Inside Geocaching HQ Podcast Transcript (Episode 23): Cache Carnival, AR caches

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00:13 Chris Ronan: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Inside Geocaching HQ. I am Chris Ronan, aka Rock Chalk, from Geocaching HQ in Seattle. Thanks for tuning in, as it were. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to find an AR cache in recent months. AR, standing for Augmented Reality. Nicole from the Community Volunteer Support team is here to give us an update on the AR cache experiment, which recently ended after nine months. But before we get to that, did you participate in Cache Carnival? It’s always fun to hear how a campaign like that is created. So we’ve got Annika from the marketing team to explain how Cache Carnival came to be. Here is me and Annika, talking Carnival.

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01:06 CR: Well, Annika, you’ve been on our podcast before, but it’s been, it turns out two years.

01:11 Annika: I know.

01:11 CR: And it was unforgettable when you were on the podcast. But for people that may have forgotten, or maybe they weren’t listening yet, could we talk about what your role is here at HQ and what kind of things you do day-to-day?

01:22 Annika: Yes, and it might actually has changed, I think two years ago, I just moved to the Marketing Team, so I’m on the marketing team as a Senior Marketing Manager and working for the international side of things, specifically Germany and France, to get more targeted communication to those markets. And then also, I was helping to get Cache Carnival out to the people this spring.

01:51 CR: And that’s what we wanted to talk about here. So let’s talk about Cache Carnival. How does that idea first start, and how does your team start thinking through what something like Cache Carnival can look like eventually? ‘Cause obviously you don’t know right at the start, this is gonna be Cache Carnival and here’s how it’s gonna work. But in the very beginning, what are you guys thinking about and how do you eventually make your way to what becomes Cache Carnival?

02:18 Annika: It starts off a little more boring, [chuckle] in that the company sets goals for the year. And we always, as our team always has the goal to get people out geocaching, that is a given for anything we do public facing, but then there was also a specific goal this year to focus on cache quality. So we thought, how do we do that, how do we incorporate both engagement and cache quality? And so we thought carnival, and I can’t tell you exactly how that happened. We talk a lot about it, how we can do it technically behind the scene. What do we have? What possibilities do we have technically to make that happen? And then we talk about it a lot, and then somebody has kind of a visual to it, and that it was carnival, because carnival really is very similar to cache creation, if you think about it. It’s people that have a passion, that spend their time creating something for others to enjoy. It’s all over the world, comes in all colors and shapes and floats. And so we thought that was very fitting to the theme.

03:31 CR: How many teams at HQ are working on something like this? ‘Cause from what I understand, it really crosses throughout the company and involves a lot of people.

03:41 Annika: It involves a lot of people, yeah. Usually on the marketing team, we create the time tables for it and we project manage it, but then we couldn’t do it with help of so many others. That is the creative team that creates all the creative assets, all the images, the souvenirs, everything you see that as part of the campaign. And then we have the community team that helps us with the social engagement, Facebook, Twitter, responds to all the questions that come up during… And then we also have the tech teams that help us implement certain technical things. This time, it was, can we make it happen that if a cache owner gets awarded a favorite point that they get points on the leaderboard or how do we get different stages of favorite points of what are different points on the leaderboard as well. So these things had to be implemented, then getting a page for it to follow your success in mobile, the Mobile Team was involved, that was a whole another thing. We have UX involved, product design, that makes sure that the way it’s presented, people understand and can interact with it well. And then this time too, because of cache quality, we also had the team that… The CVS team, involved, they are, you know?

05:09 CR: Community Volunteer Support.

05:11 Annika: Oh my God.

05:12 CR: You used to work on the team.

05:12 Annika: I used to be on that team. [chuckle]

05:14 CR: It’s so far in your rearview mirror that you can’t even remember.

05:18 Annika: I was like… I can’t look back. [chuckle]

05:20 CR: You have forgotten us completely and now you’re just CVS, is that a pharmaceutical store or is that a team that I worked on?

05:26 Annika: I was just thinking very long receipts. I need toothpaste. [chuckle] Oh my goodness.

05:34 CR: Community Volunteer Support team, yes, CVS.

05:36 Annika: Yes, that team that I was just… As always…

05:40 CR: Unforgettable.

05:41 Annika: Unforgettable.

05:42 CR: Your time on that team, yes.

05:44 Annika: God, yep.

05:45 CR: We won’t let them listen to this part.

05:48 Annika: That’s gonna be cut out, right?

05:49 CR: Of course, it will.

05:51 Annika: Yeah, they were also involved, quite strongly, especially with the creation celebration element of the whole thing.

06:00 CR: So how do you guys come up with a point structure for these engagement campaigns? It’s certainly one of the most talked about in the community and I know you’re very thoughtful about it. And you talked a little bit about some of the… You’re trying to get cache quality, you’re trying to get people out, but at the same time, I know you also wanna try to create something that appeals to a very wide range of geocachers.

