Russ concludes his time with Greg and Ray discussing the future and potential expansion of E-Sports. Though E-Sports has grown in ways no one could imagine, there is still so much more we can do. We can’t stop pushing for growth until everyone is included and accepted, and must keep setting goals and moving forward towards them until we achieve that.
Episode References
Russ concludes his time with Greg and Ray discussing the future and potential expansion of E-Sports. Though E-Sports has grown in ways no one could imagine, there is still so much more we can do. We can’t stop pushing for growth until everyone is included and accepted, and must keep setting goals and moving forward towards them until we achieve that.
Episode References
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Speaker 2:digital screen.[inaudible] welcome
Speaker 3:to the digital scribbler podcast. We're excited that you're listening to us. We hope you'll share it with your friends. It's a podcast, our digital scribbler podcast as a podcast highlighting technologies for those with disabilities and inclusion programs. They provide the tools for anyone to start their inclusion story. I have with us today, Ray Kim, who has been a part of building and running the hoops program and Greg Bods Yak cause we been part of building the original e-sport, which is east soccer. It seems to me that in order for us to serve people in a great, great way and to advocate more, we should be setting goals for like, okay, how many new[inaudible] hoops can we launch? Or maybe what we want to do, and we'll just talk about this here, like we're brainstorming and everybody listening. What if we do called, what if you had a hoops and yet many ubes right? So many hoops was a, was a branch off a satellite. So maybe you know, uh, once a month you have a Biggie hoop someplace like San Francisco. Everybody can come in and be a part of that bigger one and get training and stuff or every three months even they can come train. But the rest of them you say you're going to be a group that doesn't many, who wants to start a minute you hoops, all you gotta do is have your kids and maybe one other kid has got special needs or all you gotta do is go down to this area like, and get a lot more people involved in knowing us. Cause I think when people think I've got to drive an hour to be a part of it, the, you have to be very motivated to do that. And you have to have a lot of resources, right? Right. You know, money and time. Right. But if they know that, hey, I'm going and you, and, and, and, and, and even being able to say what have you, you know, some people may not be able to do a a minute you who sir, you hoops every Saturday. What if they did a a didn't one a once a month. Right. And just say, I'm gonna and what if you know, there's another thing Philippines for for to consider under you. He program eastwards. One of the things I've heard that's really sad and I hope we're getting this down. Yup. One of the things I hear he was really sad is you hear something that's about special needs kids. No one invite them to a party and no one goes to their birthday party. What if you found a way that if someone wants to have a birthday party for their kid, they have a mini hoops or a mini hoops or a mini east soccer party that's actually happened. Tell me about it. But you know the fact that you brought it on my like, wow, I didn't even think about the fact that we can work. So when we had a family in our Sunnyville he soccer program about two years ago, they emailed me and said, hey, our son loves east soccer. He's been coming for three seasons now. He's got a party coming up and some of his best friends are the coaches and the people at e soccer. Would you, would they be willing to bring some equipment? And we, we have a huge backyard gonna have a birthday party for our son. Can they come and do an east soccer session for my son, for our son's birthday party. And so he had about four of our coaches gather up the equipment, go on that, go over there on a Saturday and apparent was so fired up that kid had a blast. And I think, I think that I remember that. So as soon as you said, I was like, yeah, we've had that. That's happened organically. Can you imagine, can you imagine if you know, you interviewed them? Yeah. Wrote up an article about what they did. How did I, yeah. Get a picture so that people can go to the[inaudible] site and learn that sports is a great way to make sure that when you have a birthday party for your kid as special needs, that they can get friends involved and coming. Yeah. And that people can start these. And I just think we have to expand our thinking. Yeah. The question I have is do you guys have an approach for recruiting? Because I know when we launched it and when I worked with the a lot, is there an approach for recruiting more coaches more? Um, uh, how do we do that? So what we're doing now is we, we trying to get current coaches. A lot of our current coaches are in, um, obviously they're high school students, they're college kids. And so, um, what we've done over the years has had a lot of them either start clubs on their, at their schools or just, you know, invite friends and people who plan sports teams at these certain places to come out. And so through that we've been able to get a lot of additional coaches because they're the friends or they're parts of the programs that these kids are in in their schools. Um, but we, I mean, that's probably one of our biggest needs is we, because we would want a high ratio of coaches to kids so that we can really have those one-on-one. If you don't have a, a a s a serious, uh, you know, approach on your site. And, and using social media, right. That