved from there.”

The rugged looking South African spent 13 years criss-crossing the globe in search of the next great adrenalin rush and found himself competing in the local Ironman event in Switzerland, hitting the ski slopes in Europe and diving from a yacht in the Caribbean. He has tried just about all of the 60 sports on his site. “Offering all sports in all countries globally, the website connects amateurs and professionals alike, from clubs and teams, coaches and trainers to individuals seeking play-buddies,” Oscar explains. “You can also set up games or training sessions, create new teams, chat in forums, or get-together to watch sporting events.”

Easy and free to use, there are already 100 international events listed. Members can submit events searchable by sport, date and distance. “The Event listings range from someone wanting to throw a ball around at their local beach or park on a weekend to pro-events like the Geneva Marathon,” Oscar said. Seems getting out and creating your own fun with like-minds this summer just got easier. Simply log on, search for players, drop them a line and go. www.sportingconnections.com

My (Sporting) Life – Chapter 2

oscarboult — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:35:41 +0000

After a month on a passenger liner with mum dealing with a couple of little brats trying to fling themselves overboard, the family arrived in Cape Town and, after disembarking and going through the usual hassle of customs, we jumped on the next train bound for Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, our home for the next 12 years.

Botswana was an amazing place to grow up and was (and still is) one of the few success stories in Africa. They had\have a strong economy, a peaceful culture, and are proud owners of the richest diamond mine in the world (http://www.khulsey.com/jewelry/diamond_mines_botswana.html). The Africans in Botswana are very different to the rest of Africa in that they have always been a peace-loving and relaxed culture (with the odd bit of witch-doctoring here and there). Compare this to their neighbour South Africa (where we moved to from Botswana later on) where the Xhosa’s and Zulus have been fighting for hundreds of years and still continue to slaughter each other to this day; or to Zimbabwe, another neighbour, where the country lies in ruin under a mad dictator, and you will realise just what a gem of a place Botswana actually is… a real diamond in the rough so to speak.

The other amazing thing about Botswana is the weather: if you want summer year round then this is the place to be. The average temperature in summer sits around 40-44 Celsius; I remember spending entire days in the swimming pool when it got up into the 50’s on occasion. I am not sure growing up in this sort of heat was conducive to comfortable living when I moved over to the UK in later years when I often thought I would freeze to death while half the people around me were wearing T-shirts. On the other hand, when it comes to doing sport in the heat, I love it; it seems that the hotter it gets the more of an advantage I have over my fellow competitors who seems to die once temps hit the 30’s… and once it gets over 40C I am in my element!

Our first house in Botswana was a comparative mansion to where we had been living in the UK; it had two bedrooms, a study (later converted to a third bedroom upon the arrival of my younger brother, Conrad, 4 years later), a kitchen and separate lounge, and a plot of land that contained… dust! But to my folks it was a real start at a new life and after the row upon row of council housing that they had just left, the open space of Africa seemed like another planet. Oh yes, we also had 2 maids thrown into the deal which took mum a bit of getting used to; I will never forget them as they became my two African mothers, Elda and Rebecca; the patience of these two lovely women was astounding as both myself and my brother are headstrong little buggers at the best of times and no doubt we must have pushed the boundaries at times. But in the years that they brought us up I never remember them for anything more than their beautiful smiles and constant support.

To be continued… www.sportingconnections.com

My (Sporting) Life – Chapter 1

oscarboult — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:33:28 +0000

My first memories seem to be of watching my father, wearing a white rugby jersey, crunching someone in a tackle into touch (out of the field of play for the non-rugby playing fraternity) on a dusty field in Botswana, just north of South Africa.

My second memory is that I wanted to be big and muscular, pretty unfortunate really when I was nick-named “Billy Bunter” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bunter) by my parents owing to my skinny legs and huge stomach as a baby; actually, til I was about 7 years old to be honest. Fortunately my huge stomach disappeared at some stage in my childhood and then I was just skinny without the stomach!

