/ Eric Schudiske /

Announcing the First ‘Geocacher of the Month’

Congratulations to all the Geocacher of the Month nominees. The geocaching community is comprised of inspirational individuals – who go above and beyond in geocaching innovation, creativity, respect for the environment and helpfulness. Each nominee should be congratulated as exceptional geocachers and individuals. We should all be proud that each of the cachers are part of our worldwide community.

The choice for the first Geocacher of the Month was difficult. A panel of Lackeys, relying on voting and community comments, could ultimately choose only one.

haksu10 August Geocacher of the Month

haksu10 is the August Geocacher of the Month. Dozens of geocachers wrote in to share stories about haksu10’s humble dedication to geocaching, geocachers and his local community. haksu10 created geocache.fi site, used by most Finnish geocachers daily. He also placed nearly a hundred creative and engaging caches. One of the most memorable is GC16QCH Haksulandia. According to a Finnish geocacher, “What makes it special, though, is that it is located at haksu10′s yard. According to the description, the cache is equipped with an electric outlet in case you need to charge anything. Call before you arrive (or just ring the doorbell) and haksu10 will make you some coffee.”

haksu10 will receive a collectors Geocacher of the Month geocoin, along with a Geocacher of the Month hat and certificate acknowledging their contributions signed by the founders of Geocaching.com: Jeremy Irish, Bryan Roth and Elias Alvord.

The other two outstanding finalists Dale & Barb and De broekies will also receive special gifts from Geocaching.com, and we hope the recognition from geocaching community for their truly outstanding contributions. We can all be inspired by reading the testimonials and comments about all the nominees from other geocachers in this blog post. Community members are encouraged to renominate those who were not awarded Geocacher of the Month.

If you know an outstanding geocacher who should be the Geocachers of the Month, send an email to geocacherofthemonth@groundspeak.com.

Every nomination must meet the following requirements. Please include your name, the name of your nominee, their username, at least one picture of the nominee and description (in 500 or fewer words) explaining why he or she deserves to be the Geocacher of the Month. Please inform your nominee that you’ve submitted them for the award. Nominations for the September Geocacher of the Month must be received by September 3rd.

Once we have received all of the nominations, we will choose the top candidates and post them on the Latitude 47 blog. You will then get a chance to champion your favorite. Our goal is to involve the entire geocaching community in this process so we might learn from each other.

 

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Geocaching Challenges – Thanks for the Feedback

Bryan Roth: Co-Founder of Groundspeak

By Bryan Roth,

We hear your concerns, and thank you for your feedback.  Now we are asking you to give Challenges a chance. You don’t necessarily have to participate, but give us some time to improve the feature set.  Here’s why.

For many years, the geocaching community has been clamoring for the return of Virtual geocaches. There were a lot of issues with the implementation of Virtuals that prevented us from bringing them back in their original form. When we set out to find a way to bring Virtuals back that would appeal to the community, we determined that the basic idea behind Virtual Caches was “go somewhere, do something.”

This is what Geocaching Challenges are all about. Over 99% of Challenges will be location-based Challenges created by the community. You might be Challenged to take a picture of yourself walking across the Abbey Road crosswalk or tasked to take a picture from the top of the Empire State Building. These are fun, outdoor adventures that can happen even in locations that do not support physical caches.

If a Challenge is not specifically location-based, or does not require a photo (for a photo Challenge) or an action (for an Action Challenge), please flag it or vote it down. When flagging, think of yourself as a reviewer. You wouldn’t deny a cache just because it sounds boring (though, in this case, you could vote it down), but you would deny it if it were inappropriate or did not meet the guidelines. We think the instances of locationless Challenges being submitted by the community will decrease as people come to better understand what Challenges are. We are working now to improve the educational materials within the Challenges section of Geocaching.com so that it is clear what is acceptable for a Challenge and what is not.

Worldwide Challenges are the one exception to the location-based rule. These are Challenges created by Groundspeak that are meant to bring the community together by letting us all experience the same adventure. If everyone participated, we could have well over five million geocachers hiking their local trails one day or biking to work the next day. We will generally be creating one Worldwide Challenge per day, although we may add a few in the early days to get everyone started. These will almost always be outdoor adventures.  We started with one that was not necessarily an outdoors Challenge (Kiss a Frog) because we thought it would be fun.  But, we realize that such a Challenge is not in keeping with our mission of getting you outside.  So, we have archived the Challenge effective today. We will soon be adding functionality to allow you to remove ‘Acceptance’ and ‘Completion’ logs you’ve entered, if you choose to do so.