06:23 Annika: Yeah. And that’s always the difficulty in it, because we do want as many people as possible to have that moment of delight and feeling like they accomplished something, but we also don’t wanna make it that easy that people that are caching more frequently generally, that they feel there’s no challenge in it. So yeah, that’s how we try to do it, with the point structure, we just looked at how many caches do you have to find to get one souvenir, two souvenirs and so on. And then also taking into consideration, some areas have a lot of caches with a high number of favorite points, so then it’s easier but others don’t. So to make it still possible for anybody, even if it might take more, to earn all the souvenirs that they want to. Yeah, we wanna make sure of that. But in the end, we have to make a decision and it can’t be perfect for everybody because it’s just too many people involved.

07:26 CR: It must be interesting to watch the feedback that you see on social media and forums and emails, and so forth.

07:33 Annika: Yeah.

07:34 CR: What kind of feedback has your team seen about Cache Carnival?

07:38 Annika: I gotta say very positive feedback. I think people really immediately understood the thought behind Cache Carnival as being quality-focused, and getting people to experience the best caches and also highlighting those cache owners that placed them for the community. Yeah, and I think there was a lot of delight around that and I think people really liked the intent of this campaign.

08:05 CR: I’m sure people are already thinking ahead even though Cache Carnival is still happening, or depending on when we run this, it may be a couple days old, but people are already thinking ahead, and I’m sure your team is too. Are there other possible engagement campaigns down the road?

08:23 Annika: No, never again. [chuckle]

08:25 CR: Any big scoops that we can give people, or do we just have to say that… I know your team is always thinking about this kind of stuff and trying to figure out where you can plug something in to get people out.

08:38 Annika: Well, yes. We are definitely working hard on the next big thing coming in the summer, but we’ve seen over the last few times how much fun the community had with those teaser campaigns, so I’m definitely not gonna spill the beans today.

08:54 CR: Darn.

[laughter]

08:56 CR: Thought I could get you. Alright.

08:57 Annika: But yeah, if everything goes to plan, I think we’re gonna come up with something new and something quite exciting.

09:05 CR: Okay. Well hopefully we will hear about that later in the year and we won’t have to wait another two years to have you back on again.

09:12 Annika: Oh, I won’t go anywhere. [chuckle] Sorry.

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09:23 CR: That was Annika from HQ’s Marketing Team. Now shifting gears to another recent project, the AR Experiment. AR as in augmented reality, to learn more about how that experiment went and what’s next. We brought in Nicole from the Community Volunteer Support Team. That’s right, Annika’s former team, the team whose name she could not remember. Here is me and Nicole talking AR. Well, Nicole I thought you had been on the podcast before.

09:55 Nicole: No Chris, I was, but you didn’t publish it.

09:58 CR: That’s what you tell me. You say, we recorded. I know we recorded an interview but apparently it was either so good…

10:04 Nicole: So bad.

10:05 CR: I think it may have just been so good that I didn’t think the community was ready for it, but apparently something came up. You ended up on the cutting room floor, it never published. So, I’m sure I asked you this the last time that we talked, but since it wasn’t heard, let’s ask again. What is your role here at HQ? What kind of stuff do you do here?

10:28 Nicole: Okay. So I work on the Community Volunteer Support team, and mostly I’m helping support the reviewers, so the volunteers that help publish the caches on our website. And we also do the appeals process, so if during a review, there’s an impasse where the cache owner and the reviewer don’t come to an agreement, then either the reviewer or the cache owner writes to us and we can help interpret the guidelines and give guidance how to move forward. And so connected to the guidelines, our team also does things like projects like the virtual rewards or the AR caches.

11:17 CR: And the AR caches are what we’re talking about today. That was a project that you were very involved with. Augmented reality caches. What was the goal for this experiment? And maybe just talk about the process in general, how long was the experiment, what were some of the parameters and what was HQ hoping to see during the course of this time period?

11:38 Nicole: So the experiment ran from June 2018 to March 2019, so it just ended last month. And the set up was that during this period of time, cache owners were allowed to submit a mystery cache that would require the finder to download and use an augmented reality app to find the cache. And then augmented reality app is an app that would allow you to… When you look at the world through the phone’s camera, see an overlay that augments the reality that you see with your naked eye. And those caches all had to be named AR underscore, so they’re easy to find. And there were three allowed apps that CVS could use in their design. In June, we started with a very soft launch, this was the first time we did anything, an experiment like this. And throughout the whole process, we collect a lot of data. There’s a survey that’s linked from every cache page that finders or creators could fill out. And the hope was to see how the community would use augmented reality in the cache design, how will this new technology help cache creators to be more creative and bringing new elements to the game.

12:55 CR: And just to be clear, these caches are mostly still out there and they are grandfathered. And people could, today, still go out and find an AR cache, possibly in their community.

13:05 Nicole: That is correct. At the beginning of the experiment, we weren’t sure how it would go with the third party apps that we were allowing, but at the end of the experiment, we didn’t have any concerns at that point. So they’re all grandfathered, they’re all out there. You can go find them, just go on geocaching.com and search for caches that start with AR underscore and see if there’s anything near you.

