(link to podcast)

0:00:14.2 Chris Ronan: Hello, everybody. This is Inside Geocaching HQ, the podcast about what is happening at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. I am Chris Ronan. My geocaching username is RockChalk. I am one of the 90-ish lackeys who works at HQ, and on behalf of all of us, thank you for having a listen to our podcast. Today we have a conversation with Sean Boots. Sean has worked a lot on the new Treasures feature, which debuted earlier this year on geocaching.com and in the Geocaching app. With Treasures, you can collect digital items by finding and logging caches that meet specific criteria set by HQ for each Treasure collection. Sean has been very involved with Treasures since its inception. He is constantly reviewing feedback about the feature and helping to decide where Treasures will go from here. So I thought it would be interesting to hear how things are going from his perspective, and it was. So here is me and Sean Boots talking about Treasures. So we are talking about Treasures today with Sean Boots, and I came into the office and there was an email with the subject line, Sean turns 21, meaning today is your 21st anniversary with the company. So I feel like it’s fortuitous that we would be speaking today as you are now legal as an HQ lackey.

0:01:56.9 Sean Boots: I’m officially, yeah, I’m officially an adult, I guess. And so, yeah, it’s been quite the journey. I’m very excited that I’m still here and I still love my job as much as I did on day one, and 21 years goes by so quickly. What a time so far.

0:02:11.7 Chris Ronan: Now, you’ve talked about this before on the HQ podcast, but it was a long time ago, so maybe we just start with an overview of your role at HQ and the path that led you to where you are today here.

0:02:25.6 Sean Boots: Yeah, lots can happen in 21 years, but when I first was hired, I was kind of working for my father in a basically dead-end job, and I was learning how to code for the first time because I saw that as a path to more success, I guess. And I did a bunch of contracting gigs to just get some experience, and then I eventually put my resume on monster.com, and Jeremy, I was just fishing. It wasn’t even like, I didn’t even really expect anything, and Jeremy actually called me and said, hey, or emailed me or something, and he said, “Hey, your skills meet our needs, and would you like to come in for an interview? And so I did, and I think that I might have had the easiest interview at HQ because we just pretty much talked about personal things, and I think Jeremy and the rest had already made up their mind that I was capable based on what they’d seen on my resume and what I was telling them I could do.

0:03:19.4 Sean Boots: So I feel kind of lucky that that happened at the time it did, but yeah, so I was hired as basically the equivalent of a junior developer, first programming job ever, and ultimately worked my way through each of the different titles, mid-level, senior lead, head of web, and then now I’m the head of all of basically software engineering. So head of engineering is my title, which is something I never ever dreamt would happen, especially given that I’m a sociology major and had really no technical experience out of college, so it was all kind of self, I had to figure it all out on my own after college, and so here I am.

0:04:02.2 Chris Ronan: And so as you said, head of engineering, what does that mean at HQ on a day-to-day basis?

0:04:08.7 Sean Boots: Yeah, it’s primarily a management position at this point. It has some architectural aspects to it as well, but we delegate a lot of those jobs to others. I have six direct reports, and each of those direct reports run a different team at HQ, so QA is one of them, the mobile team, the API team, the adventures team, the web team, and we have like an individual developer who’s a superstar who I also manage, and he’s kind of an island who does all kinds of great things too. So yeah, I might be missing somebody, but I’m trying, anyways, yeah, so it’s six people, and I’m also a member of senior management, there’s seven of us, and we basically meet a couple times a week to talk about company, all company type things, so it’s not necessarily specifically engineering focused, but I bring my representation to that meeting, and so when engineering questions are needed to be answered, I’m the one that they might go to, and yeah, so those are primarily the responsibilities, but I do code, and I still have significant projects that I get myself involved with. I’m kind of solely responsible for the GDPR data deletion sort of paradigm that we use here, and Treasures, which is the topic of the day, that’s kind of my sort of wheelhouse as well.

0:05:36.8 Chris Ronan: Yeah, so let’s get into it with Treasures. As you said, you have been very involved with it and have been since, I think, really any of us knew that it was even coming. To start with, how would you describe Treasures to someone who has no familiarity with it at all?

