Thames Path Mighty Hike 2024 gallery now live - (well it was last week - live during the event)

 

It's always all go at the start of a Mighty Hike - intrepid Hikers being Mighty !
The Thames Path marathon start - 2024

All the mighty hike free download galleries this year (and actually past years too) are listed via https://pic2go.co.uk/macmillan

So far this year - data uploads allowing - all the images have been provisionally tagged (about 95% accurate) and online through the afternoon and by the time the last person crosses the line we have had their photos up within 60 seconds...

We then correct those last 5% (of barcodes hidden/numbers flapping) in the office manually - sunday or monday after the event... and barcodes are significantly more accurate and faster than "cloud AI number recognition" and also more private and massively faster (and cheaper) than face recognition. One day we might get to doing the 5% remaining in the office with AI help, but for now human processing is both very fast, and efficient and picks out the nice photos for this blog... (and for any image processing  companies reading - those AI tools you use are about 40 times slower compared to ours on a local machine with the pic2go barcodes - so once you have a race with more than 500 images - and we regularly take 30,000 at an event - this is a not a competiton, plus we haven't had to upload the full size images).

Gallery traffic over the past few months - spot the mighty hikes / every weekend

 
So this weekend was the Thames path might hike - with the full distance to a new finishing location in Henley-on-Thames and the sunday hike finish at the usual location - the beautiful meadows that align the banks of the lovely Cookham Moor near Cookham, a fantastically wide part for the sailing club to enjoy slow running water.

Having the photos up online so quickly means that the participants can use them for their fundraising proof - and it's shown that having the proof makes a massive difference to the amount of money that people can raise.

This is in the members only Thames path facebook group - https://www.facebook.com/share/p/RfoRaCrqCaNfkxTy/ but here's a screen shot too... showing how it's done !

Top celebration and finishing pose from Anna

And we see loads of uses - remember this is just the publically shared posts (not the ones just shared with only their friends) https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/mightyhike/

What we see is the biggest rise in downloads within about 12 hours of the event - ie get home, rest and then the first thing people are doing is getting their proof ready to talk to their friends - which means that for saturday events - the socials on Sunday with family and friends are the most important conversation people are having - and that's the fundraising opportunity - people don't tend to ask people twice for donations. So they have to have their photos all ready and ontime for that conversation and we have to be there handing it on a plate for them !

What we do inevitably see time and time again across almost all events - is the event companies social media team/person only get into the office and do things on monday by about lunchtime. There may have been some automated emails over the weekend - but they are not personalised and specific - which these days things have to be in order to get engagement. We actually have the ability to build automated bulk personalised/custom emailing that would send a participant a link to their specific gallery images - and events could do a mailchimp / mailmerge email to them - delivering direct engagement and proof to them almost immediately after the event. We've done it in the past for events - but there is always the GDPR issue of us emailing on behalf of the event - I'd really rather we didn't get that data ! Being able to do this sort of thing as a fundraising reminder is pretty simple - and incredibly powerful, and it's also a good way to get previous participants to enter this years event again - by reminding them of their efforts last year !

Which reminds me - Arundel 10k anyone ? http://www.arundelscouts.org.uk/10k/ - probalby one of the most private courses you'll ever have the opportunity to run at, and historic, and you get to run through the middle of the keep and the Castle portcullis entrance - which isn't normally open to the public !

and now a few silly photos to remember this is all fundraising for a great cause and having fun whilst being challenged !

If you look closely into the distance you can just see...

Great Family finishing at the full finish - triple thumbs up !

gotta love a marshal mighty hello at the lock gate

It wasn't raining that much, but the ice cream hut was shut... in July

The Royal Wave outside the castle

even more royal waves en-route

UNICORNS SIGHTED !

Careful walking at the Thames Yatch club

And it all started with such a sunny start on the Sunday too for the Half

Strong finish in Henley-on-Thames - the Y of Y not !

Third place team in the same time jump competition photo

YY for the why not !!

A proper coreographed team photo - will make a memory for life

When they finished at the end - they went for the bus-passenger configuration - which is harder to get a team photo... and not quite so memorable - just as well he recorded it...

So - I'm just arrived after a 5:30h drive up for the peak district Mighty Hike tomorrow - through the 33DegC M1 motorway at 50mph, which is indeed excellent for the fuel economy. The team are ready to go and looking forwards to it, and live photos during the event again - and hopefully not raining in the afternoon - it's looking thundery...

On the bright side - on Sunday - as the Half is on saturday - on the way home I get to go to Birmingham Alexandra stadium to watch the National Athletics Championships and see the eldest daughter compete - so fingers crossed for that (she came 6th at the National Schools last weekend...so doing ok)...

So - until next time - take care in the heat, keep hydrated, factor 50 and enjoy ! (and don't forget to enter the Arundel 10k)

Anthony