may cost you a bit. Yeah. So you might want to, you might want to tackle, cause this is what we've done successfully with a lot of things you might want to, cause I mean the earthquakes originally found me on linkedin. Yeah. And then that's how, you know, I introduced you to them and the rest is history. But I think that the social media presence is being yes. And, and, and then also setting goals. So for instance, uh, I think one of things we have to do is we have to say, okay, currently in all of our EAP programs, we have 2000 kids involved all year round, whatever the number is, right. And then say, okay, can we increase that by 500? Can we increase that by two 50? Can we increase that by a hundred? And, and, and trying to expand, because I, I was, um, I was, where was I at? I was at, uh, I don't know if I was getting my car wash bookstore or something. And I saw, um, across the street from me, uh, a group of special needs, uh, adults I think. Yeah. Being, being, uh, they were walking into the barns and elbows or something like that. And it just, every time I see people out there that are with special needs kids, I've seen parents with their kids is I'm out and about. I've invited people that had a, uh, I've seen soccer families together. And one time I saw a soccer family together with all the other soccer families. And then I noticed that their daughter had a special need. I could, you know, when you're, especially a parent, you sorta know. And, um, and I, I felt embarrassed, but I was like, I gotta at least let them know about east soccer, you know, until they know about it. But I think that the two few people in the bay area know about these programs. I guess that's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's still a very small percentage. And I do think getting more viral on the web, getting all the participants in the hoops and east soccer to have something that they can share with other people. Uh, uh, making sure that when these schools say, hey, we want to do something that, that you're sitting down and sort of coordinating and saying, well, how can we get them involved? How can we do it? Um, because I just think there's, so I, I heard his story two weeks ago about a family that had a party for their special needs kid and no one came. No one. Wow. No one came. Wow. Um, and I think that that the need is far greater than our current reach. Yeah. Right. And we've done a lot and I'm excited about it, but I think we want to, we want to, we want to, we want to set some goals so that if you're listening to this podcast, you can be a part of helping us reach those goals. We'll put an email address on the site. So if you want to start a and B, one of the parts of who is starting a mini hoops or maybe even a mid east soccer or a mini dance where maybe you don't go to the big one all the time, but you have one at your house. You have one at your neighborhood, you know, you have one of your community center. I think the great thing would be to have the e-sports site show everywhere you can go. Yeah. Yeah. To be able to get one and then how to start one and introduce maybe this many mentally. That's a great idea that people can come to the big one because the big ones have all the resources. Right. But sometimes it may be we can't make the big one or we'd rather do it on a Friday or we'd rather do it on our kid as Monday. All right. On Columbus day we're going to schedule it. Yeah. So I think that'd be good. That's helpful. Um, and then, and then I think just this, the training. So you, I know Greg does extensive training for the east soccer part. Did you do training for the youth part?
Speaker 4:Do Hi. It's usually, um, before our first session we have, uh, some players and then we have one of our, um, uh, mentors who was actually, she was a trained teacher of include an inclusive school. Yeah. She comes and walks all the players through the do's and don'ts, what to look out for. What does this mean? Um,
Speaker 3:do you ever, do you ever have, uh, do you guys ever have physical therapists involved in anymore?[inaudible] Yup. Not so much on with, with um, oops, we want to expand to that. And I think also just going back to some of the stuff we did originally, which was like, I think you ought to set a goal for what's going to be the ratio of typical kids, especially these kids. We got to know in every program what's the ratio because sometimes it starts get imbalanced and you don't have enough peers and so you've got a lot of coaches, but you don't have kids. Because remember a 40 year old coach is less likely to go to a 10 year old's birthday party than a 15 year old coach. And so I think that it is, if you lose sight of the peerage, then you end up not really having inclusion. So you're calling it inclusion. But really it's, um, exactly, yeah, it's, it's become a, it's become a program. Inclusion's peers are close to that peer. Exactly. Exactly. At least it doesn't mean that you don't have the older coaches, but it means that you do have the younger, and I think sometimes what can happen is we can get static in our programs and stop innovating. And I think innovation now is what's the next IEP program? What's the next creative thing? I think the mini, the mini element would be a good one to roll out. Not right away, but the planet maybe. Maybe a launch it in August. Maybe you launch it in May for the summer. I don't know, come up with it. But I think we probably just knowing that people I've talked to who love you, hoops, lovey, soccer, lovey, dance, uh, kids cry when it takes a break. I mean I hear all these stories, right? But I think the one thing that probably burdens people a lot is they feel a couple of things. There's