At the 2023 NOHVCC Annual Conference in Midway, UT, the NOHVCC Staff and Board of Directors were determined to make their programming more interactive. The NOHVCC annual conference attracts not only some of the premier subject matter experts in the OHV industry, but also the NOHVCC State Partners who have years of invaluable experience and knowledge. It only made sense to try and capture this expertise, experience, and knowledge to identify issues, opportunities, and needed resources, as well as providing direction for NOHVCC operations in the future.
NOHVCC set out to create facilitated discussions on hot button topics within the OHV community. Participants in the conference would be given an opportunity to participate in a series of discussions for a set amount of time and then would rotate to a new room where a new topic and experienced facilitator would gather the groups’ thoughts and ideas on the topic. Sessions were facilitated by federal agency staff members, industry partners, and NOHVCC Board members who had extensive experience in the topic at hand. Facilitators did not provide a typical presentation, but instead kept the group focused on the topic at hand and recorded the information provided by the group.
Topics covered in these sessions included insurance for OHV clubs, electrification of OHVs, recruitment and retention of OHV volunteers, educating the next generation of OHV users, trail maintenance, communication with land managers, volunteer stewardship, and OHV sound and emerging technologies. The final discussion sessions were organized into regional efforts so that those partners who live in similar parts of the country could discuss topics specific to their geographic locations.
This format was deemed to be a huge success by participants and facilitators and the information gathered was priceless for NOHVCC. These sessions identified areas where OHV enthusiasts and land managers needed help or additional resources and provided guidance to where NOHVCC should be directing resources throughout the year to better assist our partners.
A sample of urgent topics, questions, and suggestions for resources gathered during these sessions include:
Insurance for OHV Clubs: Need to identify providers who deal in this type of insurance, better education for clubs and associations, on what coverages to purchase, sample legislation from states who provide liability coverage/waivers for volunteers, the need for guidance for what coverage to purchase for OHV events, education on recreational use statutes, inherent risk laws, and how to provide workers compensation coverage for volunteers.
Recruitment and Retention of Volunteers: Traditional clubs vs. social media clubs, hesitance of younger individuals to join traditional clubs, volunteer burnout, volunteer recruitment strategies, training volunteers, recognition of volunteers, how to give volunteers a voice, navigating politics in OHV clubs and organizations.
Stewardship: Defining stewardship, promotion of stewardship activities, utilizing social media to promote stewardship, and discussing conservation vs. preservation.
Communicating with Land Managers: Preparing meaningful and developed proposals for land managers, understanding history, knowledge of laws and policy, getting to know managers on a personal level, providing communication training to volunteers, and navigating personal bias.
Training the Next Generation of OHV Enthusiasts: Hands on vs. virtual training, rider training vs. ethics training, introducing new enthusiasts to outdoor ethics, how to provide in school education for OHV recreation, providing resources in multiple languages, and rental safety training examples.
This list is but a sample of the many great examples of topics that are important to the OHV community. For a more in depth look at the session notes you can visit the NOHVCC Annual Conference webpage here.
NOHVCC wishes to thank conference attendees for their participation and engagement in these sessions. The feedback and direction that these discussions provided have proved extremely valuable to NOHVCC as we plan for the next year and beyond. We hope that these sessions were equally valuable to participants. NOHVCC fully intends to implement similar sessions in future conferences and welcome feedback on how to make these sessions more valuable to OHV enthusiasts.