Author: Chris

Hopelessly addicted cacher and Geocaching HQ's public relations manager.
/ Chris

Inside Geocaching HQ transcript (episode 37): Daniel Gruici

[music]

00:14 Chris Ronan: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ, the podcast about the goings-on at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. My name is Chris Ronan. My username is Rock Chalk. I am one of the 80 or so lackeys who works at HQ in Seattle. And of course, these days we are working remotely now for about two months, all of the lackeys are, so this is more of a podcast about HQ rather than being from HQ. But today, it is my pleasure to talk with Daniel Gruici, who is the Mobile Engineering Lead at HQ. He has had some interesting positions before he came here, and has had some interesting role since he has been at HQ. So we enjoyed talking about those things. So let’s get right to it. Me and Daniel Gruici.

[music]

01:15 CR: Daniel, thank you for taking some time out and talking about any number of… You don’t know what we’re gonna talk about today, it’s wide open. So thank you for taking the leap with me.

01:26 Daniel Gruici: Hey, thanks for having me, I’m really excited to be here.

01:29 CR: So, mobile engineering lead, let’s start with that. What does that mean? How would you describe what you do to a stranger?

01:37 DG: So, it’s evolved since I started, but my main thing is making sure everybody on the team feels like they’re growing, removing roadblocks that they may have, that I can help solve, and trying to be as much of a subject matter expert as I can for both the platforms. But my main thing and the thing that I enjoy the most is just making sure everybody feels like they’re growing and moving forward in their careers.

02:03 CR: What originally brought you to HQ? Because I know this is one of a few roles that you’ve had here. What was that that first brought you to HQ?

02:11 DG: So, back when I was in Arizona, I was looking for leadership positions. It’s something I’ve kind of fallen into and enjoyed each time that I’ve been anywhere, actually. And the job pool in Arizona was looking for more development, they were looking for more people who wanted to do cross-platform solutions and things like that, and I’m not extremely interested in it, it’s still a emerging market down there, so different problems that caused me to look outside.

02:41 DG: My wife actually suggested, “Hey, if we’re looking outside, why not Washington?” I was like, “Okay.” And then when I found that Geocaching was hiring, I also found out that D-Rux, one of my friends that I met in college, was working there. I was like, “Well, alright.” So I reached out and I’m like, “Tell me about working there,” and he’s like, “It’s great working here.” “Well, that seals it. Okay.” [chuckle] So, applied, fun fact, I believe, LinkedIn and the parent company for Victoria’s Secret, those are the three in the running. And then as soon as I got the offer, which came real quick and I was so stoked, I was like, “Yeah, no, we’re done, we’re going to Washington. We’re going to Geocaching, it’s gonna be great.”

03:24 CR: That is quite a trio of contenders for your services, quite a range of offerings there. And I would think HQ was probably by far the smallest of those three; those other two are pretty well-known international conglomerates. What was it about HQ that really appealed to you?

03:47 DG: The one who sold me on it the most was actually our previous product owner, Ben, who I’m sure everybody knows. He and I had a really good conversation about how the product team flow works and what he looks for and what he was interested in and how we put our work product together, and that was something I was really looking for, because it’s very difficult to find somebody who both cares about your customer, and then also brings that all the way through to the developers, so that we feel the same way and then moves the story through so that we can get work done. And then when I got to do my in-person interview, the other Android developers were very welcoming. I somehow impressed them as well ’cause they’re talented folks. And all of us had just… It felt like a perfect fit, when I finally got to be on site, even though I came in my shirt and tie, as I do…

[laughter]

04:46 DG: Don’t worry, the tie had geometry proofs, it was totally legit and very casual. [laughter] Even with that, I still felt like… It still felt like I’d fit in. It felt like I could be an asset for the team, and that was the feedback I got too. It was actually something really nice was them saying, “The first person that came in here, he didn’t just stomp in and say ‘Well, this is how we can fix this, and this is what we could do here, and this would… ‘ The first things out of your mouth were, ‘Oh, well, how do I fit in with the team? How do I fit in with Geocaching? What do I do to make it so that I’m successful at Geocaching and how things are going?'” That sold me to them, and it sold Geocaching to me. So, it was no-brainer once I finally got the on-site done and got the offer. [chuckle]

05:30 CR: You mentioned being in Arizona at the time, what kind of things had you done before you came to HQ?

05:37 DG: So, I worked with American Express for a couple of years, twice actually, and that’s a funny story, if we wanna get into that. They thought I was a 10-year veteran at AmEx when I had hit my fourth year because, worked for them in 2006, worked for them in 2016, that’s 10 years, yeah, so… [chuckle]

05:55 CR: I hope there was some extra vacation that you got for that or something.

05:58 DG: There was an insane amount of vacation. I also got this… On my desk at work, there is a black slate plaque that sits there, and it’s the heaviest thing on there. It’s got the Centurion card on it, on the back it says, “Thanks Daniel for 10 years of loyal experience and time with us at American Express.” I was like… I even reached out, “This is a… I haven’t worked here for 10 years.” I know it’s been 10 years’ total, ’cause I used to be a fraud analyst for them, and they’re like, “No, no, no, it’s fine.” “Okay, cool. Great.”

06:28 CR: Wow.

06:29 DG: 10 years, alright. [chuckle]

06:31 CR: That’s like a scene out of Office Space or something.

06:33 DG: Yeah, [chuckle] yeah, “Congratulations,” “Oh no, where did they find out? When do I get in trouble?” But for them, I was kind of doing lead work and kind of doing senior work for Android for them. It was a kind of a new team getting put together for business customers. And so that’s where I started getting further and further and just like, “Yeah, I wanna get into the senior work, I wanna get into the lead work.” Before that, I worked for Allstate, and that was a trip. That was working on a very strange system that has to do with the Good Hands Rescue, I think is the name of the app now, but I was in on that at a very interesting time. And before that, I worked for GoDaddy, and I was a part of the search team. So as soon as you type search… You search for any website to find out if you could get it or not, that was when I started.

07:29 CR: Oh, wow.

07:30 DG: I’m sure there’s still things in there that I wrote that are still in that search path, and I know for sure they’re still using… I created an automator for top-level domains. They all had the same kind of webpage and stuff, but we kept writing them every time, and I know for sure they’re still using that, which is a terribly hacky C# application. Yeah. And even before that, there was ASU, that’s how I learned how to do Android. I said I could learn it in a month and they believed me. And I joined the Teachers College and help them build educational apps, and hired on a bunch of people, and did a bunch of very interesting stuff for both Android and iOS, and that was… Oh gosh, that was like eight years ago now. [chuckle]

08:10 CR: Wow, that’s a lot of interesting stuff. So you show up at HQ… Maybe just talk a little bit about the difference working in a place like HQ as opposed to… You just mentioned a lot of, what I assume, are very big companies with very large staffs, and then you come to HQ where more of a bootstrap organization, around 80 people altogether. I would assume things work differently here as opposed to where you have been, but I don’t know, you tell me.

08:43 DG: For sure. One of the nice advantages is being able to walk across the hall and say, “Hey friends, I need help with the database thing, I need help with an API thing.” And everyone’s like, “Oh, hey, Daniel.” They know my name and my face like right away, [chuckle] and everybody is willing to help. When you’re in… When you start getting into those larger orgs, it can get very difficult to get… They can get difficult to put things through because everybody’s a separate project, everyone’s a separate team, and that has its advantages for an organization that large, like imagine for American Express trying to get into just a data system for testable data, that’s a whole to-do, that’s a project plan, that’s your project number going through, you speak with all these people, and then it’s like, “Okay, in two weeks, we might have data for you, as long as all the other project things kinda happen.”