0:05:55.3 Sean Boots: Basically Treasures, I guess we could start by what it’s not, which is it’s not, a lot of people think it’s like another version of souvenirs or some form of an achievement system that rewards you for doing things or whatever. And the reality of it is it’s much more akin to physical treasure than it is to any of those things. So for example when you go to find a physical cache in the woods and you open up the container and there’s like the little McDonald’s trinkets or whatever in there, that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. But there’s a big difference, which is that the physical system in geocaching has sort of, it’s not really something that we can control administratively because it’s sort of up to like who’s maintaining the cache, who already got the stuff that’s good. And also there’s an aspect of you have to trade out, bring something to trade and then take something. So there’s that aspect as well. And so it’s not as much of a reward system for… It’s not like the traditional treasure hunt where you go X marks the spot in the woods and you head out to that spot. And once you get there, there’s some kind of pirate booty or something waiting for you or whatever.

0:07:07.5 Sean Boots: And so I think the idea with Treasures was that we wanted to, I use the phrase, put the treasure back in the treasure hunt because that’s kind of what the objective was. It’s like I, as a player, sort of observed that that treasure experience was kind of lacking and not really all that fun. And there wasn’t much in terms of collectability or there was no game aspect to it. It was just sort of like you go out and there’s these things and you either bring stuff to trade with it or not. And do I really want the things that I’m trading for? Probably not. And so after about 10 caches, you discover that the physical trading system is really not what the game’s about. But it seems sad to me that some form of treasure, especially for new users and especially for people who are interested in collecting and having a little bit of extra, it seems like that should be a part of it. So that was kind of the thought, is like, how can we put that into the game in a way that makes it fun for those who want to use it and makes it like not intrusive for those who don’t?

0:08:09.6 Sean Boots: So I think that was the objective. And I think we’ve somewhat succeeded. And we’re still working through all the details of it and still learning what works and what doesn’t. And we’re kind of moving forward with that. So the main thing is it’s like akin to physical treasure. It’s just virtual. And we can guarantee that treasure is in the caches this way, whereas we cannot with the physical.

0:08:33.7 Chris Ronan: So the community, we found out about Treasures earlier in 2025. When did you actively begin working on what became the Treasures project?

0:08:46.6 Sean Boots: Actually, Treasures, the community has discovered Treasures even before that because we’ve done it in the form of marketing campaigns before. And so people probably remember Mystery at the Museum, Wonders of the World, all of those campaigns actually used some form of the same Treasures system that we’re using in current form. So the idea has kind of been around for quite some time. We roll back the clock about six or seven years and we were talking about how do we upgrade the trackable system to something that might be more virtual or something. And we were actually just behind the scenes talking about virtual trackables as a possibility where you have a treasure that has a movable aspect to it or whatever. And I think we even had some people who don’t work here any longer were involved with the project that set up a system that sort of behind the scenes was testing out whether that could work or whether that would be feasible. And I think we determined it was, but we really just never graduated that into a real project that would become something that we would use.

0:09:49.0 Sean Boots: And so at some point we kind of had this realization that the trackable aspect of it wasn’t maybe the killer app aspect. It was more like what if it was just treasure, like where you actually go to the cache and you get something and then it’s not like a rental situation where you have to like pass it along to the next person or you only have it for a momentary aspect or yeah. So anyways, so treasure became this idea that we were sort of interested in. And the first iteration of it, I think, was Mystery at the Museum where we basically built a marketing campaign that was kind of a game. It was like a mystery where you had to go find, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but like gems and like clues and a detective or something like that. So it’s sort of these levels of like discovery and you go out and find geocaches that have these things in it. But pretty much everything was hard coded. So it was like, this is a one time gig where it’s like, it’s going to work for a month and then it’s going to not work again.

0:10:48.5 Sean Boots: And and so the idea was that was our first test where people actually received things by finding geocaches, virtual things by finding geocaches. And so it and it was a game that was that was like one of our typical marketing campaigns. And so I actually thought that was one of our more fun ones. It was like I was very engaged by it and I actually really, I got all the caches for that one. And that’s I’m a medium cacher, not a hardcore cacher. That one really got me. And so that was like a sort of an epiphany for me. Like this is a thing that actually motivates me. Maybe it will also motivate others. And so it’s kind of this thing where that idea just kind of ended, but it sort of felt sad that that was the end of it. It seemed like there should be more. And so I don’t know, over the years, we started thinking about what’s the next iteration look like of this? And so I don’t know, I think somewhere along the line, I can’t remember exactly, but I had an idea of this, is something that also never was actually delivered.