But back to the very beginning; I was born in Greenwich, London in October of 1974 to Pauline and Neil Boult, a couple of youngsters living in council housing struggling to make ends meet. My mum was a nurse, just getting over having my older brother 18 months previously, and my father a computer programmer working for the local council. My brother, Oliver (who I never got along with until a couple of years ago), was to play a big part in my desire to compete at everything that I came across for the rest of my life, from tiddlywinks to triathlon… but more about that later.

My mum had a really tough upbringing; travelling around the world with her Father (who was in the British army, a nasty abusive bugger) and an Irish Catholic mother who would have won the gold medal in consecutive Olympics had the “placing guilt” event ever made the starting line-up! Mum’s upbringing would have a major impact on the family as a whole and a lot the decisions she made throughout the course of our lives can be traced back to her childhood.

Mum was my hero growing up and is now my best friend and confidant; without her support I don’t think I would have achieved a lot of what I did. A defining moment later in my life was having her there at the finish line as I completed my first (and so far only) Ironman event in Switzerland in ’98, a memory I will always cherish… she also had to help me walk up and down the stairs to the apartment we had rented in Zurich for the next 4 days when my hips and knees felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to them!

With her background of travelling the world as a youngster, mum was aware that there was more to life than a crappy council house in London trying to keep the heating going; she started looking at newspapers for jobs around the world and one day saw an advert that had been posted by the Botswana government. They were looking for programmers for some new systems they were putting in and, after applying on my dad’s behalf, he got the job. So, at 9 months old, I was bundled up with the rest of their belongings and they got on the next boat leaving from London to Africa. To think if she hadn’t been brave enough to make this decision I could have grown up in London and been a “proppa geeza, innit!”.

To Africa and beyond… To be continued.

My (Sporting) Life – Introduction

oscarboult — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:31:56 +0000

Some people are extraordinary athletes and excel beyond all others (Lance Armstrong springs to mind), others are extraordinarily bad athletes but become famous nonetheless (Eric “the eel” Moussambani from Guinea, the world’s slowest Olympic swimmer)… And then there are the rest of us; I’m one of them, the rest of us!

Several people I have met over the years have suggested that I get my life story down in writing and I finally have the inclination to do so. I ask myself what I hope to achieve by doing this and the first thing that springs to mind is inspiration; if this story inspires even one person to get out there and try something new, to face up to a challenge they have been considering, or even to go for a walk, then I will feel like I have achieved something amazing.

The other reason, which is not quite so spiritual or exciting, is that I have the world’s crappest memory and thought it would be a good time to piece my life together… although this would sound ridiculous to most people, I am going to have to get my passport out once I get to age 18 in order to work out the where, what and how of my life up until today, age 33 and 3 quarters (for the more star struck amongst you I am a Libra).

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Oscar Boult, the guy who started www.sportingconnections.com! This is my life story. I have no idea how long it is going to take, no plan for it other than to tell the truth (I haven’t told anyone some of these stories, even my closest friends) and to find a way to dredge up the memories! Thank you for joining me for the ride!

Change of tack

oscarboult — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:26:57 +0000

Hi All

I have decided to write my life story out on the portal page of http://www.sportingconnections.com/component/option,com_portal/Itemid,67/ and will be updating my blog as I do so with each update

Technorati 2

oscarboult — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:56:27 +0000

http://technorati.com/claim/u22fvqw2h3” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile

Technorati

oscarboult — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:55:35 +0000

I just joined up with Technorati to see how it works, let’s give this a try:

http://technorati.com/claim/u22fvqw2h3” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile

You tube video advert added… pretty bloody funny

oscarboult — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:07:37 +0000

This is me learning how to kitesurf… my mate made it into an advert for me; that’s him you can hear giggling!

