Ride Booking system

[westofsouth]

I would be interested to know if any local CTC groups are using the Meetup platform to allow easy booking and control of numbers etc. during Covid?
https://www.meetup.com/bristolcyclists

[mjr]

Why pay extra for what British Cycling's RideSocial gives you in exchange for ads?
www.ridesocial.co.uk

[AndyK]

Looked at MeetUp, thought it was restrictive (have to become a Meetup member to join an event) and quite expensive. There may also be data protection issues as Meetup keeps its data in the US and it's vague on whether it complies with GDPR fully. (I'm open to correction on this, but I couldn;t fins an unambiguous statement anywhere.)

For what it's worth, the Ramblers have done a good one-page summary of the pros and cons of various online booking systems, including MeetUp: https://www.ramblers.org.uk/-/media/Fil ... guide.ashx

[Enigmadick]

Eventbrite for us

[Nigel]

Any system beyond "email or text me here" is going to exclude some people. They either don't use the systems in question, or choose not to. Maybe that's OK to exclude people, but I'm not sure its the right way to go.

For smaller group rides, I can't see what's wrong with the email/text approach.

For a big event, an online registration system may be appropriate.

- Nigel

[mjr]

Any system beyond "email or text me here" is going to exclude some people. They either don't use the systems in question, or choose not to. Maybe that's OK to exclude people, but I'm not sure its the right way to go.

Not if the system allows the lister to add riders. Then it's the best of both.

For smaller group rides, I can't see what's wrong with the email/text approach.

It has a single point of failure: if the lister can't make it at short notice, they have to hand the bookings over rather than (on most social systems) people just checking the attendee list themselves.

[mattsccm]

Facebook.

[RickH]

I've not used it myself, but a group I sometimes ride with have been using bookwhen & seem happy with it having moved from using eventbrite initially.

[mattsccm]

Might i ask the purpose of a booking system?

[gaz]

Might i ask the purpose of a booking system?

Covid-19 has somewhat restricted group activities. At the time this thread was started Cycling UK guidance was a maximum of six people on a ride at an appropriate distance. A few days ago that changed, a maximum of fifteen people.

Every local group is different and it's a long time since I last rode with mine. With a limit of fifteen I might chance just turning up, I would not with a limit of six.

[Si]

A number of local CUK CCs use www.letsride.co.uk

It mostly works OKish. Listing rides is arduous to start with but you get used to it after a while....keep pressing the save button otherwise you'll get really annoyed when it times out. Likewise finding a ride can get a bit arduous if there are loads in your area. But signing up for a ride is easy enough once you've signed up to the site.

It's a bit of a pain that once a ride is full it removes it from the listing so you can get loads of people saying they want to do the ride but it's disappeared off the system so could you please add them manually or can they just turn up? The post ride admin is a PITA.