09:35 DG: And being siloed off like that, again, I don’t get the same kind of advantage, like I don’t have somebody that’s just writing back and stuff and helping me out with that. And it was definitely a very strange experience for me having worked in basically siloed areas the entire time for most of my professional career. [chuckle] The only thing that was this bootstrap is ASU. So back when I worked for the university, it was a very similar feel, like there was just the group of developers, and it was pretty much us making sure that these apps were put together, that we did all the backend work, we did all that. So it’s been a lot of fun to go back to that more bootstrap-y feel, ’cause it feels like a lot of things get done faster and it’s interesting to see just the result of us all being able to work together so quickly.

10:27 CR: We were talking before we started recording about projects that you’ve worked on and certainly anybody that has used the apps, the official geocaching apps, has seen your work, but so much of that is kind of, I guess, I wanna say behind the scenes. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t just obvious when you look at it. But we were talking about the navigation project, that was a really big deal, and certainly something that everybody is familiar with if you’re using that app.

10:58 DG: Yeah, that was a huge deal. It’s one of the harder pieces to work on with mobile ’cause we’re trying to deal with the accelerometer and the compass and the gyroscope, and it’s all these onboard components, and then performing a bunch of matrix multiplication and otherwise, to get your bearing and get to where the phone is pointing. And something just as simple as that took a very long time. It was a very involved project and very, very interesting. It was fun to see and test when we would have users kind of mess around with it, and aim their phones towards that the orange line everybody knows that goes from view to the cache and see it’s like, “Oh, it’s in that direction.” So it was really fulfilling to be like, “Oh cool, look at it go.” So it was a huge project. It was a lot of interesting fun, and I mean, interesting in the hard way, not interesting in like, “Yeah, I’d do this again for sure.” ‘Cause hardware is an interesting monster on the mobile platform. But yeah, it was a big change in the way that users got to caches and it was a big change in the way that just the entire flow of the app kind of went. So it was a very interesting project.

12:14 CR: Now, you’re the mobile engineering lead, what… Let’s talk about the mobile team, what kind of expertises come together to make up a mobile team, and how many people are we talking about? And we don’t have to be exhaustive about it necessarily, but there’s a lot of different kinds of abilities that make up a team like that, isn’t there?

13:32 DG: Yeah, it’s easy context. There’s 11 of us total that are just mobile. And that doesn’t mean the support folks like… So our API teams, they’re working on both the website APIs and the ones that feed the mobile app. So it could be anyone that’s doing backend work and helping us out. The people who are just strictly mobile, and this is for the Geocaching project, so this doesn’t include the Adventures project, there’s 11 of us there. So three and three for Android iOS, we have our QA lead, we have our product designer, product owner, and then our project manager as well. And yeah, the expertise just… It’s nice being in this kind of like… It’s almost like a smaller feature team like targeting the core app, and very diverse and awesome, but all needed. [chuckle]

13:33 DG: Between the two teams, like for the iOS team and the Android team, we do have a senior developer and they’re kind of like our technical lean-to. They’re the ones that are going out there and saying it’s like, “Oh, Android’s introduced something new.” “Oh, iOS 25 is coming out. Well, this is what we need to be aware of, and this is the new features they’ve added.” And then all of us working together and learning to just, “What can we use to make the app better?” And that’s basically the goal of the entire team. “What do we do so that this app does better? What do we do so you get to the geocache? What do we do so that your experience is fun? How do we keep the fun going?” [chuckle]

14:08 CR: You know, it’s funny, as you were talking just now, I was thinking about the number of times that I’ll see that my laptop needs a system update or I’ve got apps that need an update, and it’s kind of… Maybe it’s annoying. There’s that moment where I have to, “Oh great, I gotta wait for this thing to update or whatever.” But your team’s [chuckle] existence sometimes revolves around keeping up with the number of different operating system updates on Android or iOS or what have you. And I would imagine there’s a lot of them that me, as the end user, I never know that those things necessarily even happen. They’re so behind the scenes. But you guys have to be totally on top of all that stuff. I think that would drive me crazy. [laughter]

14:54 DG: It’s a weird world. So I grew up with computers, and I’ve been there when… I remember when Windows 95 got released, and you got the picture of a dude holding that above his head, and that’s done work. I get… There’s such a… Even with the headache that it is like keeping up with this stuff, I still get this extreme luxury of like, “Yeah, well, okay, this version… Oh okay, this version’s got something weird. Android introduced something new. Alright, I gotta fix this.” I can fix that in a day as opposed to the rollout of like, “I gotta get every CD manufacturer in Asia running so that I can have enough of these CDs to send out.” It’s wild, and I think that’s what keeps me humble [chuckle] about keeping up with this, it’s like, “Well, we could be releasing this stuff on CD-ROM.” [laughter]

15:45 CR: Oh my gosh, wow. That’s a memory you just brought back. [chuckle]

15:50 DG: Oh man. Yeah.

15:51 CR: Getting those big old six-inch thick boxes that just had like 12 CD-ROMs in them that you had to… [laughter]

16:00 DG: Yeah, “I put in number two of 25.”

16:02 CR: Right, oh my gosh.

16:04 DG: Alright. [laughter]

16:06 CR: Oh my gosh, I had totally forgotten about that. I’m gonna have nightmares.

16:10 DG: I know. It’s a weird world we live in. [laughter] This doesn’t date me too much, but I remember the first computer… My dad was adamant that we had a computer in our household, and we got a Packard Bell, and it connected to the internet, and we thought that was the coolest thing ever. And it took floppy disks and ran this massive dot matrix printer for putting out invoices. [laughter] And then we got an IBM 386 for the house, ’cause that was for the job, that was for his business. And I still remember putting in floppy 205 in, still remember navigating through DOS and doing all that stuff. So it’s like…

16:47 CR: Wow.

16:48 DG: I think I get to be lucky in that sense. Like developers of the future, we’ll see if they even… Like if they have that kind of like cut moment there, but it’s like, “I’m not making floppies, I’m not trying to push over-the-year updates for like an app but we’re good, I’ll handle it. Cool. You wanna change the way the UI works with Android? Great, sure, I’ll figure it out. I’ll push out an update, it’ll be okay.” [laughter]

17:11 CR: So when you got to HQ, how much did you know about Geocaching when you first got here?

17:16 DG: All I knew was that you guys were great. [laughter]. D-Rux was really… He talked really highly of the company. And I had not realized that this existed. And it was interesting too ’cause my interview was in mid-July, and in Arizona, it was 115 degrees out. So I was going to go look for one before I flew out, but then didn’t want to deal with the sun as most Arizonans don’t. [laughter] So if you look, my first find’s actually the HQ cache. ‘Cause I came in and was able to do that before my interview started and found it, and then continued to find more as I went. So yeah, I was completely unaware coming in. [chuckle]

18:01 CR: Well you’ve really gotten onboard with it though. I know you’ve been very engaged, just with getting to know the game and the community. What have you found that you enjoy most about geocaching as you’ve been involved with it longer?

18:18 DG: My, honestly, favorite thing is as soon as you’re with a group of geocachers, you’re all friends. Your’re friends right away. And I know that kinda happens in other hobbies where it’s like, “Oh yeah, we both play guitar. That’s cool.” But you don’t get that camaraderie right away. It’s like, “Oh we’re all on an adventure together. We’re great friends right now. This is… ” The conversations flow, we talk about finding geocaches, we talk about our wives, we talk about families, we talk about other hobbies we have, but it’s… You don’t get that instant into the… I guess, it’s like an instant into the party. It’s like, “Oh you geocache too? Welcome to the party, I’m glad you’re here.” And that is the feeling you’ll get at any of the events you go to, or when you find another geocacher and start talking about it.

19:10 DG: I remember I was in Leavenworth, and I was at a bar, and one of the staff there had coordinates tattooed on their arm. And I was like “Oh, home coordinates?” And they’re like, “Yeah, sort of.” I’m like, “Oh, like geocaching.” “I use the geocache, and that’s kind of why I had the idea, that’s why… ” And it was just… And then there was a conversation for half an hour about geocaches around Leavenworth. And it’s that easy, and it’s the best part about the community.

