#005 / Free Weekly Token Sorting
Tuesday the 29th of September, 2026
Free weekly token sorting
Regular readers of this newsletter (can I say that only five editions in?) will know how strongly I feel about the importance and power of human interaction.
And once you’ve got people out of their houses and into the in-this-case park, open space, or somewhere else capable of hosting a handful or more of people, over 5,000m of walking and running, the biggest threat to human interaction is inappropriate use of technology.
Now if I don’t already sound like a broken record re human-to-human in-person contact, I soon will do. But that’s because I truly believe it’s by-a-country-mile the most important thing to consider when building a mission-driven community sport organisation. And probably any organisation (think about this newsletter the next time you're at a supermarket self-checkout).
In fact, the use of tech to remove human interaction is one of the most common suggestions we received at parkrun, where ‘you should use chip timing’ was second only to ‘you should charge everyone a quid’.
To emphasise the point, let me use a real-life example, whilst revisiting South Africa and mentioning my Dad, again.
Many years ago, he’d just moved back to Johannesburg after an extended period in the UK, and I’d persuaded him to visit a local parkrun. Although he’d spent much of his life there, at that time he didn’t really know anyone, and so I thought this would be a great way for him to a) make friends, and b) get active.
I happened to be visiting one weekend and we went along to Delta parkrun for a spot of walking, running, and volunteering. After which, we found ourselves in the cafe alongside a pile of around 600-or-so finish tokens, all in need of sorting into numerical order and sticking back on whatever it was (I can’t remember) that allowed them to be handed out in order in the first place.
Regular parkrunners amongst you will be all too familiar with the Saturday-morning cafe re-stringing-tokens ritual. Which always reminds me of colouring in or playing dominoes, in that it’s mentally taxing enough to be interesting but not so much that you can’t also enjoy a meaningful conversation.
In a parallel universe, I do wonder if parkrun is really a weekly-token sorting event, where walkers and runners are simply volunteering to jumble the tokens up and get things going. Last week, for example, parkrun communities sorted over 440,000 little plastic barcodes into order, which is quite an achievement when you think about it! And almost a token-sorting PB, but not quite.
Multi-generational token-sorting at Harrogate junior parkrun
Anyway, it took my Dad and a couple of other volunteers almost an hour to get their finish tokens sorted. After which he suggested that we should ‘use technology to save the three hours of person time that task took to do’.
To which I replied …
But then you wouldn’t have just made two new friends. Who will be here next week when I’m not. And who will know your name. And say hello. And spend another hour enjoying coffee, cake, and conversation (and token sorting).
Eventually he went all the way from his local parkrun, to completing Comrades at the age of 74. And I doubt he could have achieved the latter without the former, but that’s another story already covered brilliantly by Strava in their Athletes Unfiltered podcast.
Comment
At parkrun we used technology the right way (barcodes, scanners, and stopwatches) to transform our ability to scale results processing to previously unthinkable levels. Yet at the same time, we prioritised human interaction by intentionally maintaining the need to physically give out finish tokens, scan them alongside people’s personal barcodes, and then put the whole thing back together ready for next week.
Finally, looking to the future and how we utilise artificial intelligence, we absolutely must keep human interaction at the top of our priority list. And before automating something, ask what human moment it removes.
In fact, my long-time parkrun colleague, James Kemp, and I just spent a truly game-changing few days together doing just that in support of a rather wonderful community sport organisation.
More on that another time.
Tom Williams
Co-Founder, Participate World
participateworld.org
The Participate Playbook newsletter reflects Tom Williams' personal experience and recollections from his time at parkrun. It is not an official parkrun position or record, and any errors are unintentional. Tom writes as an independent consultant through Participate World Limited, and neither he nor the company are affiliated with, employed by, or representatives of parkrun Global or any of its group companies.
