Gonna be hard to standardize QR with all the copyright hooplah...!

this sounds as iko just with a different name?...

The vast majority bans are NOT caused by accidents. They are caused by irresponsible kiters who annoy and/or endanger NON-KITERS. I don't see ANYTHING in the proposed standardizations that would limit irresponsible kiters in the slightest way.

I wonder why my request that tomfuerte "Please list one or two things which have been standardized which you feel have the MOST UNCONTROLLABLE VARIABLES to deal with." has NOT been responded to.

Richard M.
Malibu Kitesurfing - since 2002
(310) - 430 - KITE (5483)
http://www.MalibuKitesurfing.NET
kfRichard@MalibuKitesurfing.NET

I wonder why my request that tomfuerte "Please list one or two things which have been standardized which you feel have the MOST UNCONTROLLABLE VARIABLES to deal with." has NOT been responded to.

Richard M.


.. i just dont understand your question... nothing has been standardized..so... (and i thought i quote something about standardization of intructor to student ratio and wind limit, but maybe it was not what you ment) Could you express it in another way?

Kamikuza: the aim is not to put standard to kite equipment, but to kite services. minumium knowledge to be a kite instructor, miminum safety equipement a school should have, minimum knowledge to give to student in order to make sure they are safe after they leave the course.... (the list could go on)

Tiago: NO this is really not like trying to create another IKO... you really really dont get it. The idea is to get everyone involved to develop a standard. We dont aim at creating any company, organisation or any teaching body. We d like to get the IKO, the national federations, kite association, to share their knowledage and create a document that set the baseline for kiters. ISO is just a way to make it a bit more official, more undertandable by the majority of people.


quote from Richard: "The vast majority bans are NOT caused by accidents. They are caused by irresponsible kiters who annoy and/or endanger NON-KITERS. I don't see ANYTHING in the proposed standardizations that would limit irresponsible kiters in the slightest way."

If someone endanger the non kiter, for me, this is called an accident or an incident... if a kiter nearly gets a non kiter walking on the beach with the line, it s called an near miss accident, but still there is the word accident... !!!!!!

We are seen as danger because no one is organized! If we could show a paper that shows the authorities that we have all together thought about safety, that we created some standards to preserve the safety of all people, maybe they would see us in a different way dont you think? Some countries already have that, but if local on a world scale. If only we could share the knowledge and spread it across, it would be great!


And it has to do everything to do with the proposition, what if kiter had a better education from the beginning (a minimum knowledge agreed by all?) wouldnt that help?

maybe i do not

but this statement could had been written by IKO


the idea of having everybody - Brazilian, Italian, Japanese, Mozambican, US, Australians... - agreeing with the same set of standards sounds naif & the obvious conclusion is having half a dozen persons setting the standards for others to follow.

and then "ISO something certified" would be facing the same problem as "IKO something certified" - it is not something included as mandatory by the legislation of the individual countries.

"ISO something certified" would be something purely ´enforced´ by the market perception of a certain credibility given by the ISO logo. But then again - this sounds as IKO just with a different name?

In case you do not know Tiago1973, IKO is a business that produces a training program. This proposal is NOT to produce a training program.

IKO training program and also bksa, pass, vdws, ffvl are all training programs none of which are regulated other than by themselves.

The proposal is to produce standards that all these training providers and any others that evolve to follow so they are all meeting an agreed minimum level of safety and content and also that the content is consistent between organisations.


North already follows a Standard for their system so you can see manufacturers are already aware of the benefits of this process and you can meet it without copyright worries!




Why is everyone so obsessed with money making and legislation? Legislation exists whether we like it or not. It is there for a reason which sometimes is clearly about making money other times it is there to help protect people from inferior or dangerous products and practices.


If you are one of the majority of sensible kiters then none of this will ever cause you concern. If you are an Instructor who prides themselves on quality tuition and ensure your customers safety is priority then you will only stand to gain from this, however If you are someone who teaches others in an unsafe manner then you will be affected and rightly so.

Standards, be they BS EN, ISO, ANSI or whatever, are not law. However, they do tend to represent what is accepted as "good practice". Being able to demonstrate that you are complying with an accepted good practice gives a degree of comfort to someone (a client) who wants to use your skills without fully understanding what you do. An ISO certified kite school might be one that had an approved curriculum, decent safety measures in place, and a regular regime of inspection and maintenance of the gear used, as opposed to the common "bloke on the beach who teaches water starts".

The downsides:

1. ISO documents are expensive, as is the certification process.
2. The certification business can be incredibly corrupt, both in terms of the way in which the standards are written and in the way in which audits are carried out.
3. ISO works for certifying products and systems. It doesn't work for people. ISO certification isn't going to make a crap instructor any less crap - although an ISO-based quality management system might weed out some of the less competent instructors, and a set curriculum might scare off some of the sand swamis ((tm) Fokiten).
4. Many kiters will oppose standards because they're standards, and therefore the work of The Man.

So not a bad idea per se, but probably won't work. Possibly not necessary, if brands, shops and sites like this one do more to publicize best practice for beginner training, so that noobs can make an informed choice of instructor.

i appreciate your polite tone and this is my response:

by "fellow citizens" i meant the kiters that are conscientiously avoiding all kind of clubs, associations, unions and federations that require monetary income for covering some unclear expenses and luring members with exclusive parking places or good deals on some merchandize.

very funny, just the right kind of speech for the politician!

it is all general nothing saying promotional speech for me. no facts, no plans, no foundations. just promises.

that is the problem: ISO is not the standard!!! it is organization for the enterprises with the standardized description of the actions in those enterprises. not more, not less!

it is not the same. first, divers are much less. then, depth more than 10m are lethal. tank filling are much technical and crucial.
still, lets say, you got the automobile drivers. they are hundreds of millions. you got them. their cars are heavy and really dangerous. and the cars really costs the money we pay for them (lot of plastics, lot of metal). really deadly an worth insuring.
now, lets take kiters. kites costs for manufacturer about the 250-300 bucks(it is only the cloth..may be even less.). and it's about only tens of thousands of the active kiters. and less then ten of them dyes in the year. kite weights about 4kg. kite itself does not kill anyone. do not fantasize the reasons to proclaim kiteboarding the dangerous sport, please!

now, cyclists. only in china there are hundreds of millions of them! more millions of them in europe, america, africa etc. thousands of them got killed every year on the streets, in the woods and in the parks.
and nobody had tried or try to claim the training standardization territory yet?!

Not a great comparison - most people learn to ride a bike as a kid, and are taught by a parent or an older sibling - there isn't much of a market for formal bike-riding training.

Driver training is probably a better comparison. In most countries you don't have to use a qualified instructor. However, if you're going to pay someone money to teach you to drive, you want to have some confidence that you're going to be taught what you need to know, in a car which isn't going to put you in danger. In the UK, paid driving instructors should be registered (which doesn't happen until they've been audited) - obviously there's a way round that (paying "gas money" to your "friend" to teach you to drive), but if you choose to take that route, it's accepted that you do so at your own risk.

Similarly, agreeing a standard for basic kiter instruction doesn't criminalise "non-certified" instructors, and isn't the same as licensing individual kiters. It could simply establish a baseline for the service to be offered by a decent kite school, in terms of curriculum, safety, class size, etc, and give novices (who don't have the knowledge to do their own due diligence) a clear indication of whether they're about to spend their money on safe, comprehensive training.