0:11:51.9 Sean Boots: But we had this idea called Animals of the World. Basically, the idea would be that these animals would be Treasures and they would be found in the geocaches or at the cache locations or something, and then you would discover these animals and then it would be sort of like a treasure moment or whatever. And we made this massive, complicated set of rules that was pretty seriously gamified and it was regional and you’d have kangaroos that you’d find in Australia only and then you’d have… I don’t know. So anyways, we released it with lackeys only and we played the game amongst ourselves, but I think we just didn’t really develop it enough to make it into a production-ready system. But it was a chance for us to sort of test out an idea amongst ourselves and it showed some promise, I think, is what I think what we decided. And so it was a 10% project, which is one of the things I should back up, but 10% is a thing that we have in our engineering department where engineers get a Friday afternoon to sort of noodle on their own ideas and see what could come of it.

0:12:57.8 Sean Boots: And a group of us used that time to come up with this idea and see if we could figure out something that would work in this category or whatever. And so, yeah, the initial engine for Treasures was built during that project. So that’s the main point of that. And our mobile lead engineer, Heather Wallachie, was basically the primary engineer for that piece. And I was more playing a role of like a product kind of manager or something where we were working together, but I was sort of like explaining the vision and she was taking it and building the back end side of it. And another engineer did, another couple of engineers did sort of the mobile version and the web version. And so we had this workable system that was pretty cool and it actually did a lot of cool stuff. It basically was the precursor for this idea, which is that I guess I could also back up, which is it used to be that we would literally populate every geocache with a treasure. It’s virtually, I guess, because it’s IDs and things like that.

0:14:05.9 Sean Boots: But the way we did it was not very scalable. Like we would have to run queries for like two weeks in order to populate all the geocaches with all the Treasures that we would be awarding. And so this new system was basically a way to basically come up with a query that’s sort of like running a filter on your mobile app or something to filter out the geocaches that you might want. And we would attach that filter to these collections or whatever. And it would basically allow these things to automatically sort of dispense themselves in caches. And so it sounds complicated, but it’s a much more scalable and easy to use system. And so that was the precursor for this idea. In building that idea, we still had the problem that there was no real way to administrate it. So it was kind of just like this animals thing is the same as Mystery at the Museum. It was a hard-coded like one-off, this is the only theme that you can use. And then if you want to do another one, it’s going to take you another month to build it or two months or something.

0:15:09.5 Sean Boots: And so that just didn’t work. And so my role in that as a coder was probably going to be to build that administrative piece and I never did. And so there was some form of guilt that I should maybe get to that at some point. And so in 2023, I kind of decided that I was going to go after it once and for all. And so the later part of 2023, I started thinking like, I’m going to build this administrative piece that allows us to create these campaigns on the fly so that it’s not just the one idea that we had, it can be anything. And so ultimately what happened is, what people now know as collections became these mini little campaigns that you can go and find Treasures with. And so you can use an administrative tool now to build these collections and then release them very quickly and then we can just keep on adding them over and over again. And then it becomes a system that scales and we can ideally add hundreds of these things in the long term.

0:16:10.5 Sean Boots: In doing so, I think the way that we really wanted to use the system started opening itself up and it’s like, okay, now we’re starting to see what this should actually look like in practice. This idea of collections and the ability of how they might unlock for people and how we can explain to people that you can go out and have purpose with finding them. Each collection basically has a rule set where you can go to find the Treasures in that collection. You just have to go to the collection and see what the rules are and then when you follow those rules, you’ll get the Treasures.

0:16:50.5 Chris Ronan: As I understand it, in the very beginning of this, you were reading all of the feedback and categorizing all of that. I’m not sure if you’re still doing it quite to that degree now, but I’m curious to know more about what you’ve heard from the community and how that feedback has impacted the course of Treasures.

