MOTIVATED BY A DESIRE TO CAPTURE AND SHARE WHAT I was learning at the University of British Columbia’s Masters of Human Kinetics graduate degree program, I created this personal-cum-academic blog called Lightfooted using the free WordPress platform for a learning project for Seminar in the Organizational Analysis of Sport & Leisure (Wendy Frisby, HKIN 591).

Here I’ve attempted to express the theoretical concepts and current innovations in the Coaching Science field, and apply them in a pseudo-analytical discourse to relevant, everyday situations and current events. Along with the Lightfooted Fitness Facebook group, my blog was the space where I shared thoughts and gathered opinions on topics ranging from exergaming with the Nintendo Wii Fit (blog post: Asking the right questions, October 21, 2009) and how social media operates in the fitness field (Flexing your Prosumer Muscles, December 11, 2009).

For eight weeks, I tracked the blog with Google Analytics. During this time, Lightfooted received 261 unique visitors in 468 session, with over of half of those sessions from returning visitors. The average time on site (ATOS) for all visitors of Lightfooted was 4:33 (min:sec), which has nearly doubled since its launch on October 1, 2009 and was 3,990.70% greater than the benchmark comparison of 0:07 (min:sec). Comparative data indicated that viewers to Lightfooted reached a depth of 3.38 pages/visit, 104.04% greater than visitors to websites of similar size (1.66 page/visit).

The undertaking of this project was considerable and on-going; I spent a conservative estimate of 60 hours researching content, compiling an image databank, constructing blog posts, and moderating and responding to comments during its two-month run. Growing followers and maintaining a consistent blogging schedule was my primary challenge. Despite the demands of the blog, I was enthusiastic about growing Lightfooted as both a scholarly and personal reflection of the experience in the Masters of Human Kinetics program, as it was evident that people from all over the world were reading and sharing their thoughts on my blog.