19:39 CR: And for people that might not know, that’s Leavenworth, Washington. There are… I’m from Kansas, there’s a Leavenworth, Kansas. I’m sure there’s probably other Leavenworths. But Leavenworth, Washington, a very idyllic, Bavarian-theme town. And a lot of good geocaches around there.

19:55 DG: Yeah.

19:56 CR: We’ve been doing a thing where we ask people a few, I don’t know, just kinda get to know you questions. So you’ve already answered a couple of them as far as how would you describe your job and what do you like about Geocaching? So we’ll go through a couple of the other ones here. What is your favorite movie?

20:16 DG: Amadeus. One, it’s shot beautifully. Two, I like the idea of having this very, very surly and angry man in Salieri, who’s another composer at the time. Amadeus Mozart, and Salieri is portrayed as this other composer in the same court and he sees this idiot that’s there and then finds out this idiot is a musical genius, and how much hate that he has for him but how much respect that he has. Because Salieri has worked so hard. And what that respect kind of turns into, as the movie goes along, I just, it’s one of those ones that I can watch a million times. I have the soundtrack on vinyl because they did like a 30th anniversary of Amadeus on vinyl. It’s classical music on vinyl ’cause it’s all, that was all what was in the movie, but it’s just like that’s how much I love this movie. It’s like, “Oh yeah, Amadeus merchandise, didn’t think that would exist. But yeah, I’m on board, I’m a fan.”

21:20 CR: And kind of what dates me is when I think of Amadeus is I think of Rock Me Amadeus.

21:25 DG: Exactly, Falco.

21:27 CR: Yeah, Falco, man. I was on a trip recently on a, I guess it wasn’t all that recently, because it was before all the COVID stuff, but we had satellite radio in our rental car and of course, listened to the ’80s channel. And yeah, Rock Me Amadeus came on about once every three or four hours, and it was… The car was jamming, man.

[laughter]

21:46 DG: It’s a great tune.

21:47 CR: I need to go back and watch that movie though. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that one. So your favorite hobby, what is that?

21:55 DG: Still trying to figure that out. I got a lot of hobbies. I don’t have the same thing at my bookcase ’cause there’s just a bunch of brands and stuff on there. There’s so many things. A big one and one that I got hyped about because we did a partnership with is Magic: The Gathering. That was a huge magic player for… Gosh, well, it’s almost 20 years I’ve been playing Magic.

22:18 CR: Wow.

22:19 DG: Now, since ’93. So, not a difficult thing to do for 20 years, but… Yeah, huge amount of collection, much to my wife’s chagrin, she’s… There are cards all over the house, and…

22:31 CR: Yeah, that must’ve been pretty cool when that trackable promotion came out for someone like yourself, that has such a history with that game.

22:39 DG: Oh yeah, I actually, I think it’s two years ago now, they had the Grand Prix Seattle, so big, because Wizard of the Coast is in Washington. So Seattle, Washington Grand Prix, big time thing. I actually snagged some of them to start selling some other players on Geocaching, and be like, “Hey, check out this game, we’re partnering with them. It’s another cool game.” So it was very… So you could tell I’m a little bit into both games, just a little bit.

23:05 CR: That’s awesome. That’s great.

23:06 DG: Get more people on board.

23:09 CR: What is your favorite place to visit?

23:13 DG: Recently, it became Death Valley. I went on a trip with a bunch of other Lackeys to go and find all of the EarthCaches that are out there. And it was… One, I’m from Arizona and that’s… If you were to ask the one thing I missed, it’s the heat from there, which makes me weird. But there’s another… There’s a thing about it where it’s like this very predictable weather in a desert like that. And Death Valley was just like, we came in at the right time of year. Everything is just picturesque and beautiful. And it reminded me a lot of what I missed of some of the parts in Arizona, not the metropolitan Arizona, but I’d go out to Carefree, and everybody goes to the Sedona and stuff like that, but that’s all they’re out in Death Valley. It was just a wonderfully calm place and that was, it’s what I enjoyed the most.

24:06 CR: I had an interesting Geocaching experience with Death Valley as well. We were… My wife and I visited Las Vegas several years ago, and while we were there, I told her, I said I’d really like to go to Death Valley because I know there’s some virtuals and EarthCaches and things like that. And she kinda rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, Geocaching, you’re just… What would I wanna see in Death Valley?” And I said, “Just trust me. Let’s give it a shot.” Man, she was, still to this day talks about how much she loved visiting Death Valley. And so I consider that a huge win for Geocaching.

[laughter]

24:42 DG: Yeah, and what other reason would I have to go out there? It’s like it’s just… I mean, it’s a national park, it’s cool but it’s like, “Oh Geocaching brought me there. Oh wow, this place is great. Wow.”

24:51 CR: Exactly, yeah. How many times have we had that experience? What is your favorite Geocaching memory?

25:01 DG: So another Lackey trip that we did, another group trip we did for Geocaching, went to Arizona, so super excited and we went to go find the oldest geocache in Arizona. It was the right time of year. And I know, right time of year. It’s like, “Hey, just be careful folks. Bushes, snakes. Snakes will be out. Rattlesnakes they’ll be out there.” And I remember watching some folks walk around bushes and clap at them to say like, “Hey snakes.” You know trying to get snakes to, I don’t know, be scared off or leave.

[laughter]

25:34 DG: To my knowledge, I think some rattlesnakes are deaf and they just kind of rely on vibration. So, clapping at them is just gonna make them mad. But it was like, “Yeah, if it makes you feel safe [chuckle] just don’t go in the bushes, okay?” Like stick around to the desire trails that are out here that’ll lead us. [chuckle] Just be careful. But yeah, seeing a bunch of folks clapping around, “Snakes, snakes, no, snakes.” It was like, “Sure. As long as you feel safe.”

[laughter]

26:06 CR: I know you’ve also gotten to get out and meet some of the community and you went to a mega last year, didn’t you?

26:13 DG: Yes, I went to Wisconsin for the Cache Bash and that was amazing, it was a… That was a great community, I can’t say enough about them because from start to finish… Even the Chamber of Commerce is in on the event and it’s just this big huge thing for the whole, just that whole piece of community right there. And it was well organized and everybody, I’m gonna say everybody was friendly. But I’ve already mentioned before, it’s like, “Yeah, we’re geocachers, we’re all friendly.”

26:47 DG: Everybody was welcoming, “There you go. That’s a good one.” They’re like “Hey, welcome to West Bend, we’re glad you’re here. Go eat at this place, you’ll enjoy it, if you’re looking for food. Here’s all the unique Geocaches that these people have put up for this event specifically.” And it’s like, “This is astounding.”

27:04 CR: That’s awesome.

27:05 DG: Yeah, just a wonderful time.

27:07 CR: Now before we go, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask, I don’t know if we’re gonna see the video of this conversation we are recording it, it may just be audio, but I would be remiss if I didn’t ask, normally at the office you’re wearing a hat. I don’t often see your… Is this hair always under that hat or is this pandemic hair?

27:29 DG: Little of both. Personal thing, I actually had psoriasis and it gets really bad on my scalp and what my hat was for was to keep my head safe and keep my hair short, so that I could take care of it really easily. I got on some new stuff and it has calmed the way the heck down and now my hair could be free again and this is just what it does. So, I showered this morning and then with hair, do what you will and it’s like, “Okay.” And then it does this. It stays up this high, it does all these things just on its own, and it’s actually a lot longer too. My headphones are covering up that there’s just a ton of it in the back, and this is what it does, and if we do the video and you really want something silly, I can show you a picture of me when I was 16, the first time I grew my hair long and you see this very skinny adolescent version of Daniel with hair past his shoulders.

28:27 CR: Oh my gosh, wow.

28:29 DG: Yeah, it’s wild. We’ll see if it keeps growing out. It’s a little bit pandemic hair, a little bit, see what happens if I… Now, I can grow my hair again just ’cause of the new medication I’m on, but yeah you’re right, it used to be hats every day.