Check it out, pretty funny

New events component added

oscarboult — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:56:57 +0000

www.sportingconnections.com has added a new sporting events component to it’s ever growing site. Sports events of every kind, and from everywhere in the world, are being added. Feel free to come along and add your own.

Events component has been added and sporting events and companies joining the site

oscarboult — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:54:15 +0000

Well, it has been a tough month the last month, still trying to work out how to market the site online although the majority of my time has been spent contacting clubs and teams around the world. We have broken the 1000 user mark but still don’t have a newsletter or newspage as yet, hopefully we will be adding both these items before xmas.

The sporting events component was added about a week ago but unfortunately, owing to a glitch in the programming, heaps of events disappeared. Luckily the table is still growing and hopefully it will be a temporary setback. I am going to add a blog to the site over the next few days and a news page with competitions, give-aways and so on, try and make the site a little more sticky… will have to see what comes of it; I will keep you updated.

Ok, back to the grind, have a great day out there, wherever you are and I hope you get to do some sport.

Cheers

Oscar

A weekend of sports followed by working on a sports website

oscarboult — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:31:37 +0000

… life does not get any better! Cricket all day Saturday, drinks Saturday night and then a morning of frisbee with a guy that I actually met through www.sportingconnections.com . Then a mate of mine called and we went kitesurfing for the afternoon followed by watching a DVD and then a couple of hours working on the site. What a perfect weekend!

I wrote in the past that the manager of my gym mentioned that he would bring in a book regarding marketing and when I dropped by the gym today he had if there for me… the book is by a guy called Seth Godin and looks like a great book for working out what to do with an online marketing campaign so I will keep you up to date as I start to implement the plan.

Ok, gotta get back to work, the events component is nearly completed and as usual the testing involved is very time consuming… have to have it all right before it goes live

Catch you soon, have a wonderful day\night

Oscar

Getting drunk doesn’t help build a website but it’s fun

oscarboult — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:59:43 +0000

OK, just got back got back from a day of cricket and went down the cricket club for a few beers afterwards which, although heaps of fun, does not lead to a productive day of promoting the site. Good news though is that this week I took over the captaincy of my cricket side (for americans just think of cricket as baseball but the ball bounces on the ground before you have to hit it) and we had a great game for the first time today. Ok, we didn’t win but we had a moral victory as the side stuck it to the best side in the division and we showed we can stand up to the best just by changing our mindset. We are actually going to run the side through www.sportingconnections.com as up until now the communication amongst the team has been terrible. Only thing I would say is if you are not happy in whatever situation you are in… then don’t give up, just DO SOMETHING POSITIVE ABOUT IT! It felt like we won even though we lost and we definitely built on the friendships that have been started.

Ok, gotta go continue the drinking with my mate, have a great day and don’t forget, if you are going out drinking, you are going to hurt tomorrow But the best way to get rid of your hangover is going surfing so I guess a surf is on the cards for the morning. You may be wondering where my girlfriend is tonight (come to think of it it probably didn’t cross you mind); well, turns out that because I invited her to live with me up the coast, she expects me to give up cricket and my mates to dedicate my time to her… I know, but relationships are hard and I am in love with her! Question is, do you want a girl who wants to control your life… I think a few beers will sort that question out.

Have a great night or day, wherever you are and I will have a drink for you.

Love, hugs, kisses and all the rest

Oscar

New unique events component about to be launched

oscarboult — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:09:51 +0000

Hey all, I am back again, a hectic couple of days with the late nights working on www.sportingconnections.com and some interesting goings on down the cricket club… it’s all happening!

But the good news is that the 18 hour days are about to pay off with a new and exciting events component about to be added to the site. It will allow all users and companies to add sporting events to the site for free although companies will be able to create a company page in order to manage their sports events from a central location. This is hopefully going to become the biggest sports event table in the world within a year and as long as you are logged in you are able to refine the search quickly and easily. We are also going to be changing the look and feel of the site and feel of the site including adding a wall on the personal profile for people to leave you messages online and the look and feel of the tables across the site.

