I though that according to the regulations of the IFBMA cycle couriers (messengers) were only allowed to come from Western metroplitan areas such as NYC, London, San Franciso Berlin and Melbourne.....next some fool will suggest there are 10s of thousands of cycle messengers (couriers) in Brazil, India, Pakistan, China being roundly ignored by the "international messenger community"......
Ok, Winston, what do you know about messengers / couriers not in Europe, N America (FWIW, there was a CMWC pre-event in Mexico City), Australasia & Japan? I am sure that the IFBMA would welcome your input.
@ Bill, not much, but given that there are over 4500 food delivery cyclists in Mumbai alone, you'd probably only have to extraplolate this figure to include other cities in India and products / services being delivered by bicycle to realise that the IFBMA probably only "represents" (if that's what it does) a tiny perecntage of those in the world who deliver things by bike as a living.....Include China, Brazil, Pakistan and others and the IFBMA might only represent 1%.....(I'm not a mathemetician)
Don't know the reasons for this, but it would be nice to see outreach programmes with other under-represented countries....
Given that the IFBMA is a volunteer organisation with negligible funds, unless someone is willing to give the time to such a project, it's not going to happen.
Therefore your comments about the 'regulations' of the IFBMA restricting the definition of 'couriers' are less than helpful, & suggesting that the "international messenger community" is deliberately ignoring other categories of working cyclists is misleading.
For my part, when I was involved in the LBMA, I tried to engage with the London rick-shaw riders, but was unable to do so effectively because, at the time, they did not have any sort of formal organisation.
well, it was only a joke...I didn't intend the "regulations" comment to be taken seriously...!
However the fact remains that we have tens of thousands of "cousins" around the world with which we have no contact and against whom we are considerably better off.....think there have been one or two outreach projects...weren't bike parts sent to couriers in Afghanistan recently? would be nice to see more is all I'm saying....I retract all my "tongue in cheek" comments about the IFBMA who are a fine organisation and without whom any international communication between global couriers may not have been fostered and major events may not have taken place!