28:45 CR: Well, if nothing else, we’ll do a screenshot and we’ll make sure it’s on the podcast page so people can, just coming from where I am, everybody knows what I look like. Kudos, hats off to you. This is very impressive.

[laughter]

29:00 DG: It wants to be a pompadour, never understood why.

29:02 CR: And I hope it continues once we’re back in the office, I think we’d all love to be able to see this every so often. [laughter] How are you doing otherwise? I’ve tried to ask everybody as we’ve done these conversations, just kinda how work is going and just life is going as we’re all making our adjustments here?

29:25 DG: Oh, it’s going really good. I have a good enough home office setup. So, working and getting all that is, it’s nice. I’m able to section that away from the rest of the house, so it doesn’t feel like I just work in the place I live. So that’s very helpful. Definitely a plus if you’re remote working friends. Work is going really well. Coming in the position for the mobile lead thing is kinda new but it’s also all the strengths that I have and I really enjoy that I get to flex all of those and work with the team and the team’s enthusiastic and doing great, which means I’m doing great so that’s… Everything is going quite well.

30:08 CR: Oh that’s great to hear and this has been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed hearing more about what you do, and I’m sure folks that met you at the event last year hope to see you again out there, and then hopefully folks in other areas get a chance to meet you down the line as well.

30:26 DG: Oh yeah. Every time we do one of those big trips, we try and do an event. So, if you’re ever seeing like a Lackeys on tour thing, I’m probably there. I’ve been to as many of them as I can, so keep an eye out for me there.

[music]

30:42 CR: So there you have it, that’s Daniel Gruici, the Mobile Engineering Lead at Geocaching HQ. If you have something you would like to hear us talk about on the podcast, you can send us an email. Our address is podcast@geocaching.com that is podcast@geocaching.com. We really love hearing your feedback and your suggestions, and if there’s something you would like to hear us cover, we’ll try to make that happen. Until next time, from me and from Daniel and all the Lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.

/ Chris

La celebración del vigésimo aniversario de Geocaching se pospone para el 2021

Debido a las incertidumbres suscitadas por el coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), la sede de Geocaching pospone la celebración del vigésimo aniversario de Geocaching para el 2021.

Lamentamos cualquier inconveniente que esto pueda causar, pero creemos que es la mejor manera de organizar el evento de manera segura y responsable. Muchos de vosotros habéis hecho preparativos de viaje para la celebración y os preocupa tener que posponer vuestros planes conforme se acerca la fecha. Así que, aunque esperamos poder reunirnos en los eventos de agosto, somos conscientes de que actualmente existe demasiada incertidumbre como para garantizar un evento seguro para todos.

¡Esperamos dar la bienvenida a los geocachers para celebrarlo con nosotros en Seattle el año que viene!

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/ Chris

Célébration du 20ème Anniversaire du Géocaching reporté à 2021

En raison des incertitudes liées au Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), Geocaching HQ reporte la célébration du 20ème anniversaire du géocaching à 2021.

Nous sommes désolés pour tout désagrément que cela pourrait causer, mais nous pensons que c’est la meilleure façon d’accueillir l’événement de manière sûre et responsable. Beaucoup d’entre vous ont pris des dispositions de voyage pour la célébration et se sont inquiétés du report de leurs projets à mesure que la date approche. Donc, bien que nous espérons pouvoir nous rencontrer lors d’événements en août, nous savons qu’il y a actuellement trop d’incertitude pour garantir un événement sûr pour tous.

Nous sommes impatients d’accueillir les géocacheurs pour célébrer avec nous à Seattle l’année prochaine !

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/ Chris

20 Jahre Geocaching-Feier auf das Jahr 2021 verschoben

Aufgrund der bestehenden Unsicherheit hinsichtlich des Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) verschiebt das Geocaching-Hauptquartier die 20 Jahre Geocaching-Feier auf das Jahr 2021.

Wir entschuldigen uns vielmals für eventuell entstehende Unannehmlichkeiten, aber wir glauben, es ist das Beste, das Event auf sichere und verantwortungsbewusste Weise durchzuführen. Viele von Euch haben Reisevorbereitungen für die Feier getroffen und je näher der Zeitpunkt rückt, umso mehr Gedanken habt Ihr euch wohl gemacht, ob Ihr Eure Pläne nicht lieber aufschieben solltet. Wir hoffen zwar, dass wir uns bei Events im August treffen werden, aber wir wissen, dass die Situation zurzeit zu unsicher ist, um ein sicheres Event für alle zu gewährleisten.

Wir freuen uns darauf, Geocacher nächstes Jahr in Seattle zu unserer Feier begrüßen zu dürfen!

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/ Chris

Inside Geocaching HQ transcript (episode 36): Maria McDonald

[music]

00:14 Chris: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ. This is our podcast from… Or about Geocaching HQ in Seattle. I normally say from, but we’re not there right now. We’re at our homes as we are going to be talking on this episode. And my fellow Lackey who is joining me today is Maria McDonald. Hi, Maria.

00:35 Maria: Hi, Chris. Hi, everybody.

00:37 Chris: So, yeah, we’re… We usually say, “We’re Inside HQ.” We are not inside HQ right now. We are at undisclosed locations, and we’re gonna hear about the kind of stuff that you do at HQ. But I guess just to get started, how’s everything going for you during this crazy time? 

01:00 Maria: Yeah. You know, it’s going okay. I feel extremely, extremely lucky to, of course, number one, have a job. I’m just so grateful. I’ve been grateful from the day I started at Geocaching, but that’s just really prevalent now to just how grateful I am to have work that feels meaningful, and something to keep you busy and engaged during this time. So, really grateful for that. And also, I’m just really reflecting on… I love my little apartment here in Seattle, location still undisclosed, but it’s a little apartment, but with just a big window and the spring sunshine is starting to come in.

01:38 Maria: So I know that things are really hard for a lot of people out there, and I have a ton of empathy and a lot of compassion for all the different ways people are struggling, both internally and externally right now with everything that’s going on. And I just feel really grateful for what I have and really glad that I am able to stay connected to people, virtually right now, and to the communities that I care about. Because that’s helping keep me in a good headspace and feeling like I’m able to support others even virtually, is keeping me motivated to stay positive myself. So I’m getting through. So far, everyone I know and love is healthy and safe and I’m grateful for that too.

02:17 Chris: Well, there is a lot to talk about as far as your journey at Geocaching HQ over the years, and what you do at the company, and especially stuff that’s very pertinent to what we’re going through right now. But just to start with, what team are you on at HQ? What is your job title, and what is your normal day-to-day like at HQ? 

02:40 Maria: Yes, I love it. God, I love talking about my job at Geocaching, and I think my friends are all sick of me talking about it, so I’m glad you asked. [chuckle] So I actually have been a lackey for seven years this month. I’m about to have my seven-year lacke-versary, which is amazing. I’ve had several different roles at the company, which has been really fun to see how things have shifted over the years. I started as an office manager there, and was the office manager for, I think, three or four years, and then I ended up taking on all of the facilities, and I’m the Facilities Manager now. At some point, I was on the video production team, so I got to roll around with Reid, and Derek, and a few other Lackeys of the past, and we got to make some really awesome videos, in super cool places, and engaged with different geocachers in the community in really awesome ways. So those were some real highlights of my time at Geocaching. And then now, I actually am the manager of our Learning and Development Program, which didn’t exist at Headquarters before I started building it. So I’ve been building that out for the last three years now, and it’s been amazing. I absolutely love my job.

