University sport is where Sportmeets’ roots are. Over the last five years at Glasgow Uni we’ve played actively volleyball, football and squash, tried kayaks and lawn bowls, gone hiking, climbing and running, and even attended exercise and salsa classes (I am not sure about Miro, but I did!), so there’s quite a bit of personal experience in what we do now. We know that there’s much to improve in how students go about finding others to play a squash game with or participate in a university squash ladder. We also know that the captain of the volleyball club still has to send out at least 5 email reminders till they get everyone to confirm their attendance for the Sunday match and that there are over 50 contacts on the mailing list although there were never more than 15 people at the training session. This and much more is what we set out to improve with the Sportmeets project. And there’s no better place to tell the right people about it than the annual conference of the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS).

This year’s conference will be held at the Keele University in Staffordshire between 13th and 16th July. The theme of the conference is about finding innovative ways of delivering sports at the universities, to which Sportmeets certainly has a lot to say. With over 100 UK universities represented by their sports union presidents, directors of sport, and sport development officers, it will be an exciting event and we’re looking forward to see more and more students and universities discovering the benefits of Sportmeets soon!

You’ll probably know that organising sports groups has always been at the heart of Sportmeets. What you might not know yet is that there are Sportmeets groups on every single continent by now (although I’m not sure whether Antarctica counts in or not).  And seeing ‘crowds’ as diverse as university volleyball clubs, workplace ping-pong ladders or Sunday-football-in-the-park groups joining in, we decided that we’ll ditch the crowd terminology and put the right name on each of them instead. So you can now choose the type of group that you’re creating on Sportmeets – we are starting off with clubs, teams, ladders and, well, groups.

This is an important step in shaping Sportmeets to best fulfil the needs of each particular type of sports group. Here, let me give you an example. You don’t really have (or need) a secretary or a treasurer in your Thursday night football kickabout group, right? Likewise, the Chairman of a long-established squash club might frown upon being publicly called a mere Crowd organiser. So, that’s the big news. Keep the feedback coming! Chances are high that  your suggestion might make it to the next post!

Happy sporting!

It’s been a busy and exciting fortnight at the Sportmeets office in Prague for our international team. We’d love to share some cool thing we have been up to recently.

Following our promotion at the two events in Perth and Prague, we’ve been receiving a lot of helpful comments & tips on what you like and what we could improve about Sportmeets. We’ve heard from players, captains, coaches, universities and even national sports associations. Thanks for this, everyone! We love reading your feedback and we are happy to transform it into an even better experience of organising games and sports events for everyone.

Introducing: One-on-one game challenges

This is something we have really tackled and are proud to bring to all players! If you play tennis, squash, badminton or any other sport where it is only about you and your opponent (boxing counts too!), you can now challenge another player  directly and set up the game in no time. Sportmeets will let you know as soon as your would-be opponent has accepted your challenge. So, give challenges a try →

Or, if you are not so much bothered as to who are you going to play against, simply create an open match within your crowd and you’ll be notified when  someone takes up your challenge. In any case, if you want to play, we will make sure there’s nothing to hold you back from getting a game set up! Play with the same people often? — then why not organise a formal sport ladder to find out who is really the best in your club, at work or among friends!

Also stay tuned for our still-secret extension code-name “Project Challenger” as well as recommendations on who to play as we are revamping our sport interest matching algorithm!

Yeah, by the way, sporting is social so don’t keep your games for yourself ! Just imagine the upcoming  FIFA 2010 Football Championships being played behind a closed door! So share your matches on Facebook and Twitter and have your friends show their support by voting on who they think will win! They can do so directly at the meet page or via our Facebook app. You can also gently remind everyone which of the two players they should give their vote for (Hint: tell them to vote for you!). That’s what friends are there for, right?

Well then, there’s a lot going on right now,  so watch this space for further updates on what’s cooking in the Sportmeets kitchen!

The last weekend in May was an exciting one for Sportmeets with two interesting sporting events at which we attended, too! So let me tell you what it was like at the big volleyball event in Scotland.

The Perth tournament was great as it’s always been: excellent organization, lots of teams from all over the place, a lot of sun and even more rain, crazy team names and costumes, but also some really good volleyball action and loads of fun on and off the courts.

It was good to see some friends and teams from previous years coming back, too. Especially teams with names like the ‘Italian Leather Sofas’ or the ‘Juicy Lucy’s’ are quite easy to remember! And the guys playing in an assortment of superhero costumes were probably the highlight of this year…perhaps along with the Spartans, half-naked and complete with spears and helmets.

My team, the Skillful foreigners, was a bit more conventional as to the name and the attire, but then, we like to take volleyball a bit more seriously and a costume of, say, Spiderman does not exactly add to one’s performance (although I have to admit that it keeps mud away when diving for the ball).

There were some pretty decent teams in the men’s division 1, indeed, and the ocassional downpour or wind gusts made it a whole different experience than your standard indoor match. On the whole we can be satisfied. We only lost against one team – twice. Disguised as a bunch of middle-aged Czechs on a weekend trip to Scotland, these guys went on to become unbeaten winners of the tournament. Congrats to team Pribram CZ! And for us it was once again the 2nd place and a nice bottle of whisky – a very Scottish prize!