As for the cricket club, I have decided to take over as team manager and captain of the local cricket team I am a part of; as the 4th team we have been getting a bit of a rough ride, there has been a lot of bad attitude on the field, current captain and a couple of mates about to the leave the club etc… So instead of leaving I got them all todether for a pow wow and now we are going to get together as a core bunch of players with the previous captain as the vice captain and a couple of other senior players joining the party… we are going to get a bit of team spirit going and try and qualify for the finals in February; it is amazing how a bit of team spirit and some good friends can go a long way.

OK, the boss is calling, gotta get back to work Have a wonderful day and good luck finding your team mates and training partners!

Oscar

Aha, so that’s what I should be doing!

oscarboult — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:20:19 +0000

I met up with an online marketing consultant yesterday for a coffee and a debriefing on what I had been doing to date; just as I suspected, for my type of website I was not using my time efficiciently and, in effect, was banging my head against the wall trying to work it all out for myself… and I can tell you there are a few lumps and bumps around the cranium right now.

For anyone launching a website who has not been involved in websites before, DON’T TRY AND DO IT ALL YOURSELF! It is not worth it and you could save yourself days, weeks and event months, by talking to a professional who does it for a living. Yes, it is expensive when you have no budget, but so is the cost of living when the days slip away and you are getting frustrated – get some help.

I also learnt a lot more about friendly urls, breadcrumb urls etc. which it appears my developer decided not to put into the site, there is now going to be a time consuming (and probably money consuming) exercise of making the site search engine friendly. He tells me it is my fault as I wanted a password protected site so he never bothered and yet even the Latest News, FAQs etc all have horrible URLs? Oh well, c’est la vie, live and learn…. people, MAKE SURE you have friendly URLs and insist upon it no matter what type of site you have.

Ok, have to get back toward making this site grow, there are lots of sporty people out there who have no idea how to meet someone to do sport with and my job here is done… to ininity and beyond!!!

Have a great day and don’t forget, just 30 mins of exercise a day makes all the difference!

Cheers

Oscar

Where does the time go

oscarboult — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:35:56 +0000

Wow, can’t believe the weekend has come and gone as well as another Monday… where is all the time going? It is as though the universe just went into overdrive and things have sped up? And yet when I worked for someone else I could swear each hour was like a day at times

SportingConnections is going well and the numbers keep growing; I decided this weekend to havea total break from the site and just try and clear my brain and come back fresh today. I spent the weekend playing cricket, cycling with friends, taking my girlfriend and son to a group surf lesson and then had a some champagne and crackers on the beach just to round things off! What a great weekend but I couldn’t wait to get back to the site and kept a sneaky eye on people signing every few hours.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow though, I am going to see someone who may take over in an advisory capacity on where I should be heading with my online marketing; up until now I feel I have been blundering around a bit but I think I have learnt enough while doing it to make the meeting tomorrow worth my while. We are over 670 users now but I noticed this evening that some users are having issues while signing on to the site which is very frustrating! Oh well, we have found a workaround but I am not sure it is satisfactory.

Well, nearly midnight I and it has been another long day. Sleep well or have a great day depending on where you are in the world.

Cheers

Oscar

Help comes from the strangest of places

oscarboult — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:32:45 +0000

Ok, we have over 620 users this evening but I am starting to get frustrated at my lack of knowledge on how to advertise the site to the Billion plus sports users who I know would love to use the site. I was starting to wonder what the next step is and ended up speaking to the manager of my local gym here in Maroochydore; he got really excited about the site, joined it while I was there, and told me that he has read up a lot about internet marketing techniques and has a book he has downloaded and printed out which he will bring in for me to read. Isn’t it funny how help can pop up in the last place you would expect it!

