OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Prior to flying out to the Commonwealth Games a couple of months ago, Paul Drinkhall and Darius Knight had the pleasure of meeting Michael Bublé. Or maybe that should be Michael Bublé had the pleasure of meeting (and playing against) Paul and Darius as Bublé told a spellbound Sheffield audience, “Today I had one of the coolest days of my life”.

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Looks like those guys had fun. We need more celebrities who are partial to TT to participate in videos like this one. I'm not a Michael Buble fan but I know lots of people who are. Keep up the good work!
Is the person behind this forum account also behind Barrow's Facebook and Twitter presences? It's Tristan right? You do a really good job of club promotion. If only all clubs were as tech savvy as yours, I think TT could be much more popular.

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"Despair says, I cannot hit with the speed of my opponent. Happiness says, I do not need to."
Committee Member @ Gold Coast Table Tennis, Queensland, Australia
Audio Table Tennis Interviews

Hi Jackson, yes it is me, Tristran.

Doing the videos and everything isn't difficult, just time consuming. With a baby on the way, I need to do some convincing to maintain my current level of output!

See you're from the Gold Coast. I was in OZ a few years ago before going to South America. I travelled with my bat, but it didn't see any use and looking back I wish I had gotten involved with the scene over there. The lure of the sea was just too much though. My girlfriend (she is Canadian and we met in Sydney) and I did think about moving to OZ, it is just too far from either England or Canada for her though.

Out of interest, what is your level of involvement with table tennis?

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Hi Tristran,
Thanks for the reply. So interesting to hear about your travels. I’ve only been overseas once, to New Zealand, but that was before I was really interested in table tennis, so I didn’t seek out any clubs while I was there.
I’m a pretty avid player of table tennis. I’m at my club an average of 5 days a week. Recently, I was elected to the committee of the club. My day job is network administration at a couple of government schools, but I’ve become very interested in the area of social media and I set up and maintain Facebook and Twitter presences for the club. I’m of the opinion that our club, and indeed the sport as a whole, could benefit from some better marketing in this area. I’ve heard that a huge proportion people play table tennis casually as opposed to in an organised atmosphere like a club, and think that social media would be a great way to channel more of those casuals into club play. But, as you say, it is time consuming, and I’m limited in what I can do because I need approval from the rest of the committee first on many things. They don’t always see things my way. For example, we have a visitors book in our club that not many people sign. My idea was to offer an opportunity to win a prize if you put your name and email into the book. That way, more people would sign the book and we could grow our mailing list to stay in touch with our “leads”. This is a fairly widely used idea by many businesses, but the committee did not agree with it. 
Then I had the idea to start my own blog. It’s at www.primetimepingpong.tumblr.com. That way I’d have something of my own that I could market however I wanted, and if it succeeded, the club could benefit from that success indirectly. It’s difficult to come up with ideas to write about all the time though. Also my writing so far hasn’t been the best, but hopefully I can get better. 
I don’t want it to be just another place for coaching tips etc. I’m not good enough of a player myself to be offering advice to others (though I am in the middle of becoming accredited as a coach, so I could potentially go that way in the future). I’d rather it be a place to discuss ideas about how to make the sport more popular, especially via better marketing.
Actually, my latest idea is to interview people who have some level of interest in TT, but also hopefully some sort of business background, to combine the two areas of knowledge, then post these interviews on the site for others who want the sport to be better to learn from and be inspired by. Would you be interested in doing an interview with me sometime, perhaps via Skype? I can’t imagine it taking more than half an hour. Even if you agree, I daresay it would maybe 2 weeks before I organise myself to do the interview, so take your time to decide.
OK so I realise I’ve been rambling on a bit, but let me know what you think. Do you do social media for any other companies other than your TT club? Do you have your own personal blog? I’m very interested.
Thanks in advance,
Jackson

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"Despair says, I cannot hit with the speed of my opponent. Happiness says, I do not need to."
Committee Member @ Gold Coast Table Tennis, Queensland, Australia
Audio Table Tennis Interviews

I haven't come across your blog before. I've had a quick glance and it looks like there is more than a couple of articles, so I shall give it the time it needs later.

My background is software development and I work for one of Europe's largest Social Shopping sites.

I would be more than happy doing an interview with you. Not sure people really care about me, but hopefully your editing skills will make something of it.

I did set out to blog about a number of things (with the hope of making a little money) and bought various domain names. However, I must confess that the Barrow TTC presences (see links in signature) take all my time (as well as sorting out the team), the videos in particular.

In the new year, I am going to be doing some work with a new company currently setting itself up and looking to do something different in table tennis. One of my tasks will be to interview the International players they sponsor - which I am looking forward to greatly.

Hope all is well down there in sunny OZ - the snow has finally cleared here!

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Sounds exciting! I'd like to ask you more when we do the interview. I'll PM you an outline when I write it. Can't really do much right now. I'm on the road and posting this from an internet cafe.
What timezone are you in? So I can choose a suitable time to do the interview when I get back. I'm GMT+10 (no daylight savings in Queensland)

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"Despair says, I cannot hit with the speed of my opponent. Happiness says, I do not need to."
Committee Member @ Gold Coast Table Tennis, Queensland, Australia
Audio Table Tennis Interviews