Of course, Perth tournament was a great place to meet people that play sports and talk to them about Sportmeets. I was excited to tell people about it and also curious about what the opinions of so many volleyball players would be. So, with my camping hat on and a sign up sheet in hand, I introduced Sportmeets to over 30 teams from across Scotland – this is as much grassroots as awareness-raising can possibly be! And, for those who missed the pleasure to chat with me, we had several shiny Sportmeets posters hanging in some of the most frequented places (like the Aberdeen Angus steak & burger stand!). A big thanks to the SOVT committee for their help with this.

Overall, I am really happy that our idea of a website to help anyone find the right people to sport with and  manage sports groups without the hassle has received a big thumb-up from all the teams I spoke with. We are therefore looking forward to welcoming some new volleyball teams among the Sportmeets community.

And as for Perth, I’m sure I’ll be back next year again! And I hope my team will be one of many that got organized for the weekend on Sportmeets.

We’ll be all over the place for the upcoming weekend spreading the word about Sportmeets.

Volleyball Up North

You’ll be able to find us in beatiful Scottish city of Perth attending the Scottish Open Volleyball Tournament from 29th to 30th May. The SOVT is the largest volleyball tournament in the UK with over 100 teams attending each year and is currently in its 26th year.

Peter’s no newcomer to the tournament and together with his team – The Skillful Foreigners - will attempt to repeat the last year’s success of winning the consolation prize in the mixed-teams category – a nice bottle of Famous Grouse Scotch whiskey!

And of course, with so many volleyball groups and teams attending not only from UK but all over the world, we are excited to spread the word about how Sportmeets can help each one of the teams to get organised, meet and play volleyball hassle-free! So if you’re at the SOVT this weekend, watch out for the guy in a blue ITALIA volleyball T-shirt passionately explaining what exactly a crowd is!

Dragon Boats Down South

Further down south and to the east, Sportmeets is also sponsoring The Red Devils Dragon Boat – one of 19 to tackle on the rugged waters of Vltava for the Dragon Boat Charity Challenge organised by the Prague Rotary Club.

The event starts at 10:00 on Saturday May 29th. The spectator area is shown below:

Stay tuned for the photos & get updates through our Facebook page.

Good luck to all and have fun sporting!

We are thrilled that after 4 months of intensive development and caffeinated nights, we can begin our public beta service. We have opened up the registration to everyone and anyone, so that it is even easier to find the right people to play sports with.

We have built what we expect to be some really useful tools for running successful sporting groups since both Peter and Miro – the two co-founders – have been in the shoes of the event organizers, players, referees and coaches! Some of the cool things we are most excited about are:

• Notify people of new meets and let them confirm attendance via SMS, Facebook, Twitter or Email
• Track how much people owe you for attending meets you organize; then get paid via PayPal right on Sportmeets
• Challenge others for matches, then record and share the scores

So go ahead and get playing with Sportmeets →

We are fresh on the pitch – improving the product continuously, so your feedback and impressions, whether good or bad is always welcome at hello@sportmeets.com.

Happy sporting from the crowd here at Sportmeets.

OK, so let’s hear the big news on the football event that Sportmeets will be holding on 29th April in Athens!

What’s happening?

As we are presenting Sportmeets at the Openfund Demo Day on Wednesday 28 April, we thought that the best way to show what Sportmeets does is to let it do what it is best at: organize a game of football! This will be the first-ever public meet held on Sportmeets and a pretty cool place to be on a Thursday night! Everybody’s invited!

What will it look like?

Football, great people and fun. We have a nice 5-a-side football pitch booked for Thursday evening and there will be 5 games of 20 minutes each, with short breaks in between. We’d like to see and meet quite a few of you there, so hopefully this will give everyone a chance to join us at the event at least for a while.

Where and when?

We will be playing on the Coco-Mat Field, close to the Kifissia train station. Here’s the location: 165 Tatoiou Str. Kifissia – http://bit.ly/d0Cvc8

A big thanks to Coco-Mat for having us there! Also, we’ll be happy to pick people up at the train station if needed, just let us know in your RSVP!

We will be meeting after 6pm and start the first game at 6.30pm. The games should finish around 8.30pm.

How to sign up?

The easiest way is to follow this link that will take you to the homepage of the OpenCoffee football crowd, where you can join the group and sign up for the football game at the time you prefer. If you are not on Sportmeets yet you’ll have to create an account first.

Do you feel like playing more than one game? Excellent! Just sign up to for several games then! And, once you’re at it, we’d really appreciate your thoughts and feedback on how you like the Sportmeets application!

Anything else?

Of course! We have a nice prize that travelled in a bottle all the way from Scotland to give out to the ‘MVP’ of the event. (Note that it’s not the ‘minimum viable product’ this time.) Whoever scores the most goals will be named the most valuable player and grab the prize!

So Miro and I, together with the Openfund guys, are looking forward to meeting you all on Thursday for a different kind of social event this time! Please, don’t forget to tell your friends and bring them along, too! You can also follow us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss out on any updates or annoucements!