0:17:12.2 Sean Boots: Well, one of the things that was a really, really smart decision that was made early in this process was that one of our designers, Reese, is their name, and brought forth the idea that we would basically put a feedback mechanism on the actual Treasures’ page where people could ask or they could tell us what their opinions of the Treasures experience was. And so what’s happened is people have actually used that mechanism, and it’s funneled in thousands of pieces of feedback that we can basically monitor on a daily basis to understand what people’s pain points and happy points are, I guess. And I’ve taken a strong interest in figuring out what that looks like, what I could do with that. So basically, I would say the answer of what I’ve… It’s better than I expected. It’s been mostly positive, but there are also very, very constructive comments that come through and give us ideas of why a certain type of collection is too hard or too easy, or it’s preventing people from being able to complete the full set.

0:18:17.0 Sean Boots: And so we’re basically watching all this feedback and learning which ones are good and which ones are not good, and we’re getting ideas about how we might want to iterate this going forward into the next version. For me, it’s pretty fascinating to watch all these comments come in because, it’s just so many different opinions about different things, but they’re all so useful, and some people are just flat-out negative and they hate it, and other people are just like, this is the coolest thing you guys have done, and then other people are very, very specific with paragraphs filled with data with their comment that says very specific things about how they can fix it. And some of these things are going to be ideas that we add to this feature because they’re clearly good ideas and they’re going to make a difference, I think. And so, yeah, that mechanism was really great, and honestly, it’s something that we probably should consider putting in other features when we’re building them as well.

0:19:11.5 Sean Boots: But yeah, I have the ability to immediately translate all the comments that come in, and I can organize them based on sentiment. I haven’t hooked it up to AI yet, but I can obviously tell what it is, and then I can label it myself, and then I can sort and filter by which types of feedback I want to be looking at at any given moment. So we have suggestions and complaints and questions, and sometimes people are just confused, and so sometimes I’ll just jump in and send a message center message to people to help them out really quickly. Yeah, so it’s been a really important function to help us to improve the feature.

0:19:52.5 Chris Ronan: I think one thing that we see pretty commonly here at HQ, whether it’s with a souvenir campaign or now Treasures, some will say that a collection is too easy, others will say it’s too hard. And I’m curious how you look at that, how you kind of balance those needs, and if it’s impacted by the fact that you are personally very into gaming yourself.

0:20:19.3 Sean Boots: Yeah, you’re right, I’m definitely a game player. I’m especially a board game player. That’s my number one hobby, I would even say. It’s like I have hundreds of games displayed in front of me in my office at home. But yeah, I think about that a lot, actually, which is there are different types of users, and we need to figure out ways to accommodate all of their needs as best as we can. But we also have to keep in mind what is our vision for why we even have this feature. And so we might tailor it a little bit more to a certain type of user over a certain other type of user. But at the same time, I think the overall goal is just to make it a feature that everybody can enjoy. And the current set, I think we view this as a new user to intermediate user feature because so many of the advanced users are already engaged, and they already don’t need incentive to go find geocaches. But at the same time, we do also want them to like this. But we find that they blow through them so fast that they just have them all, and then they’re clamoring for more, and we’re not able to get them out as fast as maybe we would want to.

0:21:26.5 Sean Boots: For those people, I think sometimes they get irritated because it requires a little bit more like a special kind of cache, and so they tend to save caches for the Treasures where they might rather just go get it right now and not have to wait to get the Treasures. And so it’s maybe preventing them from going as crazy with the caching as they maybe even want to. So there’s some of those little minor aspects to it for the advanced users. But for the new users, I think it’s hard to deny that the initial attraction of geocaching to a brand-new user is the idea that you’re going to find treasure, even if that’s not ultimately what they discover is what happens. I remember the first time I went looking for geocaches, it was purely a treasure hunt, and it’s like, what’s going to be in this cache? I’m excited to find out. And when you find out, it’s like, oh, there’s a little Zeus plastic thing from McDonald’s, and that’s the best thing that I can find in here. It’s like, well, I’m taking it.

