Hi Guys, Thanks everyone for your contributions this year. Thanks for the positive feedback Charl and others. As far as news/coverage goes... its just seems spread over too many platforms. We had people telling us they couldn't believe how much easier it was to follow and how much more info there was this year and then other people (ie. on this platform) saying info seemed harder to come by. We would really just like to get everyone to the same place to run commentary and updates on the race. This year we actually tried to get a forum built into the Freedom Website but were strongly advised against it in the end for site security reasons. There is no doubt that the main platform has been twitter over the past few years. We will still continue to use twitter for important announcements and updates but don't want to oversaturate our twitter feed with too much stuff that is not of public interest. The past 2 years has seen a big shift toward facebook (and instagram) as they lend themselves to more visual coverage too. This year was definitely the year of WhatsApp (for those in the know). The main group was massive and non-stop! Look away from your phone for a couple hours and you would have 200 msgs waiting. As race director, I actually opted to leave the group as there was just too much discussion/distraction. The group was not exclusive as anyone could add people but it still meant you had to know about it to get into it. In future years we would like to bring everyone to one central meeting place to run commentary, share stories, updates and follow Freedom Challenge TOGETHER. We will do a bit more research into the best platform but at this stage i think a Facebook Group is going to be best. For those adventure racing dot-watchers you will know how well the "Expedition Africa Lovers" facebook group works. it creates an online platform where everyone can contribute, add pictures, videos, link pictures etc. The average Freedom Rider is 51 years old and in years gone by Facebook has been more for the younger generation but this year there is no doubt that that has been the most reliable and readily available source of info. The freedom challenge facebook page has had an average of 70 000 posts viewed per week, 80% of which are creating engagement and interaction with viewers. (info available to us from Facebook) so this seems to be the best avenue for Freedom Challenge in future. Facebook definitely has a much older subscriber base than 10 years ago so it seems to be the correct fit for this generation of Freedom's followers. So if you are not on Facebook then best change that before 2020 Freedom challenge. That said, best place to spectate is from the saddle so hope lots of you will be signing up to ride the trail next year. until then, ciao, Chris