So we are off to Athens again! Last time we enjoyed it a lot. The November weather was great, the hotel proved less exciting than its location near the Omonia square would suggest, and the Openfund gave us the green light to kick-start the Sportmeets project. What is ahead of us this time then?

OK, the first major change is that we’ll be staying in a safer area, so Miro might actually take his camera with him this time. Hope we can get some nice pics for the blog, too.

The second big thing is that we will be presenting Sportmeets at the Openfund Demo day, which will take place on 28th April. You can find out more about the event on Openfund’s own blog. We are looking forward to meeting up again with all the guys from the Openfund, as well as the other funded startups – Fashinating, YouScan and Listiki.

Of course, Sportmeets is about sports in the first place, so we are taking our football boots along, too! Following the Demo Day, on Thursday (29th April) Sportmeets will host its first ever public sporting event: a proper game of football! (originally we thought of ice-hockey, but British Airways won’t let us take the hockey sticks in the cabin luggage for some reason…)

This is an open event and everybody is invited – or more precisely – everybody will be invited – via Sportmeets! So if you feel like you could do with a relaxing, healthy kickabout on Thursday evening, just watch this space for my next post about the exact place and time, and how to RSVP. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Well, here we come, Athens, so get your souvlaki and ouzo ready! Yeah, and we hope there will be no volcanos causing trouble this time…

It’s been a while since I posted the first part of the Sportmeets story. Now, with the first 4 months of my involvement (or is it a love affair?) with Sportmeets successfully behind me, and another big trip to Athens ahead of us, it’s time to tell the world what made me join the team and think that an application like Sportmeets could ever work, that is, make it easier for people to play sports, wherever they are.

I don’t want to sound too cheesy, but I’ve traveled and spent some time in quite a few countries over the last couple years (precisely the last 5 years if you need to know). My traveling was something between what you’d call ‘low-cost backpacking’ (usually involving Teva sandals, big backpack and a cheap local equivalent to the Rough Guide)  and ‘living abroad’ (usually involving life outside one’s country…). The peculiarity of this type of traveling is that whichever place you come to, you are a tourist for at least the first month. Then, gradually, you kind-of master the language, get to know the locals, appreciate the cuisine and stop ignoring the customs… and when you finally start feeling (and resembling) a local yourself, it’s time to ‘go home’.

Anyway, my point relates to sports, in case you started wondering where this post is going to. As a backpacker, holidaymaker or just a roadtripper you never worry too much about playing a particular sport, since you never spend enough time in one place anyway and there’s just so much to see (Hint: think ‘frisbee’ on these trips). However, if you work and live in one place for three months, and you happen to have a favourite sport or two, you will almost certainly miss it a lot if you don’t get to play it! And that was my case over the 4 summers I spent in the US, Mexico, Spain and Catalonia (OK, I know, Catalonia is not OFFICIALLY a country).

So here I was last august, with more free time, beaches and sun than ever, in the Catalonian city of Tarragona, wondering why finding a game of beach volleyball, football or tennis can take so much time and effort even if you happen to speak Spanish and Catalan. Apparently, just typing in ‘volei playa en Tarragona’ didn’t do the job. Of course, not every single group of occassional volleyball players that meet up whenever they find time can keep a dedicated website with the game schedule for the whole summer, even if this would made my life easier. And,I thought, as with the Joe the Organizer from the first part of the story there must be many people like me with exactly the same problem. Why not make it easier to discover sports wherever you live? Well, that’s what you can do now with Sportmeets.

Well, this is my story, short but true, that made me think that becoming part of Sportmeets might be worth it. And had Miro not ask me to join him as a co-founder on that rainy October evening, I would certainly be his first paying customer today!

CHEESE-ROLLING

Which do you think is the world’s most ‘cheesy’ nation (read ‘cheese-lovers’)? The French? The Dutch? The Italians? Nope. Apparently the English. What makes me think so? Well, check the video below.

The annual event that has been held for hundreds of year at the Cooper Hill in Gloucestershire involves rolling a round of Double Gloucester cheese off the top of the hill and…chasing it. You can imagine that since the cheese gets a head start and reaches speeds of over 70 mph, this is not an easy feat. Thus, rather than having to catch the cheese in mid-run, it’s the first person to get to the bottom of the 200m-long hillside that wins (and gets the cheese!)

As you can imagine, the activity, as any other, is usually accompanied with occassional, minor injuries…no, seriously, people end up with broken bones and sprained ankles here. And the runaway cheese can easily knock off a spectator, too. OK, here’s the promised video. Judge for yourself:

Gloucester Cheese Rolling 2009

What else than love for cheese would make you even consider doing this??

One more fact probably not worth remembering is that, due to the food rationing in the UK, between 1941-1954 cheese-rolling was ‘played’ with a big round of wood that had a small piece of cheese inside.

Anyway, if you don’t feel like breaking your neck to get your daily amount of protein, check Sportmeets for some more conventional but perhaps equally entertaining sporting options in your area!