Another great day for me personally today, started training in the gym again, a great evening catching up with my mates at cricket practice in the evening and a quiet beer reflecting on previous games. The good news is that my team mate offered to hand out flyers at the indoor cricket center he plays at… who knows, maybe someone is looking out for me today

Well, Friday night and back to the grind again, the site is not going to grow on it’s own. Just starting to do link exchanges this evening which is pretty time consuming and laborious. Luckily my mum is working flat out with me but is based in the UK so she keeps things ticking over while I sleep. I think with an international task force going hard at it we can only succeed; thanks ma, you are the best.

Anyone, peace, happiness and a great weekend of training and sports to all of you

Oscar

Another day another dollar less :)

oscarboult — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:55:37 +0000

Well, once again the site is outdoing initial expectations; we are up to over 600 members already today and the number is steadily increasing. As for me, another late night at the grind last night researching ways to market a site on the internet without it costing an arm and a leg… at the moment it is mainly google ads that I am relying on but I have found that although each individual ad is cheap to start off with, as soon as you start getting a few hits they pump the price up pretty quick. Considering I didn’t have a budget to start with and the high budget advert that I put on youtube (where I look half asleep) is the extent of the marketing so far, the site is doing amazingly well. It was also a surprise to find that I have had 15 people reading my blog already, I thought I was going to be writing to myself for the forseeable future.

The good news today is that a friend of mine who I used to coach for cycling has made an amazing offer to back me to help keep me going for a few more months as I try and launch the site…. with no strings attached. I actually met him when I was looking for a financial advisor before I started the site and gave up my job to try and launch it. Thank you David Wilkins, you are an awesome person and generous beyond belief, I know that when my site becomes really successful I will find a way to thank you!!!

In the meantime, as my developer lives in Ireland and I live in Australia, I am up til after 1am each morning and at times up til 4am. His day starts at about 5pm my time (with the 8 hour time difference) so I am still pulling 16-20 hour days at the moment. Fortunately the adrenalin of getting the new business going is starting to wear off and I am getting a chance to sleep a little in the afternoons; saying that, I felt really tired on the bike this morning after playing cricket last night. I am going to have to be very careful and make sure I keep getting my daily dose of multi-vitamins.

Well, back to the grindstone for now, have a great day and if you haven’t done some exercise today the old excuse of having no one to train with is gone Just check out www.sportingconnections.com and find your training partner now!

Peace, love and healthy living

Oscar

Our American buddies join the party

oscarboult — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:04:07 +0000

Wow, what a beautiful day to wake up to here in Australia; the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, my gorgeous girlfriend next to me and a quick wander over to the computer and…. what the hell!!!?! The site has about 20 users on and a few teams from the USA; absolutely wonderful!

With such a big sports crazy market in the USA and so many people on the move around the country and worldwide, the site is going to suit so many people over there. It is so exciting to know that SportingConnections will appeal to so many people of every sporting ability and sports background.

We are now up to 584 users as of this writing and while I was swimming at lunch time I came up with so many new possibilities for the site… staring at that black line and feeling the water flowing around your entire body is such a good way to free your mind for what it is supposed to do… expand it’s horizons.

Anyway, off to play cricket now, it is nice to be able to get back to all the sports that I love so much after spending 20 hours a day on the site for the last 3 weeks since it launched.

Peace and love

Oscar

New website launched that will change how people meet for sport

oscarboult — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 08:19:24 +0000

A free website, www.sportingconnections.com, has been launched that allows you to find sports partners, teams, coaches, personal trainers and sports events anywhere in the world and, best of all, it is free. The site is the brainchild of Oscar Boult, committed traveller and sports nut, who decided to do something about the lack of internet based options for finding others to do sport with as he travelled.

The site allows you to create a sports profile for yourself and set your location by using google maps (privacy assured) and allows you to then search for other members, teams and events anywhere around the world by your sporting interests, by distance from where you live and a multitude of other search options. This allows you to find others who play the same sport, age, ability and location (or of course, before you go on holiday or travelling you can find people in the area you are going)

SportingConnections includes around 100 sports already, everything from walking, hiking and lawn bowls, to the more extreme sports of motocross, surfing, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding and kitesurfing; of course all the normal sports like football, soccer, golf, baseball, basketball, rugby and running are included as well.