If you think an individual Challenge is bad, you are welcome to vote it down. All users have the ability to sort by the highest rated Challenges (simply click on the column header ‘Rating’ in the search results), so voting a Challenge down will send it further down the list.

We will be updating the mobile applications, adding functionality to the API so that other developers can incorporate Challenges into their applications and services, and working to improve the website functionality on an ongoing basis.  In the interim, we ask that you to allow us some time to innovate.

We believe that, if people use the Challenges system as it was meant to be used and populate it with Challenges they think others would enjoy, Challenges will add more to geocaching than Virtuals ever did.

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

GeoWoodstock IX 2011 – A Lackey Report from Pennsylvania

Editor’s note: Groundspeak Lackeys are traveling thousands of miles from H.Q. this year to share smiles, shake hands and make geocaching memories at more than a dozen Mega-Events worldwide. Dani Isbell, a.k.a. Dani, attended the Mega-Event GeoWoodstock IX in Warren, Pennsylvania, USA. Dani has been a Lackey since 2009. This is her account of GeoWoodstock IX.

Dani aboard the Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad

By Dani

I had the privilege of attending GeoWoodstock IX with MissJenn in Warren, Pennsylvania.
This was my second Geowoodstock in as many years and I am so happy that I got to be in attendance again!

Our adventure started with a four hour delay in Chicago due to inclement weather. MissJenn and I finally arrived at our hotel in Warren, Pennsylvania around two in the morning.  Then it was up at ‘em and by 8AM to get to our first event, the “Geowoodstock Express.” This pre-Geowoodstock event had more than 500 geocachers in attendance to mingle and ride the Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad through the Oil Creek Valley.

MissJenn (far left) and Dani (far right)

MissJenn and I, never ones to shy away from the dramatic, make our grand entrance by running for the train as it is about to take off.  We had gotten a bit turned around by the area, the road construction and misleading train tracks.  We finally found our way and climbed aboard to much laughter at the Lackeys who were unable to navigate. We laughed at ourselves as well and were welcomed with open arms. The train took off from Titusville at Perry Street Station and ended at Petroleum Centre Station in Oil Creek State Park. When we arrived at Petroleum Centre Station, we were greeted with a great buffet spread, warm smiles and helpful park staff who loved having so many geocachers in town!

Nearly 2000 geocachers logged "attended" for GeoWoodstock IX

The train ride back was full of chatter as we made new friends and reconnected with old ones. People were also busy sending postcards from the train back to family and friends. That’s right… FROM the train!  The Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad operates the only working Railway Post Office in the United States. I could not think of a better way to get to know the history and neighborhood we were visiting.

After the train ride event, I received a message from Jessie. a.k.a. Foxfire, from Groundspeak HQ in Seattle. The message I received was that gooseygal, a lovely cacher I had met hours earlier, was in a pickle! Her car had broken down on the way back to her campsite from the event. If that wasn’t bad enough, her poor dog was stuck in her camper! She was worried that her dog would overheat and not be able to go outside for another several hours. Uncomfortable at best and at worse, well, I’d call every number I had too! She made a call to a number she knew, in Seattle, hoping the message would reach me in Pennsylvania. More than two thousand miles and back, the message was received!

Grandstand at GeoWoodstock IX

I was with the infamous Keystone at the time who bolted back to the campsite to check on gooseygal’s dog. Luckily, gooseygal and her friend were not far behind Keystone, but the help was much appreciated. This is just one example of thousands of how the geocaching community is truly amazing!

The main event, Geowoodstock IX, followed the next day. After catching up on some sleep, MissJenn and I arrived at the main event bright and early. We were immediately greeted by old and new friends. It was wonderful meeting so many people the day before. It made all of the new friends met at Geowoodstock a little less overwhelming.
There were so many things to see and do!

The “Meet the Reviewer” panel was a great opportunity for many players to put a face to the name that is always next to their “Published by” logs on their caches as well as to ask some of those burning questions they’ve wanted to ask. On-going activities such as GPS accuracy tests, Trackable logging and trading, merchandise purchasing and the Geo-Bingo Icebreaker game kept all busy throughout the day. If that wasn’t enough, live music, various classes, kids’ activities and a Geo-Poker tournament ensured that there was a little something for everyone.

Signing the log at GeoWoodstock IX

It’s always a bit surreal to attend a Mega even as a Lackey. There’s this recognition and appreciation from geocachers who are just so happy to meet you. Perhaps the surreal part on their end is how equally happy I am to meet them! I love meeting the community that makes geocaching their life and passion. It’s not about the finds. It’s truly about the people you meet.

