Rio Poncho Peeps point the way

If you watched the opening ceremonies of the Rio Olympics on Friday night, you saw a few people steal the show from the athletes.

My favorite, of course, was the flag-bearing, greased up (coconut oil or insect repellent?) man from Tonga.

Second fave was the dancing neon-arrow-poncho-wearing volunteers lining the path borders to help direct the athletes along the way.

As a logistics lover, I applaud the creative way that the event organizers combined the use arrows and volunteers to move the athletes along during the opening ceremonies. Perhaps we will see more events request that their volunteers wear the directional signage, instead of holding or posting the arrows.

When I was a walk manager, we would recruit route marshals to provide a safety necklace around the walkathon route. They would stand at any place along the route where a walker would have a choice of making a right or left turn.

These route marshals were an essential part of the event logistics. They could multitask as a directional, motivational and education piece of the event logistics cog.

I think that wearing an arrow is a lot more fun than holding an arrow. The volunteers will then have their hands free to hold a megaphone, whistle or other noisemaker. Looking forward to seeing how future events will morph this arrow-apparel and make it a part of their walkathons!