The Mission of CODGC

If you have ever tried to catch up on what’s happening in the sport you will inevitably find yourself needing to explore multiple different social media sites (FB, X, IG, TikTok), YouTube, Reddit, Discord, Spotify, and the list goes on. As the sport has continued to grow, most notably during the era around 2020 leading into the Covid-19 crisis, players across the U.S., and gloabally, all flocked to their platform of choice leading to an unfortunate “silo” effect within the sport. 

Now, in 2024, the “silo” effect is felt more than ever with disc golfers, business owners, and content creators needing to be on mulitple social platorms to get the word out about events, build their audience, follow their favorite players and companies, and grow their brand. The amount of time and energy idividuals and brands are putting into social media continues to reach new highs every year, as the expectation to be everywhere all at once continues to present itself as the new standard, begging the question… to what end? 

Beyond the time consumed by social media use, the impact of social media on our mental health is also very alarming. The past 2 decades has seen a dramatic increase in depression, anxiety, and numerous other concerning issues for both kids and adults, and every year the data continues to point to things will continue to get worse if we don’t begin making a change in our use of social media. This issue burns very hot for me, as @brandy and I run a clinical mental health practice (alongside being the Co-Founders of CODGC), and have seen first hand the negative impact social media use can have on people’s well-being. The solution is simple, we need to set down our screens and get outside as much as possible!

The unfortunate intersection of these two issues presents a perfect storm on the horizon for the sport. As the pressure and expectation to be on all social media platforms presses forward, our collective mental health continues to deteriorate. So, what will happen to all of the individuals, brands, and organizations in the coming years?  It is hard to know, but the feeling I have is that many are going to pullback from being on multiple platforms – and once again we must confront the inevitable “silo” effect happening once more, only this time my feeling is the tribalism around each platform will skyrocket. 

Another unfortunate detail that needs to be addressed regarding social media is that you, the user, are the product. These platforms are free and with that, these legacy social media companies scrape your profiles and posts for data that they then sell to 3rd parties to advertise back to you. The next time you log on do a quick check, how much of your feed is paid advertisement vs. your friends / connections?  For some this is a non issue, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, referencing what was outlined above regarding mental health – this leads to “Doom Scrolling” as you see more and more posts and threads that are tailored to your interests (vs. living your life and hopefully getting out to play a round).  

Finally, there is another interesting challenge that needs to be addressed as a result of this “silo” effect happening within the sport… who is the authority?  In 2024, we are already seeing disc golfers on each social platform touting themselves as “The Disc Golf Community,” so, again I ask… who is the authority? Furthermore, where do new players to sport go?  If they choose “Social Platform (A)” vs. “Social Platform (B)” what are they missing?  How many players miss out connecting with people and events in their local community by simply not being on the “right” social platform?  How would having a central space change this?

This now brings us to CODGC (Circle One Disc Golf Community) and the mission behind its creation. Seeing the “silo” effect continuing to grow over the past 5 years, the fracturing of the disc golf community has never been more pronounced. The sport needs a central space to connect, share, support, and grow together, with CODGC acting as the central hub / town square for the sport. This is not to replace social media, as that is where the audience(s) are and dollars are being spent, rather CODGC aims to create a unified meeting place for all of us across the different disc golf communities effected by this “silo” effect to come together for the betterment of the sport. 

Within this mission, CODGC is designed to provide a variety of different ways players, brands, shops, artists, course designers, league directors, tournament directors, content creators and bloggers can unite to connect, share, support, play, and grow the sport together. CODGC hosts:

• Member Directory – You can find players by skill level, location, PDGA#, UDisc username, and more. The member directory allows you to seach across a variety of different details that members list in their profile. The more members complete their profile, the more accurate the member search will be. *Note: you must be connected with another member before you can direct message them.

• Player Profile – You will complete your basic information when you sign up to the community, allowing you to expand your profile to include your home course, involvement (leagues, clubs, etc.), what you are looking for (join a team, look for a job, expand your brand, etc.), what’s in your bag, and link all of your other social media acounts for members to find and follw you on other platforms where you have your following. *This is designed to help you be found and support by others. 

• Groups – You can create Public, Private, and Hidden groups. These groups can be for interests, clubs, leagues, tournaments, artists, brands, friends, etc.  Each group can assign it’s own organizers, moderators, create it’s own Forum, as well as customize how the messaging works based on the design of the group. Example: say you are running a tournament and you want to be able to send out notifications in live time for updates to tee-times, starting holes, award ceremony, etc. – you can select to make the messaging open for all group members or only organizers and moderators (acting as a message board). 

• Forums – Each group can have it’s own forum. Forums can have any number of Discussions (working similar to Reddit). You can link YouTube and other videos, pictures, documents, @mention, and select to pin any Discussion to the top for easy access.

• News-Feed – This acts similar to X, where anything you post is posted to the entire community. Additionally, anytime you post in a Public Group, create a new Discussion within a forum, post a Blog,  it will show within the News-Feed. *Private Groups, Hidden Groups, responding to a Discussion, and commenting on a Blog will not show up in the News-Feed.

• Spaces (beta) – We are currently working on creating an internal directory for businesses, services, travel & hospitality, food, legal, and public figures (Pros and other notable individuals). As we are currently developing out the final aspects of Spaces, you will see the notation of (beta) next to it.  Our goal is to build this out as Business Pages (similar to FB) where you can speak as your brand within the community. Spaces will additionally host reviews, a maps feature providing you with directions to physical locations, and currently has a business messager integrated. 

• Drop Zone –  This is a new feature to the community that pulls content from FB, X, IG, Reddit, YouTube, Rumble, and Podcasts into a central space you can access on the app or website platform. The Drop Zone was developed to save you time if you are wanting to quickly catch up on what is happening on all of the other social media platforms from all of the main content creators and from a variety of #hastags. This can be helpful for those interested to see what’s happening, but not interested with being on another social media platform. 

• Blogs – The CODGC community hosts it’s own blog directory, allowing any member to create and post blogs that will show up in the News-Feed as well as being saved in the Blog directory. We incourage bloggers to post here, either creating new content or copy-and-paste existing blogs using the “create new blog” tab. *Anyone can add pictures, videos, hyperlinks, and even add affiliate marketing links to their blogs. We designed this to both honor and support all of the disc golf bloggers out there – with the hope thay can continue building their audience and guide people to their website. 

• Events – Within CODGC we have created links to the upcoming tournaments page on the PDGA, UDisc, and Disc Golf Scene websites. This feature, most notably useful on the app, is designed to give users quick access to review upcoming events without having to open up new apps or log into different websites. Currently, these links open to a new browser, noting that we are currently exploring working with these companies to allow us to open these links within the CODGC Mobile App. 

Finally, I would like to say thank you to those that took the time to read this blog. @brandy and I are continuing to develop and grow the CODGC comomunity and greatful to all of you that are in this community. CODGC is a free community that we have self-funded since it’s beginning in 2021 – as we do not want there to be any barrier to entry to those interested in the joining the community and our vision to grow the sport.

If you would like to support us, we encourage you to explore our shop – as we using merchandise sales to assist us fund this project and continue to see it grow. We are always open to talk, discuss, and collaborate so please dont hesitate to reach out either one of us. 

Best, 

@dave & @brandy