Happy caching!

 

You can also find a Lackey at one of these upcoming Mega-Events:

HQ in Washington State, USA – Groundspeak Block Party

Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany – Geocoinfest Europa

Catalunya, Spain – Mega Event Catalunya

South Carolina, USA – Geocoinfest

/ Jeremy Irish /

The Eureka Moment: Challenges

Jeremy Irish: CEO and Co-Founder of Groundspeak

By Jeremy Irish,

To me, the core geocaching experience is the “eureka moment” when finding a cache.

The word, Eureka, comes from the ancient Greek εὕρηκα heúrēka, meaning “I have found it.” I love this word. It represents that elated feeling of discovery when you move a few leaves to discover that container in the woods, or reaching under a park bench to extract a magnetic key holder. It is a sense of accomplishment and marks the end of a successful journey.

Finding a geocache is fun and rewarding, but I’ve always been frustrated of the limitations of a geocache. As a physical object, some places are inappropriate for placing a cache. They can’t be hidden close to each other to reduce confusion, many locations have to be regulated by land managers, and some locations just can’t support a hidden container. But there are lots of cool and interesting eureka moments in the world. So how can we get people there without a cache?

We tried this before. Our early attempt was to support virtual caches, which weren’t geocaches at all but unique locations on the world for people to discover. The best of those virtuals still exist today as grandfathered listings, but there was a time when virtuals were hard to qualify. The biggest reason was that we were applying the guidelines of geocaches to virtuals, which required a reviewer to publish them. No one could determine what the subjective threshold for what was a virtual was and wasn’t, so the constant angst resulted in the retiring of virtuals. For years we have focused on the core game of geocaching, but have always wanted to find a way to bring virtuals back.

Click on the image for a preview video of "Geocaching Challenges"

Spring forward to 2010 when we added the feedback section of our web site. It became quickly apparent that the community wanted virtuals back as much as we did. However, knowing the history of virtuals, we couldn’t just flip a switch and have the same process again. So we sat in a room and tried to distill the idea of virtuals into one sentence. The result was “go somewhere and do something.” This evolved into Geocaching Challenges.

Find a location of interest and challenge someone to take a photo or complete some kind of task unique to that location. Make it fun! Take a picture of yourself holding up the Tower of Pisa. Pull statue Lenin’s finger in Fremont (Seattle). We’re looking for the community to define the best challenges in the world.

We also know in the early days that there won’t be many Challenges, so we’ll be issuing Worldwide challenges daily. For those old timers, these challenges will be like the old Locationless caches. For example, we’ll challenge you to take a picture of yourself on a boat, kissing a frog, or dressed like a pirate. We’ll be using our feedback site as a way for the community to suggest Worldwide Challenges.

What are the guidelines for issuing a challenge? Unlike caches, there aren’t any official guidelines. Instead, you can rate challenges with thumbs up or thumbs down, and there are reporting tools available in the case that a challenge is inappropriate or unavailable. We’ll be tweaking these tools and introducing new ones as the activity grows, to ensure that the community can collectively decide what is appropriate, and what isn’t. For example, there is no 520’ guideline and Challenges won’t be blocked from being issued at Disney World, or even a pub.

There will be some restrictions at the start. To reduce the growth during the early days, only Premium Members can submit challenges. Premium Members will be limited to creating a Challenge once every 24 hours. Our hope is that we’ll be able to open this up further once we tweak our system to address the feedback we get from the community.

We’re also releasing a whole new set of mobile applications for Challenges, on the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7. We expect that this new activity will be primarily accessed through these free applications, though we’ll continue to support GPS devices.

I’m very excited about Challenges, and look forward to seeing what the community can do with the new concept. I also look forward to constructive feedback on how to improve the activity and make it a part of the core geocaching experience.

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Geocaching.com “Photo” Challenge – A Sneak Peek

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Here’s the latest sneak peak Geocaching Challenges video. Geocaching Challenges are an innovative new way to experience and share location-based adventures around the world. Groundspeak is anticipating releasing Challenges on Geocaching.com later this week.  Geocaching Challenges will also be available via free smartphone apps for the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 platforms.

Groundspeak is beginning by launching two types of Challenges: Action and Photo. The video above describes what an Photo Challenge is. Additional types of Challenges are slated to be added in the future.

Geocaching.com Premium Members will be able to create Action and Photo Challenges.

Check out this blog post for an animated video teaser about Challenges.