Last Excursion

THE IDEA:

To provide an “open” social network specifically for the outdoors community - a social network which functions around “excursions” that users can edit, like a wiki, for various outdoor activities.

Last Excursion will act as both a master guidebook and log book for these various outdoor activities, providing the ultimate, consistently updated, easy to use resource for the outdoors.

Individual “excursions” will act as editable guide book pages, providing specific places for the outdoors community to collaborate. An excursion will be a public page for a specific place, or route, for a particular outdoor activity; associated with a sport, an area and a country.

Users who have added an excursion are able to edit its content in a way similar to Wikipedia. Users are able to search for excursions on the platform; if the excursion they’re looking for already exists they’re able to add it to their profile. If it doesn’t they’re encouraged to create a new one.

Users are able to join fellow users, who have added the same excursion to their profiles, they are then able to collaboratively build up the information within that excursion and interact socially around its common ground.

For example, a user adds a caving excursion, “Calf Holes” in Birkwith-Yorkshire-UK:

-A user’s profile says they’ve recently been caving, down “Calf Holes” in Birkwith-Yorkshire-UK – anyone on the platform can then click on this and be linked to the corresponding excursion page.
-Alternatively anyone on the platform can search for “Calf Holes” or caves in Birkwith-Yorkshire-UK, providing them with a list of results ranked according to relevance.
-Due to the “open” style of the platform, all the people who’ve recently been caving in “Calf Holes”, or who are considering going there, can be connected together in one place around the said excursion.


WHY?

Last Excursion will address the difficulties in easily finding accurate and up-to-date information on outdoor excursions, guide books exist but their content goes out of date quickly.

For example; a climbing route, recommended in a guidebook, may have recently become unsafe due to erosion, or an exit to a cave system may have recently collapsed.

If you’re an active member of the community you might be lucky enough to hear about this information via word of mouth, otherwise you’d be oblivious to it. This sort of information prevents accidents and could save lives, it will be more readily available and easier to find on Last excursion.

Last excursion also aims to encourage newcomers to outdoor sports, potentially helping tackle issues such as obesity and crime. Not only does the platform provide easy access to information it also accumulates lists of people who have been on excursions, providing contacts for newcomers seeking advice on an excursion or perhaps looking for someone to show them the ropes.

As it stands there aren’t massive amounts of funding available to the outdoors community and faced with a global financial crisis the leisure industry is likely to suffer.

Last excursion is to be setup and ran as a charity - whereby any profits, predominantly made through advertising, are returned to the outdoors community. Anyone will be able to apply for this funding as long as the cause benefits the outdoors community.

The money could be used for a range of purposes within the outdoors community such as helping to improve facilities, reduce costs, finance outdoor start-ups, fund research/exploration and support rescue facilities.