03:56 Maria: And I get to work with Lackeys all day in really cool, unique ways. I get to work with each team. I get to work with our leadership team. I get to work with brand new Lackeys who are just starting in their first couple of weeks. So between the two roles, I’m still the Facilities Manager and the Learning and Development Manager. So, sometimes I’m sitting down, leading trainings, and helping onboard people to our culture, into the things that we really are passionate about, what our values are at the game, or at the company and for the game. And then, I’m also running around fixing the sink when it breaks, or at least calling a plumber. No one wants me, actually, fixing the sink, [chuckle] but making sure the plumber gets called, and keeping our furniture up-to-date, and paint all our walls, and all of that funny stuff. So I have a really, really wide range of responsibilities. And it keeps me really busy, it keeps me learning things I… I learned a lot about new carpeting this last year. Never thought I’d care about that at all, but now, you can ask me any carpet questions, I feel I can answer them. [chuckle] So, yeah, I love how I’ve been able to grow at the company, and it’s amazing to see and reflect on seven years, how many different things I’ve gotten to do, and all of the different opportunities that have been presented to me because of Geocaching.

05:19 Chris: As you were mentioning how your first job was as the office manager, it actually reminded me of… I still have it burned into my memory. My first memory of you was you showing me around the office, and this would’ve been… It’ll be six years this fall when this happens, ’cause I only came in about a year after you did. And I remember, I don’t know if you just had a certain look in your eyes that made me really take it seriously, but you said… You were walking by the dishwasher and you said, “You know, we all… Everybody pitches in here. We make sure… We unload… Load this dishwasher, unload this dishwasher.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna take that seriously.” And I really fell for it, because I think I was one of four or five people that actually took that seriously. There’s four or five of us that are actually doing this on a regular basis. Everybody else…

[laughter]

06:09 Maria: Oh, that’s great. [chuckle]

06:10 Chris: That’s what I remember. Every time I walk by the dishwasher, I think of you in my head like, “Don’t ignore that. Don’t let it just sit there. Do something with it.” [chuckle]

06:17 Maria: Oh, that’s awesome. I’m really glad that resonated with you. I think I gave everybody the same spiel, but maybe I had a little extra. I bet some people hadn’t been unloading it the last few days which is why I was in a particular mood about it.

[chuckle]

06:33 Chris: Now, tell me about the team that you’re on, because… It’s Team Unicorn.

06:38 Maria: Yes, it is.

06:41 Chris: I’m not sure if I’ve known where that came from. Where did that come from? 

06:45 Maria: That is a great question. It originated, I wanna say, four or five years ago. So when we started, it wasn’t… When I started as the Office Manager, that wasn’t the name of the team. We had a… I think we’re Office and Facilities, a very obvious, obvious team name. [chuckle] And at some point, I believe it’s when Office and Management started working under HR… Or under Legal and with HR. So Team Unicorn is comprised of five outstanding individuals. We have Jennifer Arterburn, Head of Legal; Eileen Kim, Aman, and Linda, and myself. So, I get to work with four just really, really amazing people. And I believe it’s when those three departments all started to come together that we realized that what makes unicorns so special is that they’re magical and rare, and we decided that all of us together in these different roles were this really unique combination of gifts, and skills, and experiences. It didn’t normally necessarily fit together at other company, but Geocaching HQ is a special place. So they were fitting together for us there at this company, and so we decided that we were rare and magical in that, [chuckle] we obviously needed to be called The Unicorns then because of that.

08:00 Chris: Do you guys have anything planned for National Unicorn Day? 

08:02 Maria: What? There’s a National Unicorn Day? 

08:05 Chris: I can’t believe you don’t know this. I gotta be really quiet when I say this because my wife loves unicorns and I did something for her for National Unicorn Day and it’s April 9th. Now, we’re recording this on April 8th.

08:18 Maria: Oh, thank you for that.

08:19 Chris: I don’t know when this will end up going out, but just peek behind the curtain, we’re not recording this the day that you hear it, it’s gonna be a few days later, but… So, anyway, it’s April 9th, it’s National Unicorn Day.

08:27 Maria: Oh my goodness. Okay. I’m so glad you told me that because now I can surprise my team with something tomorrow. I will definitely do that.

08:35 Chris: Well, that’s what I’m… I got her a cake. They had one at the grocery store. I’m having a hard time keeping it a secret.

08:43 Maria: Where are you hiding a cake right now? [chuckle]

08:46 Chris: It’s in our guest room closet.

[laughter]

08:51 Chris: And the problem is we’re like 20 feet away from each other. She’s probably hearing this whole… I’m trying to keep it quiet. And I hope that on the recording people can actually hear me talking, but if they can’t, then that’s just a sacrifice that has to be made. But anyway, yeah, they actually had one at the store and I saw it, and I was like, “Oh, I’ve gotta get that,” but I guess my next thing should have been to text you and say…

09:14 Maria: Yeah, they’d love it.

09:15 Chris: “Guess what I saw?” [chuckle]

09:17 Maria: Okay. Well, will you make sure that you take a picture of that? ‘Cause maybe what I could do is I could send a picture of the magical cake to all my colleagues. I think they would like that.

09:25 Chris: Oh, sure. Yeah, a picture of a cake is always just as good as actually having the cake, right? 

[laughter]

09:32 Maria: They’ll love that. [chuckle]

09:36 Chris: Oh my gosh. So, as your role has evolved at HQ, and now Learning and Development, talk about that a little bit, because that’s probably something maybe people have heard about, but maybe they don’t actually do it at their own companies, they might not have as much personal experience with it. So, what does that mean? What kind of projects does that involve in HQ? 

10:03 Maria: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that Learning and Development, although not a new field necessarily, is definitely gaining in popularity in the last 10, 20 years, I would say, as companies really start to transition in their mindsets towards, I would say, maybe younger generations that are wanting a lot faster, different upper mobility in their careers. So that’s part of it, is that people just have a lot more… Culturally, I think things have just shifted now, and people expect that their professional growth, and the things they learn, are part of a service that they’re getting provided by their employers. So I know that’s kind of a new school versus an old school mentality, but that seems to be pretty popular.

10:45 Maria: That also might just be a US thing, I guess, I can’t speak for everybody. That could be more popular in other parts of the world, but in the US, that seems to have gained a lot of traction in the last decade. So, now, I think a lot of people that are younger in the workforce are expecting, when they get hired at a business, that that job, that business, that organization has a plan for how they’re gonna develop their professional skills and work towards their professional goals. So that’s certainly a part of it, and typically, those departments, or people in those learning and development positions, seem to be more popular in larger companies, like companies of 150, 200, 300 people seem to be when businesses start adding in that role.

11:25 Maria: We were, I think, unique in that at Headquarters, mostly because we built the entire Learning and Development Program off of our foundational training at Headquarters which is our Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So we used Dr. Covey’s book and his three-day training to really give all of our lackeys a really solid foundation in what it means to operate effectively. That’s in how we communicate with each other, how we work on projects together, the way we think about building, and designing, and creating. So The Seven Habits was a pretty solid foundation. I think… Chris, I don’t know if we took the training together or if I was… I might have shadowed the training you were in. I can’t remember where you entered in that part.

12:09 Chris: I can’t remember either. I feel like you facilitated it by the time I did it. Maybe I missed one round and then the next… By the next time. But I’m pretty sure that you were the one that that took us through that. And I’ll admit, I think, as people listen to this, people are probably having different reactions when they hear about this kind of stuff. You have some people that are like, “Oh, whatever, that’s just… I don’t really buy into that stuff,” or what have you, and then you got some people that are gung-ho about it and they really feel that it’s effective. I was probably somewhere in the middle with that. ‘Cause I had never done it at my previous jobs, and so when I heard about it, I was like, “Oh, come on, I know how to communicate.” But once you’ve gone through it and you start seeing it in action, it’s so valuable for everybody to be using the same language and being on the same page as far as expectations. And, yeah, it’s kind of amazing how it’s become ingrained into the environment at HQ.

13:18 Maria: Yeah, I think we’re a stronger company who’s able to serve our community better because of it. Obviously, I believe that ’cause I teach it, but I really do think it’s, like you said, that common language, it helps us relate to each other in a way that helps us ultimately work together better, which is what we want. I think most people want to go to jobs where the work they do matters, they know they’re doing something that’s meaningful, and the people they’re doing that work with are a pleasant addition to their lives. You don’t wanna go to work and either just like the work you’re doing or have a hard time getting along with your colleagues. That is just a drain and a waste of your energy, and your creativity, and your ability to serve your clients or your community. So I think that HQ has done a really good job of building a solid foundation where we can work together in such a way that we’re able to do better, cooler, more interesting stuff, because the human aspect of it is working together more seamlessly.