499 sports users and growing

oscarboult — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 01:20:35 +0000

Absolutely stoked this morning, first of all things have been sorted out with my girlfriend last night, it was just the usual mis-communication I think everyone has in a relationship; back together as happy as ever. Then I logged on this morning and found that we are reaching the half-thousand mark (sounds so much more than 500 doesn’t it)?

Anyway, got up and went for a run this morning and now back to the grind on the site. Just trying to figure out the nuts and bolts of link exchanging at the moment, currently have a link page but it is empty other than sub-headings. If anyone has any ideas on the best way to go about this feel free to drop me a line. Looking forward to another day of growing the site.

The relationship is taking strain.

oscarboult — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:14:29 +0000

After spending between 16-20 hours a day on getting the website up and running I finally decided that I needed to start getting a bit of a life again. I thought that I would spend this weekend catching up with some friends who I hadn’t seen for nearly 4 weeks as the site launched and playing cricket for the club again. I then planned to go for a cycle with my girlfriend and some friends and then spend the afternoon teaching my girlfriend how to surf.

Unfortunately my girlfriend was hoping for a bit of quality time this weekend which did not involve my mate and so I find myself once again working on the site as she decided not to come round… the irony of the situation being that it rained so it would have been a perfect morning to laze in bed and go out for a coffee and some breakfast and relax a bit.

The funny thing is that when you are working for someone else, an 8 hour day feels like a week sometimes and yet when you launch your own idea it seems like 24 hours flashes by in seconds! Oh well, hopefully there will be a bit of normality returning to my life over the next couple of weeks as I learn a bit more about online marketing and set up a good strategy to grow the site.

The number of users is climbing

oscarboult — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:18:00 +0000

Well, the site has been up for exactly two weeks now and we have 473 members already, making this one of the fastest growing sites on the internet. I have had really positive feeback about the site so far and it looks like www.sportingconnections.com is going to keep growing rapidly.

It is a wonderful feeling to watch something grow that you have thought of, designed and then launched. It was a tough road getting the site set up, I went through 5 developers over the year that the site was being developed and lost a fair amount of money… but kept at it because I believe in the concept and it is something that I am going to use.

We are also up to over 20 teams now and this section is growing rapidly as well.

I will keep you posted on how we go over the next couple of weeks.

The idea behind SportingConnections

oscarboult — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:02:00 +0000

WHY

I travelled the world for over 13 years and participated in just about every sport at every level, from social to semi-professional; during my travels, and more importantly when I returned to Australia, I found that it was always difficult to find training partners, teams or other people interested in doing sport; last year I found myself driving down to Brisbane for a game of golf (the latest sport I have taken up) as my friends who played were based down there. When I decided to try and find someone up here on the Sunshine Coast to golf with, I realised that with all that modern technology out there, there was no way I could just look up someone who was interested in a game of golf…. or sparring, tennis, running, surfing, kite surfing; or any other sport I might want to play… and so I decided to do something about it.

WHAT

www.sportingconnections.com is a FREE community site I set up that allows you to search sports profiles of the site’s members, locally and globally, who are interested in joining you to play sports of every kind. You are able to find training partners, sports teams (or add your own team and look for team mates), clubs, communities, coaches, personal trainers and sports events.

You are able to add your own team or club and members from all around the world will be able to contact you for free. You are able to use an online notice board for your team members to communicate and, as the team manager\captain, you can email all team members via your team message system.

WHERE

The site is already growing incredibly fast and users are signing up from all around the world and adding their teams, social training groups and clubs. The idea behind the site is to create a global community that allows members to go anywhere in the world and find people to train or play sport, whatever the sport and whatever the skill level. As shown in our company logo, we are “Building friendships through sport”.