no way to go nowhere to go that they know have to go to give a donation. Cause I'll talk to some people and they'll be like, hey, this is all free because I suddenly understand all these programs are free. It's all free. Can we go give a donation for equipment? Can we go give a donation for gas money for the coaches that are driving long distances? Like there's so many different things. I think for us to work on the rollout maybe maybe we'd even need a new campaign. You know what I'm saying, that that, that you know, he 2020 you know we're, where are we going with our East sports program in 20 East sports 2020 that'd be a good program, don't you? It. Yeah. And I think this is really good because when I'm really at realizing it, because we're not using social media enough and because we're not using the level things we are doing, there is a donation button on the website and do people do use it. But like you said, so many people don't know it's there. We're not communicating. We're not, we're not advertising what's going on and even setting a goal like their donation button is there. I've never seen it. But at the blue donation button is there, then what's the goal, right? You just leave it there. What did you say? Hey, this is what we want to accomplish. This is how we want to do it. We're going to, and what we want to do is we want to start a seed money fund for anybody who wants to start a program that can't afford it. You know, maybe, maybe someone wants to start a mini hoops, but they literally don't have the money to buy the hoop. Right. And you give them, you know, hundred dollars and boom, they got a hoop. Or maybe there's a, yeah, maybe instead of the seed money, you go to companies who make these hoops and you make them a partner because it's good to have the universities as partners. But what if you have a partner that makes sports equipment? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's great. I mean if you, I think in the old days we had some connections with Nike. I thought I remembered that. Yeah, that was long ago. But you're right, we haven't pursued that in a long[inaudible] Nike, Adidas. Yeah. I mean getting them to see, I mean these guys are, these people are good. Yeah, they there and there and Nike. They've had some trouble with the way they've handled workers overseas and all that. They might be, they might be into it. Hey now this is who we really are. Like I said, there's lots of negative things get put out about people who are good people and they need opportunities to go do good. I just think we got it. We got something here. He sports 2020 I love that. That's going to be east worst 2020 setting 10 goals for 2020 for Eastboards and really and and and getting them out there and starting to say, Hey, this is the next way. This is the next place we're going to go. Great. No, we are really glad you joined us today for our podcast of digital scribbler. We're going to be doing a whole bunch of stuff like this, not just telling you about what's going on in introducing you to programs and plans, but we're going to talk right online and right here on the podcast about creative ways to build it, advance it. And if you have some ideas, don't be afraid to go on there and click on that email and email us your ideas. And even if we can't do them or if you're doing something really cool out there that's inclusive, let us know about it. We want to know about it, we'll talk about it and we do have the capability to even call you and get you on the podcast. If you really have something cool you want to share, we can line it up. You can get ahold of us, uh, on. So just check on the, uh, on the site, uh, by this a podcast and a and e-sports will start leaving some information for you about where to find the podcast, about how to contact them. And, uh, we would love to write your story. We would love to help you launch a mini program or be a part of the big program. If you don't live in the bay area. Don't be afraid to contact us. Fly in. See the most beautiful city in the world. And why your why and not just San Francisco, but the ultimate part. Silicon Valley. Uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the suburban part. Contra Costa, the hidden part. Alameda. There's so many parts. I mean we are in three cities in the bay. It's just unbelievable. But come on in, fly in, go ie hoops, go to u soccer, learn how to do it, get some contacts and go back to New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, wherever you live, uh, India and start it up. And we also need to get that international flavor. Make sure we find out what's going on, get on east sports. And then we've got to have sort of a, I think if we, if we keep an uh, uh, a constant Facebook and Twitter presence where we're going, here's the update, here's the latest update. Yeah. And probably every week at minimum where it's out there. I think maybe it will help so many people, cause I'm telling you right now, I've talked to people who have never heard of any of it, which is amazing to us because it's been so big, so many places, right? But with 8.4 million people. Yeah, it's going to be tough.[inaudible] skinny out, right digital scribbler. Now, today was an update on e-sports and plans for East sports 2020
Speaker 5:we'll see our next
Speaker 2:[inaudible]. Thank you.
Speaker 5:You're listening to the digital scribbler podcast. If you like what you're hearing, subscribe to the feed and please leave a five star rating and write us a review. Also, make sure to check out digital scribbler.com to learn more about our apps, products, and efforts to help bring inclusion into the mainstream. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next.