0:22:22.5 Sean Boots: But it’s still like after 10 of those, it’s like, all right, I don’t need any more or whatever. But it’s still like that delivery of a treasure to the person who’s looking for a treasure is actually a really important thing, I think. And then also, there’s this collectability aspect for especially intermediate users is a really good thing too because it just adds more depth to why you go caching. It’s like, I’m looking for this set of Treasures, and so I’m picking these certain number of geocaches that are going to meet the qualifications for it such that I can get those collections. And then when I get the collection of all of them, it’s going to be a sort of a milestone moment, which adds fun to the experience. Even though even in each individual cache, it’s fun in its own right. For me, that’s a fun thing. And so I think a lot of people have not necessarily, like they haven’t like realized maybe yet that like the completion of a collection is a sort of remarkable moment.

0:23:21.8 Sean Boots: They’re wanting a souvenir to like really cap it off as you should give me a souvenir to prove that it was a great thing. But hopefully we’ll get to a place where the number of collections that you have completed is in of itself a kind of a find count-like number that will be interesting for people. I guess that gets to the point of or to the heart of the question.

0:23:43.6 Chris Ronan: We are obviously very early days with Treasures, just a few months into it still. But what comes to your mind as some of the possibilities of things that could happen with Treasures down the road? Every time I talk to you, it seems like there’s a whole lot of possibility and a lot of things to possibly look into over time.

0:24:05.2 Sean Boots: Yes, that’s an understatement. I think it’s really been probably the biggest challenge for me is to like hone in on like what’s next and not get too excited about all the possibilities of where it could go. But in the meantime, I think I can start with what’s actually coming next. And then I can get into some of the potential future things or whatever. One of the things that’s really been an issue for people that I think we were looking to address is that the way that we initially introduced this was pretty locked down. We start you with a single collection and it’s a very easy ones. So we need to teach you that… Part of the objective with this is how to introduce people slowly into this concept so that it’s not too overwhelming from the start. And even that was a little bit of a challenge because it was a big paradigm shift for people. So we wanted to introduce people to the very first collection, which was very easy and everybody was getting Treasures for just about finding anything, which in and of itself was confusing because it’s like, why do I just get this participation trophy?

0:25:09.9 Sean Boots: But it’s like, well, it’s because we’re trying to introduce you to this idea that Treasures even is a thing. So once you get through that collection, you now have unlocked the next one. And that next one was slightly more difficult. You wouldn’t find them in all the caches anymore. Now you have to be very specifically looking for a certain type. And then the next step was to unlock multiple collections at the same time. So people would understand that there’s actually a possibility that you might qualify for two Treasures at the same time and one of those would be delivered, but the other one wouldn’t. And so then people have to figure out how are they going to navigate that kind of system. This whole unlocking system has definitely created some challenge because people want what they want. They don’t want us to dictate what they want to do. They want to be able to pick things. They want to like I’m going after this one, not this one. And I don’t like that that I have to get through this egg hunt, which is very difficult in order to unlock the next one, which is not as difficult. But it’s the one I want. So there’s a lot of that sort of like where we put you on a track to like kind of guide you through this like progression system. Some people like it because it’s easy and it just takes you down the path. But other people are like, I want more control.

0:26:30.2 Sean Boots: Another thing is that like when there is this track that people go down, we’ve sort of loosely designed it in a way that like you’ve got kind of three tracks technically going at the same time. One is a very easy track, one sort of a medium track and one’s a much more difficult track. And so people maybe don’t realize that the difficult track is just going to unlock another difficult thing and the easy ones are going to keep unlocking the easy ones. But we’re not like advertising that it works that way, but it is what it is. And so people still find like I’m so frustrated that I can’t get through eggs because I really want the next one and whatever. So I think where we have settled going forward is that we’re looking to create a system that basically strips away that track system entirely. And we’re going to at some point, I think we’re still going to make you do the first collection such that you learn with an easy system. But once that unlocks the next like the actual system, I think we’re going to be building a system that allows you to basically choose from whatever collections are available.