14:18 Maria: So that feels really important. And you definitely… I’ve taught that course now over at least five, maybe six years. And it’s amazing to see how people are able to take it, and integrate it, and start using it. And I get so much good feedback from people that not only have they been able to use it at work in ways that are really helpful, but they take these skills home to their families, and to their friends, and to the people they care about, and they’re able to see their lives get a little smoother, operate a bit more effectively in those arenas as well. And that feels really meaningful just as a person who’s helping share those skills and those tools. One thing they say is that the seven habits are… They’re common sense, but they’re not necessarily common practice. So you could read the book and you could hear what the habits are, and kinda be like, “Yeah, yeah, obviously those things are useful, but that doesn’t mean people are doing them habitually.” And that’s a part of the training, is how do you actually take those skills and use them on a daily, regular basis so that your entire life operates from a more effective place.

15:23 Chris: And another thing that you do well… I say another thing, it’s like other things that you do, because there’s so many of them here, but as people are trying to figure out ways that they can become more effective in their roles at HQ, I know that you help a lot of people with trying to identify, I don’t know, a seminar that you can do or different tools that might be available. How do you go about trying to figure out what’s out there? There’s so much and so many different possibilities. What kind of research do you do, or how do you get your brain wrapped around that stuff so that you can present to a lackey some options that might be helpful for them in their jobs? 

16:07 Maria: Yeah. Oh, also a great question. I think about two ways. One, I think we have training opportunities internally, and then externally. So that’s the first thing I look at. If people come to me and they have training needs, and I start to sense a pattern of their needs, and it seems like something that can be addressed internally for our work culture, then I’ll usually design some sort of internal trainings. Like, we have six competencies, six core competencies at Geocaching and we’ve been doing trainings on each of those competencies, just as an example. Or smaller things too, how to have effective meetings? Again, you might think that that’s common sense, but if everybody’s running their own version of what they think an effective meeting is, it’s not effective as a company culture. So we try to do things internally that support the entire company in working together more effectively.

16:58 Maria: And then, what has been really fun and a challenge for me, as someone who’s only two to three years into this field, is I work with our developers, or our people on our marketing team, people in… Partners and promotions, just people from all over the office in all their different roles on what sort of external trainings they can go to. And there’s a few interesting, not barriers I guess, but a few things that make that challenging. One is that there’s typically way more information than you actually need. There’s so many trainings, and workshops, and webinars, and they all cost money, and they all want you to get certified in their specific thing. There’s just so many things out there, that a big part of the problem is just narrowing it down to the content and the training experience that’s really gonna provide the most value, the most learning value, at that price point. So I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what to look for at this point. When people bring me trainings or things that they’re interested in, I’ve gotten good at knowing how to look up that specific training, or that educational opportunity, and get a sense of how good it’s gonna be.

18:05 Maria: I think another thing that I am able to help with, or how it typically goes, is a lackey will come and talk to me, have some ideas of what they wanna learn about, then we’ll do a little narrowing in, like, “Okay, well, why is this skill important to you at this time? What value is it gonna add to your team in addition to just your own skill set, and then how is that gonna add value to the company as well?” Then they can get really crystal clear on why that skill is gonna be helpful, then we start to broaden out and just look at as many options as we can find, and then we start to narrow it down to what we think is gonna really match our… Sometimes it’s match our company culture. Like, is it a training that’s also in the outdoor industry, or in the gaming industry, or in the tech industry? ‘Cause we’re kind of in all three industries, so we can narrow it in that way. And/or, sometimes you send them to a training in a totally different industry, because that can help people bring back skills that… We already know, we’re circulating in the industries we’re used to, but what is some other totally different industry doing that we could learn something from? So those are some different ways to approach it.

19:11 Maria: And we’re very lucky that HQ has a budget for learning and development, so typically, Lackeys, if and when they choose, they can go to one, maybe two, trainings, or Learning and Development opportunities per year, because we recognize that there’s incredible value in them getting more skills, and them being able to bring them back to Headquarters and use them to help us improve. But also, it does help with retention too. If people are learning, and growing their skills, and able to contribute in more meaningful ways, they’re gonna want to stay and be a lackey even longer. So now it’s called a win-win, which is what we’re always after. So it’s a win for the individual Lackey and it’s a win for the company as well.

19:51 Chris: Yeah, and most of the time when we do these interviews on Inside HQ, we are hearing about people talking about specific work that they’re doing on an app project, or on the website, or what have you, but what you’re describing is work that you’re doing that’s hopefully enabling these people to come back and do better work on those apps, and on those website projects, so that it eventually is delivering great stuff to the community.

20:20 Maria: Yeah, absolutely. And technology changes so fast. The way those apps are being built shifts all the time, and we do have fairly good retention of our lackeys at headquarters. So we have some developers, and other people, that have been with the company for year, after year, after year, and we wanna make sure they’re getting the exposure that they need to whatever is new. New products, new developments, new software. Anything that’s coming out that’s helping us get better, and helping us improve, we wanna make sure that we’re adapting to that as quickly as possible, and integrating it where it makes sense for us so that we can build cooler stuff, so the community can have even more fun out there geocaching, which is ultimately what everyone who works there wants. We want people outside playing the game in the way that really makes sense for them and the people they care about, and the more sharp we can be in our skills set, the better we’re able to deliver that to everybody else.

21:17 Chris: Well, let’s talk about some of the challenges that are presented now with this new paradigm that we’re all facing here, with people working remotely. At HQ, I guess it’s been just over a month now that we’ve been all working outside of the office. And I know that you, and the folks on your team, have been looking for ways to help lackeys do their jobs better. But not just do their jobs better, also just trying to help them with just the mental side of things, and just looking for ways to get through this as best we can. And I wonder if you can talk about, again, is there research that you do for this? How do you go about trying to identify methods that we should be considering as workers and as people? 

22:14 Maria: Yeah. Yeah, man. What a pressing thing right now. This has been everything I’ve been immersed in this last… I think it has been a month today. I think we got sent home a month ago today. So that has definitely taken over my whole world. So it’s a few things. We know we’re all virtual now, so one part of it is: What tools are gonna help us do that the best? So it’s just actually like, “How do we get to see each other’s faces, and hear each other’s voices, and share screens, and all of the technical stuff that goes along with an entirely remote workforce?” So that has been part of it too, just trying to find the right tools for us that are gonna serve us right now, enabling us to stay connected and work most effectively. And that side has been a pretty steep learning curve for me. As someone who doesn’t necessarily adapt to technology really easily, that’s been challenging. But pretty much 100% of the work I do involves our people, and so I had to figure that out really quick, so that I could stay connected to everybody. So the technical piece is part of it, and then making sure everyone else knows and feels comfortable using the technology too.

23:24 Maria: Right now, a lot of us, we’re using Zoom, and some people have never used that before. So it’s just trying as quickly as possible to figure out all the features, which ones are actually adding value versus which ones are just kind of maybe cool but noisy and not really that helpful. Because we don’t want anyone to feel or get left behind because they’re not able to participate in the same way. That’s a big part of learning development and facilitation, is equal participation, everybody’s voice needs to be heard. So how do we make sure our tools are setting us up to do that? That’s part of it. And the other part that to me feels even more compelling, and I would say urgent, is how do we make sure, like you said, the mental side of this. This is a different stressor than any of us have ever experienced, and the mental health tolls that that takes on people are significant. They are now and they could get more significant. Just the stress, and the anxiety, and the fear, that people are potentially living under right now, is just… Never done anything like this. And the isolation piece too. People have such unique, different living situations, but everyone’s more socially isolated, no matter what living situation you’re in right now, than we’re used to.