13:28 CR: Okay. So let’s talk about how the period went, how did the experiment go? What were some of the takeaways that HQ had from this time?

13:37 Nicole: There were over 600 caches published in 35 countries, so it was a pretty widespread. And almost 10,000 founded logs were posted on AR caches.

13:47 CR: And one thing you had mentioned to me beforehand, was the length of the logs on these AR caches was quite a bit longer than maybe you were expecting it to be.

13:57 Nicole: Yeah, that was something that was very surprising. Among all the stats that we are monitoring was the average length of AR cache logs, and about halfway through the average log length was 191 words, that’s the average. So a lot of the AR caches… A lot of the finders of AR caches had these epic journeys where they went with their friends on a road trip and went to the next state to get the closest AR cache, because they were so excited. And I have a watch on a couple of the AR caches, and it’s always really fun, still really fun to see all the logs rolling and the stories that people… The adventures that people had or still having.

14:39 CR: So you talked about there was a survey that people could fill out when they found and logged in AR cache. What kind of feedback were people giving? Was it more about just the process of using the extra app or was it about the journey or was it a mix of all that stuff?

15:00 Nicole: It was a mix of all of that. So, those who did participate in the feedback, left overwhelmingly positive feedback. Of course, there’s always also critical feedback, but the survey showed that between 70 and 80% of the geocachers who participated really, really enjoyed the AR cache experience, and they liked the creativity that the COs were able to demonstrate with the AR apps, the new element that AR caches brought to the game. And just unique experiences that they had. And some of the other feedback we got was about the new technology. It still has its challenges like little box or also big box, [chuckle] and sometimes the AR apps didn’t work quite as expected, or they would crash, which of course is very frustrating. But surprisingly, a lot of the positive feedback was still from players who had issues with the apps and they still had a good overall experience.

15:57 CR: So what are the next steps on something like this? Obviously, you have a lot of feedback to go through and a lot of things to consider, but from your standpoint, what are kind of the next steps on the horizon with possibility of AR?

16:09 Nicole: So we encourage everyone to go out and find AR caches. The survey is still live so you can still participate and we are still monitoring the submissions. And yeah, this is not the end. I can’t say anything more at this point, but definitely stay tuned.

16:24 CR: I know I asked you before in the conversation that nobody ever heard, that not only you’re from Germany, but you speak, it seems like a new language, every month. Is it still just five? Just five?

16:35 Nicole: It’s five.

16:36 CR: Just five. I say just five. Go through them for me, I love hearing them.

16:43 Nicole: I’ll just tell the history of how I got to know these languages. I was born in Germany. My dad is German, so I learned German growing up, but my mother’s Russian, so I learned Russian growing up as well because I spent the summers in Russia with my family there. And then when I started school in Germany, you get to pick a language in fifth grade and another one in seventh grade. So I picked English and French, and I wasn’t really good at it. [chuckle] So my parents were like, “Okay, let’s send you to France, let’s send you to England to live in host families for like a month or two. And that worked really well, so they did that twice. I went to England when I was 15 and to France when I was 16, I believe. And that’s where I learned English and French. And then when I had to decide what to study in university, I was really inspired by Chinese, because my host family in France was actually half-Chinese, half-Vietnamese, and so, I picked Sinology and learned Mandarin.

17:39 CR: Wow, so five. That’s so impressive. And so whenever we have… You talked about being on the appeals team. If we have a ticket that’s in Mandarin, obviously, you’re gonna get it. Most likely. Russian is a pretty good…

17:53 Nicole: Please, if you speak Mandarin, write to us in Chinese. I would love that.

17:56 CR: Yeah, I don’t think you’ve got any use of it, have you?

17:58 Nicole: There were a couple of spam calls in Chinese that we got.

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18:05 CR: Spam calls. I love it. Well, I think we’re gonna keep this episode and we are gonna let people listen to it this time and if… I don’t know, we’ll just keep letting you hang and maybe eventually you’ll stop saying yes to these interviews with me, but thank you very much. I think people will love hearing about AR. And I think I joined most people in looking forward to seeing what’s next with it.

18:29 Nicole: As do I. Thank you, Chris.

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18:34 CR: So there you have it. Nicole from the Community Volunteer Support Team. We also heard from Annika of HQ’s Marketing Team. Thanks to both of them. If there’s something you’d like us to cover on the podcast, please send us an email. The address is podcast@geocaching.com, that’s podcast@geocaching.com. In the meantime, from me and all of my fellow lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.

Episode 23: Cache Carnival recap, AR caches

What went into creating Cache Carnival? Annika is here from Geocaching HQ’s Marketing team to tell us about it.

Also, Nicole from HQ’s Community Volunteer Support team has an update about the recently completed AR (Augmented Reality) cache experiment.

You can listen to the episode via this page, or on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, or Stitcher. If you use an aggregator to subscribe to podcasts, you can access the RSS feed here.

A full transcript is available here.

Inside Geocaching HQ Podcast
Inside Geocaching HQ Podcast
Episode 23: Cache Carnival recap, AR caches
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