0:27:35.0 Sean Boots: And you can decide based on looking at the criteria of these collections and what kind of Treasures they are, what the theme might be, at least you won’t get to see the Treasures until you find them. But basically, we’re going to let you choose which collections you get to go after. And I think there’s going to be some degree of you can have one going if you want, or you can have up to three going at the same time. And you can decide what order is the priority order so that if you think that you want… If hypothetically you had the egg hunt and the celebrating 25 years and classic trackables going, if they were placed in a certain order, if they all evaluated to giving you a treasure, you would get the one that’s placed at the top. So you basically get to say, I want eggs. So whenever I qualify for eggs, no matter what else I qualify for, I’m getting the egg or, you know what I mean. So there’s just a lot more granular control over how Treasures like sort of work for you. That’s the big next thing. It will also help us with organizing because right now, as you complete collections, that stack of things that you’ve completed on that page is getting to be a little bit long.

0:28:39.5 Sean Boots: And ideally, we’re going to have like lots of these collections that you might want to go after. And so if that stacks up to like hundreds of collections that you’ve solved, that’s going to be a gross looking page. And so we need to do some sort of sorts and filters and things with the collections to make it look… So you can sort of understand what you have and what you don’t really want to see at any given moment when you’re looking for the next one. So this collection choice is what we’re calling it, is basically it allows you to decide, hey, what kind of a collection am I actually interested in? Do I want to go after difficult ones or do I want to go after easy ones? Like what experience do I actually want to have? And hopefully we’ll be able to like put it out there so that it’s pretty obvious like this is going to be a difficult one. But then the advantage to going after difficult ones is that you may ultimately end up with a collection, an overall collection of Treasures that you found that is an impressive looking collection because you found things that other people were not willing to go after or whatever.

0:29:39.8 Sean Boots: And so there’s sort of this angle of at some point we’re going to show everybody what everybody else has too. So you can see what other people have with collections and then we’ll be able to sort of compare and contrast. And I can see that, wow, this person, Chris, who’s a hashing maniac, has found every single treasure in the world. And I couldn’t dream to find the ones that he’d found because he found all the hard ones. But it also gives us the ability to create some very, very interesting, like difficult, like maybe even like significant effort type collections that might take you a year to finish. This idea that you’re going to be able to do everything is probably not the way that we’re viewing this. We’re going to give you stuff that you’ll… So it’s such that you’ll always be able to go after something and have that experience. But we actually really want this to be a thing where like that this is some of these things are like like massive accomplishments if you get them. That’s a ways away. And we’re still dreaming up like what would those collections even look like?

0:30:39.5 Sean Boots: And like how do we manifest them into the system? But but it is, that’s kind of the vision. So that’s the actually coming, that’s already in process. We’re putting that together. Much of that some of the more hypothetical fun ideas that could also happen are down the line. I think we do have the idea of hooking up souvenirs to achievement such like you get 25 collections completed, you get a souvenir or 100 or I don’t know, like a certain number of Treasures found that don’t that doesn’t matter with what the collections. But if you find 100 Treasures, you get a maybe a souvenir for that or something. So that’s a pretty easy one that we might be able to add soon, at least noodled with the idea of you can get something for completing collections, like some form of reward. And I don’t know, we haven’t really dreamed up what those rewards would be, but it could be something like a favorite point or like a… I don’t know, like it could be a souvenir, too. But I don’t know, like or like something happens to your display to let you know you get to temporarily change the color or something.

0:31:44.8 Sean Boots: I don’t know. There’s all kinds of ideas that could happen in that category. And so that might bring more purpose to the collecting for people if they actually like when you achieve the completion of a collection, you actually get something. That’s more of a pipe dream. It’s a future idea. But people often ask, what’s the point of this? And the answer is, well, there isn’t much of one other than like if you like to collect stuff and accumulate trinkets just like you do with other things in life. Like, what’s the point of collecting board games? I don’t know. I keep doing it. Yeah. You know what I mean? People who want more purpose from it. I don’t know. You may be a little bit disappointed because… Unless the souvenir idea of achievement rings a little more that matters to you. But for me, it’s like, well, I just want to keep increasing the number of collections that I’ve completed. That’s enough for me. I just want to find stuff and I want to see what the ones that are out there are and I want to get them. That’s what the purpose is for me.

0:32:49.4 Chris Ronan: Well, you have certainly given us a lot to think about. Is there anything else that comes to mind for you as far as what you would like people to know about Treasures?