24:46 Maria: So, to me, one of the most important things about my role right now at Headquarters is: How do we make sure people still feel connected to the community of their colleagues and the community of everybody playing the game? We don’t want people to feel alone, or like they’re going through this by themselves, even though it can feel like that sometimes. So, what can we do as a company culture, and what can I do to help contribute to people knowing for sure that they still belong to a very strong company, a very strong company culture? We care a lot about our Lackeys and about each other, and we wanna make sure people still know that and feel that, even when they’re not seeing each other’s faces and being in our really amazing shared space together right now. So, yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of research on it, lots of articles, tons of podcasts, talking to a lot of my other facilitator friends. I’m part of an international network of facilitators, and facilitators are all about building community and keeping people connected. So it’s been a lot of: How do we take some of those skills that we’ve been studying for a long time and make them virtual? Let’s see, I could share a few resources that I look to for some of those answers, and I can also share a few, I think, pretty creative, fun things that we’re doing at Geocaching, if either of those things sound interesting.

26:08 Chris: They do sound interesting.

26:11 Maria: Cool. One person who I’m really following right now, as far as a leader in keeping people connected, is a woman named Priya Parker, P-R-I-Y-A, last name Parker. She gave a very popular TED Talk, maybe a year ago, on why we gather, and then wrote a really amazing book called, The Art of Gathering. Her background’s in peace negotiations through many different complex situations, and she’s all about how and why you bring people together, and how you make those gatherings meaningful. So now she’s writing a lot on how to do that virtually. So she’s someone that I follow pretty closely. She just came out with a podcast, so I’m excited about that.

26:53 Maria: Oh, this is a crossover between this and the other thing, but TED, right now, TED Talks has something they’re doing called TED Circles, where you can get a group of people together, and watch a TED Talk virtually together, and talk about the TED Talk. So me and four other Lackeys got together last week and watched the Priya Parker talk on how to keep communities connected in a virtual world, and came up with some ideas for what we could do to help support our colleagues right now, based on some of the insights that she had, one of which is to run TED Circles every week [chuckle] and then invite people to watch TED Talks on different things. So, yeah, TED’s got a lot of really cool programming going on right now and we’re gonna watch one this week, a speaker who’s a rabbi talking about what it means to stay connected during Passover right now, and how to keep courage and hope alive in this interesting chapter.

27:48 Maria: So, we’re gonna experiment a little bit more with TED Circles and then maybe open those up to the rest of the company too, to see if anybody else wants to do them with us. So, yeah, Priya Parker has been huge. TED Talks are doing awesome. They’re just doing really good work, every morning. There’s a podcast called, The Happiness Lab. That’s a really good one. They’re doing a great job of speaking to cultural things that are important that have to do with Covid right now, without, I think, actually talking too much about Covid. I don’t wanna hear stats or updates every minute of the day, but I do wanna hear how to stay connected to people, and how to be a meaningful, contributing member of society right now when you can’t directly go shake hands with your neighbor.

28:34 Maria: So The Happiness Lab has had some useful information. And then… Leanne Hughes runs a really interesting facilitation network online, on Facebook, called, The Flipchart. And so that is a group of facilitators from all over the world who are on that Facebook page, and they have a lot of cool stuff happening right now too. And they are walking those two lines of what technology should we be using right now to keep people connected, and also, when you, let’s say for example, start a Zoom call, can you take a moment, before you just dive right into that content, to give people some ice breaker, or energizer, or a way to connect? And it can be as simple as, everybody pick up your favorite item that’s around you right now, and hold it up, and share with the group why this is your favorite coffee cup. Or why you’re sitting next to your favorite pillow. It’s not a huge thing, but it keeps people feeling that personal connection to other people. So trying to weave those in as much as you can, even using the technology.

29:38 Chris: Yeah, we should have done that at the start of this thing. [chuckle]

29:43 Maria: Oh, what would you have shown me? What do you have? [chuckle]

29:45 Chris: Gosh, I have some gift cards, I’ve got a couple of cables, I have a brochure from a national park. Yeah, yeah, just nothing all that interesting. I’d really have to… You know what, you were talking about Zoom a second ago. I feel bad that this conversation hasn’t been Zoom bombed.

30:06 Maria: I know. 

30:07 Chris: I feel like I’m being left out. I haven’t been in a meeting yet that’s been Zoom bombed. And I feel like, as I’m saying that, somebody somewhere out in the ether has heard me and they’re gonna do it, but, yeah, there’s so many… As these new technologies and people are trying to find ways to connect, of course, on the flip side, they’re having these potential downsides to the whole thing. [chuckle]

30:30 Maria: Totally, totally. Yeah. And the privacy issues are crazy. In addition to my role at Headquarters, I also teach Yoga on the side, so now I’m 100% virtual Yoga teacher, which is never something I ever wanted to do, or thought would be interesting, and now I’m teaching Yoga classes from my living room where everyone [chuckle] can see my whole house. It’s just so bizarre. I also haven’t been Zoom bombed yet either, which is, I’m excited for it to happen at some point.

31:00 Chris: Yeah, I think we should both be careful about what we ask for on that, but one thing you had alluded to earlier was some of the things that we’ve done at HQ to try to keep people engaged. And I know there’s been virtual happy hours and virtual lunch rooms. Are there other things that I’m not thinking of off the top of my head? 

31:22 Maria: Those are good ones to start with, and I think they… What’s so funny about both of those… So virtual lunches, just pretty much what they sound, you invite everybody, and anyone who wants to come have lunch together, can, no agenda. It’s mostly just a lot of watching people make sandwiches. Annie had that crazy sword in the background, like, “Annie, why do you have a Samurai sword in the back of your kitchen? [chuckle] It’s fun to see into people’s lives that way during lunch time. And then the virtual happy hour that we did, similar, only this one had a theme, and that was, bring your pets. So everybody got to bring their pets, and they did a little… I don’t know if they did a pet parade, but showed off each other’s pets during the virtual call. So those two things are obviously easy and they make a difference.

32:06 Maria: They help you feel happier and just more connected. So, those are two really easy ones. Another one we’ve started doing is, at Headquarters, we celebrate people’s birthdays and what’s called their lacke-versaries, so how many Lackey years they have behind them. So normally they get an email and maybe their desk decorated, and what we’re doing now, is sending people personal cards in the mail, and maybe some little gifts with that, which again, these are small gestures, but people seem really happy when they get them. And I just think it’s a good way to remind people that we’re connected to each other. We’ve also… The TED Circles, that’s a cool one. We’re gonna keep playing with that to make sure we’ve got the tech part of it figured out, but then I think we’re gonna open that up too, and let that be a way that people connect with each other.

32:56 Maria: What else have we been doing? Oh. [chuckle] Our office manager, Linda, she didn’t wanna come on the podcast, but she is an amazing and absolutely necessary part of HQ life. She is an incredible baker. So one thing is I think being on quarantine, a lot of us are gonna lose some weight, because without Linda’s baked goods constantly in front of me, I just am not snacking nearly as much, but that’s also obviously a big loss. So Linda has been making… Not cakes. Cookies and bread, those are the big things. And then Lackeys will go to her house and from the appropriate 6 feet away, they will do some exchange, or she’ll pass the cookies out, and they will pass in some snack, or some basic good that they brought.

33:46 Chris: Or raw materials, flour and sugar.

[chuckle]

33:52 Maria: Totally. So that has been really fun, and she’s just been organizing that so that people can still get her baked goods. I believe last week there was a cookie exchange for a gallon of tequila… Or margaritas, that had been mixed up and ready for her. So that’s been a fun way to watch people still. At least you get to see someone in person for a minute and exchange something that… She puts a lot of heart into what she makes.

