Podcast transcription 

John Campbell 0:03
Welcome to the inspired and active podcast. This is where we offer hints and tips and advice on being more active and connected to the outdoors. This is where we interview inspirational guests to share their focus and their ideas. And this is where we really want to try and work with you and give you help to be more confident as a parent and as a, as a coach, to your children, and others to help develop them to be the best they can be. My name is John Campbell. I’m a coach and a parent of four. And I want to show and share and discuss ideas with you. To help us all make a small difference in this world today. We want to encourage the appreciation of what’s around us. And we want to make a small difference in the world today. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. And let’s get into the conversation.

Welcome back to the INspired and Active podcast. And today we really want to talk about adventure, the spirit of adventure creating an adventure but the whole idea of going on an adventure now this to me over my years has been a critical and the most enjoyable element of everything I do. I’ve always really enjoyed going on adventures but also organizing adventures for other people and just seeing the enjoyment that people get from being on an adventure. But let’s step back for a minute and discuss what an adventure is. Now an adventure means very different things to different people. And that’s the great thing about the adventure to one person could be jumping off a cliff or climbing the highest rocky crag on a hill and adventure to someone else could be a simple Hill walk or simply going into the woods to do something they haven’t done before. Because that’s really what adventure is. Adventure is experiencing something unusual to you; I think it has to have an element of challenge. And it really has to have an element of uncertainty that you don’t really know how this is going to work out. But we need to have an element of that uncertainty of the excitement. And then you really need the adventure needs to be planned and considered. That’s also important; you can turn up and do an adventure, without any planning or consideration about how you’re going to go about things. Just before we move on, I want to explain a different type of adventure. This is a Jew adventure. This is something that we have brought to the market to really try and engage with users in a different way. One of the challenges you have when creating adventurer is really getting people engaged. Now, what a geo adventure is, it allows you to create geo markers. Now, these are just locations that you can pin on a digital map typically on a webpage on a mobile phone. And then dropping these geo markers which just when someone gets close to them with their phone, using this style of the app we have or a geocaching app or something similar, there are a few apps like that, the phone will indicate that you’ve passed over the mic. So you can without putting anything physically on the ground, you can actually then make up an adventure, which actually allows a user to look for a mark. But not you don’t have the difficulty of laying out a trail and collecting in the trail and making sure everything’s there, you can use a geo adventure, which allows you to put these markers down and then have an amazing adventure looking for these markers, putting clues and everything around about them without all the hassle. So we will talk about your adventures. And we do offer some geo adventures that we have built. And these are available to be downloaded from the app stores or the play stores. So what I want to do in this podcast is really discuss the four steps that are important to start creating your adventure. Now, this isn’t written in an extreme adventure with all the risks attached. What we’re looking at here is creating an adventure to get you out and about and get your family out and about and really to really push the boundaries slightly, maybe create a challenge that you you’re not used to doing as a family. But there are key things to make sure that you actually get this Deland rate especially with your teenage kids because if they’re anything like my teenage kids, you’ll find as a real mixture of our I don’t want to do this, or it’s not exciting or not again, dad. And that’s what we’re trying to look at. We’re not looking at the extremes. venture, but it’s more the practical but enjoyable and challenging expedition for your family. So let’s define an adventure as something fun and purposeful. And in an engaging experience, which takes you out of your norm. And now that’s the key thing taking out of the norm, something that you don’t normally do. Now, there are four key areas we want to cover off. Now the first of these is, is a purpose you need to develop and deliver a purpose, there is absolutely no point in just going out without really considering and setting your own challenge, which comes from having a purpose, the people doing the adventure with you have to understand what the outcome is, what are they trying to do. Now, this could be either walking to the top of a hill, it could be finding a certain type of animal or plant if you’re going on a nature adventure, or it could be finding a cave, but they need to know what the outcome is. So you need to develop a purpose. And I’ve seen a lot of people saying we’re going to an adventure, but they don’t actually set out what they’re trying to achieve. They said we’re just going to go out for a couple of hours. And that really won’t sit well with with a lot of people like to understand what is it they’re going to achieve. And that’s important when it comes on to the second point because you develop your purpose, but then you have to create anticipation, that’s the second step. And adventure is all about the consideration the planning and the anticipation that you’re doing something that is out with your normal day to day, something that you you will look forward to but while hope you look forward to it. Still, something you can then really start considering in your own mind and start your own actual planning, for one thing, I found really useful and to help us anticipation of adventure is to try and see it set now by seeding it. I mean, if you’re doing an adventure, maybe it’s next month or in a few weeks. And to help this anticipation send out an early challenge, send out something that gets people thinking.