0:32:58.7 Sean Boots: I have enough. There’s a few other ideas that are that are being thrown around as well. I think one of the ideas, too, is like this potentially the idea of figuring out some way to get people to create custom Treasures that they might be able to like let… I don’t know if it would be purchased or acquired somehow and then put into the caches that they own. And then maybe like when people visit those caches, those Treasures would be available to people such that there would be like an entirely larger type of collection that could happen. It’s kind of reminds me of like lackey tags or something like that. But like everybody gets to have a tag of some or something like that and then somehow there’s a system that works in that regard. Yeah. Each of these Treasures are actually technically unique instances in our database. So like they actually are tradable, but in the way that they’re built, we just don’t have it. We’re not allowing people to move them or to do anything with them. But they are unique instances.

0:33:58.0 Sean Boots: They’re not just logs of a moment in time that happened. So anyhow, that’s kind of a way that they’re set up. I think in terms of future and like where we’re going with this, I think it’s more of just this is a set of functionality that is sort of like on top of the game that’s designed not to bother the core experience. And for those who think it’s fun, it’s available and it’s there to sort of distract you with an additional layer of fun. And for those who think it’s boring and doesn’t have a purpose. Well, you just turn off those messages and you don’t have to visit the treasure page and then it doesn’t, it’s not a thing for you. Well, actually, that’s one other thing about our… Now that I think about it, the next iteration of this will actually, for those people, it would allow them technically to say I’m not looking after any Treasures right now. So take my three collection potential and make it zero. So then you would be able to at least put your experience on pause or you could like, I don’t want to get Treasures until I go out caching with Chris.

0:35:04.5 Sean Boots: When he and I go out, I’m going to turn my Treasures and we’re going to both specifically go after this one collection together. And so that would be really a way that we can sort of like… Could work because right now it’s like Chris is working on like the tools of the trade hardest one. Well, he’s probably already finished it. But if he was working on the hardest one and I’m still stuck on eggs or whatever, well, then when we go caching together, like he’s going to get tools of the trade and move his career of treasure hunting up. And I’m going to maybe get an egg and I’ll still be lagging behind, I guess or we may not qualify at the same time. So maybe that wouldn’t be as fun. So there’s a lot of options with the new system that would allow you to tailor the experience and customize it to what your friends are also doing at any given moment.

0:35:50.4 Chris Ronan: And so before we let you go, I always ask the lackeys who come through here on the podcast, do you have any caching plans coming up, any big caching outings, anywhere people could see you out in the wild among other geocachers?

0:36:06.9 Sean Boots: Yeah, actually, I do. Well, I’m still like I’m at this point, I think I’m like 75 %, but I am supposed to go to Amsterdam at the end of the month for a block party event. And I had an accident recently with where I was wakeboarding and I messed up my back. And so whether I can actually ride on an 11, 12 hour plane ride is still kind of up in the air. And do I really want to be in a foreign country all by myself with this condition is sort of like a question I’m still trying to answer. But I am planning to go at this point. I think I’m probably going to be able to do it. So that’s my goal. So I’ll be, I think it’s the 27th through the 30 or the 1st of September. I think I’ll be in Amsterdam and the Rotterdam area of the Netherlands. I love talking about this subject specifically. I’ll talk about anything with you. I love talking about geocaching, just period. But like if you have any questions or if you have any ideas or if you do manage to go to any of these events and you want to hang out and talk about that stuff, I’m very interested in having that conversation.

0:37:17.2 Chris Ronan: When you mentioned the Netherlands, I thought that you might mention another passion of yours. I see at the moment you have on a T-shirt with the Formula One logo on it.

0:37:27.8 Sean Boots: I’ll be going to, there’s an F1 race there and I’ve become a massive, like Chris and also like Bryan Roth. We’ve all become massive F1 fans. Just so happens that there’s a Netherlands race at the same weekend, which I will also be attending. Another reason why I like I’m going to like force myself to get on that plane no matter how I feel. So, yeah, excited.

0:37:55.4 Chris Ronan: That was Sean Boots, the head of engineering at Geocaching HQ. If you want to learn more about Treasures, visit geocaching.com or open your Geocaching app. Go to your profile tab in the app and Treasures is right there. And if there’s a topic you would like for us to cover on the podcast, please feel free to send a message to podcast@geocaching.com. We’d love to hear from you. And until next time, from me and Sean and all the lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.