34:16 Chris: Well, and just to be clear on this too, I mean, people are referred to as excellent bakers all the time. Linda is like crazy. It’s like, if she posts in our Slack channel, there’s a channel just for the Signal Cafe, back in regular times when we were all in the office, if Linda posts that she has put something in the kitchen, bread, or cookies, or whatever, you had best get there quickly, because it is gone. It doesn’t matter how much she brings, either 10, 15 minutes, it’s just gonna be a pile of crumbs. There’s nothing… There’s no chance. That’s how good she is.

35:00 Maria: Yeah, it’s true. Yeah, she’s expert level. So we’re all very lucky to get to take advantage of that, and it’s nice to have some of those things. I think that’s what I would say for people listening. If you think about some of those things that your company culture, maybe in your family culture, or other communities you’re part of, there are just these staple moments of connection, how can you take those and transfer them into our world now? Maybe you can’t create it exactly, but if food is a driving force, which it is for so many of us, or one person’s baked goods, or certain celebrations or certain moments where communities just gather around those moments, how can you transfer them now and how can you adapt them to fit the times now in a way where they’re still really meaningful? 

35:47 Maria: Yeah, and you can be a little choosy, that’s nice too. You don’t have to recreate the stuff that maybe wasn’t working, maybe some of that stuff can fall away now. Maybe some of those meetings we had on our calendars that we all thought were really important, maybe they aren’t so important, and this is a chance to look at that. So, how do we identify what was really serving us, move that forward into this new way of being right now, and then let go of some of the stuff that really wasn’t that helpful so that we can make space for new creative ways to connect and to work really well together.

36:17 Chris: Right. Well, before we wrap up, we have a series of quick questions that we’ll ask you here.

36:23 Maria: Okay.

36:23 Chris: You’re the first one that’s done this on the podcast, so you’re our first victim with these series of questions. Okay, let’s start with, what is your Geocaching username? 

36:32 Maria: Oh, I love my username. It’s akprincesswarrior, and let me be clear, the AK stands for Alaska, not Arkansas. No offense to anyone from Arkansas, but I am Alaska born and raised, so akprincesswarrior is my username.

36:47 Chris: Akprincesswarrior. And, I guess, in one sentence or two, how would you describe your job to a stranger? 

37:00 Maria: [chuckle] I help manage an office that runs an outdoor adventure game, and my job is to support and create company culture while helping people learn and develop.

37:18 Chris: Nice. Okay, what do you most love about Geocaching? 

37:24 Maria: Oh, man. So many things to love about it. I love being outside and I love connecting with people, so those are two very obvious things that are part of the fabric of this amazing game. And I think some of my favorite moments are those moments where you end up in a place where the view is just spectacular, or the cash was hidden so creatively, you could have never seen it coming, and it really gives you one of those wonderful aha type of moments. Or you run into someone and they somehow hear that you are a geocacher and now you have this whole new thing to talk about with a stranger, because they also are a geocacher, or their aunt’s a geocacher. So you have these connections with people. The events just blow my mind. It’s incredible how much time, and effort, and energy, and thoughtfulness get put into these events by the host and how they’re just, they’re magical.

38:30 Maria: I just feel like they’re… The Disneyland equivalent of geocaching is these incredible events where people get to go and just have these amazing days, or amazing weekends, really engrossed in this passion that they have that brings them so much joy, and then sharing that with the people around them. I just think those are such incredible moments of connection in the community, I really, really love those. And the stories people bring back. When Lackeys get to go and travel, and go to those events, and then come back to Headquarters, they just come back just on fire to do their jobs even better, and to build cooler stuff, and to get out there and go geocaching more because that enthusiasm is so contagious. I don’t that’s one thing. I don’t think I answered your question at all. [chuckle]

39:12 Chris: No, you did. You had a lot of great things to mention there about what’s great about geocaching. This should be an easy one. What’s your favorite movie? 

39:24 Maria: Okay, this is nerdy, but I just watched it with my family the other day. My favorite movie of all time is Singing in the Rain.

39:31 Chris: Oh, that’s a nice movie.

39:33 Maria: It’s old school, but I love it. I grew up watching it. I think I have almost every word… Between me and my sister, we have every word, every song memorized, and now my 10-year-old niece likes it too, so we get to watch it as a family together, and it’s pretty special.

39:47 Chris: Very cool. What’s your favorite hobby? 

39:52 Maria: Man, it depends on what month you ask me. They change pretty quickly. Favorite hobbies, do a lot of reading, if that’s a hobby.

40:02 Chris: Sure.

40:02 Maria: I do a lot of Yoga, lots of it all the time. I’m teaching, or I’m practicing, or I’m studying, or taking anatomy classes, or learning how to weight train. I love geeking out about all the stuff our bodies are capable of doing physically, so I love movement, and any style of movement, I would say, is also my hobby.

40:25 Chris: Yeah, I’m always impressed with anybody that likes Yoga that much, ’cause I only tried it once and it was a disaster. [chuckle] I have no… I’m an old distance runner, and distance runners have notoriously bad hamstring, or tight hamstrings, and so I remember the first time I went, everybody just immediately went into really impressive pose, and I was like, “Yeah, I can’t. I can’t do any. I’m sorry.” [chuckle]

40:53 Maria: Yeah, tight hamstrings have a hard time in yoga classes. Most of those positions very, very much need some open hamstrings.

41:01 Chris: Right. [chuckle] Favorite place to visit? 

41:05 Maria: Oh. Oh, these are good. As a general anywhere new. I love going new places. So any place to visit is a place I have not yet been. That being said, I would go back to Greece and/or Costa Rica again in a heartbeat, because I’ve been very fortunate to go to both of those places and I really, really loved them.

41:28 Chris: Awesome. And finally, favorite geocaching memory.

41:34 Maria: I was probably at the company within the first year, and I was out, and it was the summer promo. I love the summer promos that we do in the summer time, because the weather in Seattle is always perfect. There’s a ton of Lackeys you can find to go caching with you any time. So it was a summer promo, and me and a group of Lackeys decided to go find caches on a bike, riding our bikes around, which is not something I normally do in the city either. So we were on bikes, there was a huge group of us, and we were going around finding caches, and there was one… Chris you might remember this one. Oh, it might have been before your time actually, ’cause it got taken down several years ago. It was in the side of a Safeway or in a grocery shop. And it was… The side of the wall had all these really big rocks. And it just looked like just the whole entire wall was covered in rocks.

42:23 Maria: Small rocks, big rocks, that was what they had used for the siding and there’s a geocache somewhere in that wall. And it was like, we looked forever and couldn’t find it. And finally, at one point, someone put their hand up on a wall in a moment of like, “Oh, I give up, I can’t find it,” and their hand hit the rock that happened to be the geocache and it twisted, so that was weird, and when it twisted, it pulled out this entire hollow tube that had been drilled into the side of this building. So this whole… The rock was just the cover and it pulled out this whole long tube and that was the geocache.

42:55 Chris: Wow.

42:56 Maria: So when you put it in, it went right back into the wall, squeeze tight, pull it out. And it was just… I don’t know how he found it. I don’t know how they built that. Just the whole thing about it was so cool, and to know that so many people had walked by that wall all day every day and had no idea that that treasure was hidden there. I just think that’s so fun. [chuckle]

43:17 Chris: Yeah, that’s very cool. Well, you made it through the questions.

43:20 Maria: Yes.

43:20 Chris: Congratulations.

43:22 Maria: Thank you.

43:23 Chris: Well, Maria, thank you so much. I think folks will learn a lot from the stuff that you shared, and it’s always fun to meet another Lackey at HQ, and I’m glad we were finally able to get you on here.

43:35 Maria: Yeah, same. Thanks for having me, Chris. Really nice to get to spend some time with everybody. Thank you. Stay safe and healthy and well, and go find some geocaches if you can.

43:45 Chris: Yeah, that’s right. Well, we’re gonna keep trying to do the Inside HQ podcast. As you can see, we’re doing it remotely. If you have ideas for the podcast, you can send us an email to podcast@geocaching.com. We always love to get your ideas, and we’ll see if we could do something with those. And until next time, from me and Maria, and all of the Lackeys at HQ, happy caching.

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