A great way to do this is to use a text message or whatever message you use WhatsApp and send a series of messages to do increase that kind of anticipation to see on these messages, give a clue give a wee bit of knowledge about what they’re going to be doing. Or I’ll give them an actual challenge. Or a lot of people like the old fashioned approach. So why don’t you consider a postcard with a few clues about what the challenge or the adventure is going to be? Or it could be something more practical, if maybe you have a fun challenge where you have to click things, and you send something out which gets them thinking about what is just about ahead of them but really be quite creative in this because that is the anticipation and it’s this anticipation that will really help the adventure when you get going. The third point in creating your adventure is really to make it fun and engaging. Now, this is a really challenging part if you’ve got a mixed group especially if you you’ve got some people who already are saying well I don’t want to go on this adventure. But if you’ve built into separation, what you now need to do is making it make it engaging if you’re going on a long trek, try and think how can we mix it up? How can we actually get some variation in it, so we’re not just walking for a long time? Now we can give you some good examples of this but really look at things like geocaching. If you’ve ever geocache, know what geocaching is, is around the world. There are thousands and 10s of thousands of caches, which are just small boxes hidden away in walls or behind rocks, or in more intriguing places and cities, you have to find now these geocaches are located on maps, and there’s lots of apps you can pull down to find these geocaches. So maybe that would help mix things up. If you’re on a longer track, but equally, just do your own thing. Get them if you’re working with teenagers, get them basically put some challenges in could be speech challenges, claiming challenges. Just put these things in, if you can actually gamify it in some way. Now gamification on a challenge changes the whole scope of it because then suddenly, there’s a bit of competition. there’s a bit of reward at the end. But mix it up. If there’s a long walk into the adventure, maybe you’re going into exploring then try and mix it and make it fun and don’t repeat it too often. We often see mistake of somebody just doing the same thing each time and then then then you will find that doesn’t sit well with your group either if it’s repeated too often. And that leads us to the fourth part is really to motivate and connect and really expand this idea of gamification to keep it interesting. Try and introduce some scoring process where a person can build up a score doesn’t have to be really competitive against each other. But self-motivation works to get people to if they find things, they get different scores of the go along. And it’s, it just allows you to build it up in the group and to build these challenges as you go. So these are the four key steps and building a purpose, creating anticipation, delivering a fun engagement, and motivating and connecting through gamification that I think is really important in an adventure. And we’ve created an adventure creation blueprint, which is a just a document which you can download from our website, I’ll give you the links in the podcast. And also, we’ve created a series of mobile apps, which really allow you to start creating your own adventure Advent. Now we’ve, we’ve created my geo adventure, and myjio scatter. Now, these are two products that allow you to go onto our website, our website and build the adventure area that you want to work in, put in some points, put in different information for your adventure players to find and then that will automatically be synchronized to the mobile phone, to really allow the user or the player to follow this and engage them in the adventure. Now, this is a great way to get them out. And it’s a great way for you to really plan. And you can create as many adventures as you want anywhere in the world for as many players as you want. Now, this could be for your own family, it could be your community, or start just a few people going out yourselves that creates this engagement create something different. And if you want more information about my geo, it’s basically on our website, my geo active comm again; I’ll put it into the podcast notes. And there will be offers the download is free; you can play them for free. So could you give it a go? And I’d be really interested in any feedback you can give us so really get out there and try an adventure and adventure is getting out of your norm. It’s really engaging with people or getting people out in the outdoors. It’s so important in today when there is so much kind of teenage obesity around about inactivity, people not getting outdoors people being kind of restricted being risk-averse is you have to really motivate and try and get your family and get your children to love the outdoors. really enjoy the challenge and the fun of it. And I hope you can get outside, have some fun, and just let us know what works and what doesn’t. We’re always really keen to hear from you. Thanks for listening, and we’ll speak to you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai