Tag: Community Story

/ Eric Schudiske /

5 Tips to Achieve Geocaching Stardom

Rock Star move at a Geocache
Rock Star move at a Geocache

The basics of geocaching are inspiring in their simplicity. A geocacher hides a geocache and challenges others to find it. That’s it. And it’s easy to unlock the joy of geocaching when you discover clever hides and share the adventure with good friends. Becoming a great geocacher is all about remembering the little things. If you follow these five quick steps every time you geocache, you’ll be ready for Geocaching stardom.

1)      Bring a Pen – There are few rules in geocaching. But one rule is that you need to sign the logbook. Always pack a pen to make sure you’re ready to sign your Geocaching username, the date, and leave a note.

2)      Leave No Trace – Be kind to the geocaching game board (which is the entire world). Make sure to Cache In Trash Out (CITO) when you geocache. Pick up litter along the way and leave geocaching locations free of trash.

3)      Write a Great “Found it” or “Didn’t find it” Log – When you find a geocache, or even when you don’t find a geocache, make sure to share the spirit of adventure. Write a log detailing the geocaching journey for the geocache owner and for other geocachers.

4)      Put the Geocache Back Where and How You Found it – It’s tempting. You ask yourself, “Wouldn’t the geocache be better hidden if it were just over there?” Resist the temptation. The geocache owner placed the geocache at a specific location for a reason and will need to find the geocache when it needs maintenance or when other geocachers need help finding the geocache.

5)      Move Trackables Along – If you remove a Trackable, like a Travel Bug ®, from a geocache make sure to post a “retrieved” log and move the Trackable along to another geocache as soon as possible.

These five steps will have you rocking the geocaching world in no time. What geocaching tips would you add? Post your thoughts in comments below. Oh, and don’t forget a 6th step: repeat steps 1 – 5 often!

 

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Celebrate the Geocaching Community’s Volunteers

The Global Geocaching Community VolunteersThank you volunteers

English language flagVolunteers help define your geocaching experience. Volunteers offer their advice and guidance to geocache owners and help set the tone of the game. The volunteers number in the hundreds, speak dozens of languages, and most all love geocaching and the global community it creates. Find out more about the geocaching community volunteers, including a behind-the-scenes video. Each geocache you find or hide has the digital fingerprints of a volunteer on it. Volunteer reviewers assist geocachers by reviewing and publishing geocaches that meet specific guidelines. To learn more about how to work with your local reviewer and successfully hide a geocache, see How to Hide a Geocache and watch Basics of Hiding a Geocache. For more information about working with a reviewer, see the Geocaching Help Center. Go to the official Geocaching Facebook page to join us in saying a big ‘Thank You’ to the community’s volunteer reviewers.

Die weltweiten Volunteers der Geocaching–Community

Volunteer image

german language flag

 Freiwillige helfen mit, Dein Geocaching-Erlebnis mitzugestalten. Sie stellen Cache-Ownern ihre Expertise und Anleitung zur Verfügung und helfen dadurch mit, wesentlich bei unserem Spiel mitzuwirken. Volunteers beherrschen hunderte, sprich: dutzende, Sprachen, und fast alle gehen in Geocaching und der globalen Community, die dadurch entsteht, voll und ganz auf. Deswegen finde hier mehr über die Arbeit der freiwilligen Helferinnen und Helfer der Geocaching-Gemeinschaft heraus, inklusive eines Video-Clips, der einen Blick hinter die Kulissen wirft.

Jeder Cache, den Du findest oder versteckst, trägt den digitalen Fingerabdruck eines Volunteers: Freiwillige Reviewer sorgen mit dafür, dass alle Caches, die gepublisht werden, auch den Richtlinien des Spiels entsprechen. Um zu erfahren, wie die Zusammenarbeit mit Deinen lokal zuständigen Reviewern aussieht und wie man erfolgreich einen Geocache versteckt, schau Dir die Seiten “Wie verstecke ich einen Geocache?” und “Grundlagen des Versteckens eines Geocaches” an. Für weitere Informationen zur Zusammenarbeit mit einem Reviewer, wirf bitte einen Blickin den Hilfe-Bereich.

Besuch die offizielle Facebook-Seite von Geocaching, um mit uns zusammen den Volunteers einmal ein großes “Dankeschön!” für ihre Arbeit zu sagen.

/ Eric Schudiske

Two Mega-Events in One Weekend

Crowd at Piratemania V

Groundspeak Lackeys are traveling thousands of miles from H.Q. throughout the year to share smiles, shake hands, and make geocaching memories at nearly 20 Mega-Events worldwide. Jonathan Zbikowski aka jzbikows, attended the Mega-Events PirateMania V (GC365FT) and Geolympix Mega:Oxford 2012 (GC22T2T). They took place in Ashbourne and Oxford in the United Kingdom. Jonathan has been a Lackey since 2008 and is an API Developer. Here’s Jonathan’s account of his adventure.

JZ holding an Olympic Torch

Written by: Jonathan Zbikowski

Having been lucky enough to work with Groundspeak for a little over three years now, I recently was given the opportunity to travel internationally to a Mega-Event. There were many events to choose from, but Piratemania V caught my eye – a Pirate-themed Mega-Event? Count me in! I was fortunate enough to attend along with co-founder and Mega-Event veteran Bryan Roth.

Bryan and I awoke on the day of the event bright and early – excited for the day. We surely looked a little foolish walking through a nearby bus station on our way to the car – Bryan dressed in full pirate regalia (“Fancy Dress” to the locals), me with a sword, sash and bandana. However, for the hundreds of attendees at the event 30 minutes down the road, at a beautiful campsite surrounded by farms and wilderness, we fit right in.

We arrived to find many people still waking up and having breakfast at their campsites, where a multitude of makeshift flagpoles had been erected. The flagpoles were flying a motley collection of pirate-themed flags and banners to represent the different groups assembled throughout the campsite. All present were already in the pirate spirit, even the kids!  ‘Arrrrrr!’ was the preferred greeting by many attendees.

Bryan Roth, co-founder of Geocaching, part-time pirate

After talking a quick walk around the campsite and signing the log sheet, we caught up with the organizers Mark (PopUpPirate) and Liane The Cache Hoppers and were promptly asked to choose allegiances. Bryan, ever the neutral arbitrator, chose to support both the Red and Blue team. I however (unintentionally) only supported Blue. We were then given a map with the location of 24 caches specifically placed for the event, spread out over eight miles of English countryside. After finding a few older caches in the area while following some random groups of cachers, as well as some wrong turns and dead ends, we caught up with two fast moving cachers, Karl(Doyboyz ) and Colin(Flamedodger).

They were hot on the trail of the newly placed caches. We ended up hiking, slogging through muddy public footpaths, and enjoying their company for the next 18 of the 24 caches. After making it back to the campsite very parched, we enjoyed a few drinks at the “Outside In” bar onsite. We encountered a couple who were staying at the campsite but were unaware of geocaching. By the time we finally left they were hooked and excited about getting out and finding their first cache.

Luckily, another Mega-Event Geolympix Mega: Oxford 2012 was being held much closer than we had previously thought. The opportunity to attend two Mega-Events in short proximity was too much to miss out on. So after saying goodbye Saturday night, we woke up early Sunday morning and set out for Geolympix which was held two hours south in Oxford. We signed in and happened to see a few others who also made it to two Megas in a weekend.

Flags at Piratemania V

We stopped by our new friends Karl and Colin’s booth for their upcoming Mega (Halloween Hides and Creepy Caches Event).  We also had a chance to meet Wendy (Dorsetgal & GeoDog) who had the opportunity to carry the Olympic Torch while it traveled through the United Kingdom before the 2012 Summer Games. She was kind enough to let both Bryan and myself hold the torch! After talking to a few different groups of people, we ended up joining a group venturing out to find a Wherigo cache. We were lucky enough to walk around with creator of the cartridge, James (metal-bijou), who had worked on the cartridge during a Geolympix talk about Wherigo.  Our band of cachers also found a few other caches including a Letterbox cache, helping me to get both a Letterbox and a Wherigo icon on the same day. After parting ways with the group, we found one more cache as we headed back to our car for the ride home.

I was exhausted after two full days experiencing two unique Megas, and am still in awe of the fact that we are lucky enough to support the community that helped make all of this possible. I have the best job!

/ Adela B /

GPS Awards: Highlighting Quality Caches in Portugal

Awards Medals

Peter!, the Website Administrator and Video Producer at GeoPT.org, said of the Portuguese GPS Awards, “Just like the Oscars, this is to recognize the quality of geocachers’ work.”

What better way to highlight quality caches than to encourage the community to discover and vote for their favorites? In this case, that community includes geocachers across all 20 regions of Portugal.

“We decided to organize the event to improve the quality of geocaching in Portugal and to reward the owners of the best caches,” explains prodrive, another GeoPT.org Website Administrator and Event Organizer.

Portugal experienced a geocaching boom in 2011. On average, over 500 geocaches were published each month, accumulating to more than 6,000 caches that year.

Peter! says, “We have around 18,000 active geocaches in Portugal, but not all take you to a place with an incredible view or put a smile on your face because they took you on a real adventure.”

GeoPT.org, a geocaching discussion portal in Portugal, initiated and organized the GPS awards to highlight quality caches across the country.

Geocachers at the Awards Ceremony

The organizers selected 365 of the Portuguese caches published in 2011 based on the following criteria:

  • Favorite Points
  • GCVotes
  • Average length of logs
  • Number of photos in the gallery
  • Terrain rating

They then encouraged geocachers to go out and discover as many of these caches as they could between February 17 and June 4, 2012. Geocachers who found at least 40 of the caches could vote for up to 20 of their favorites. An incredible 600 votes were submitted.

Voting closed on June 4 at midnight. Five caches in each district were selected as finalists. The awards ceremony took place on June 16, where the winner of each region and a national winner were announced. Over 150 geocachers attended the awards ceremony and crammed into a theater-style hall to recognize the finalists.

The 365 nominees received a bronze icon for their cache page. The 100 finalists received an additional silver icon, and the 20 regional winners received a gold icon for their cache page along with a medal.

You can view videos of the 20 regional and national awards winners here. The big winner of the night was “A casa mistério” (GC34FCJ), created by helderjust.

One geocacher who attended the awards ceremony says, “Our first participation! We like! Not only because we stood on stage but for everything we experienced that night. We liked to see all those fantastic [cache] owners take the stage. Some more than once and without a doubt very well deserved. We kept adding more and more caches to our “to do ASAP” list. A great and fantastically organized event. Many congratulations to the organization that made it all possible.”

With the success of the GPS awards, another awards show, honoring 2012’s best regional and a national cache, is expected to take place in fall of 2013.

2011 GPS Awards Winner, helderjust

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Geocacher Competes in the 2012 Olympics

João Costa username: Neverfail1

Portuguese Olympian João Costa embodies his Geocaching.com username. It’s “Neverfail1” That tenacity leads João to find an average of 2.5 geocaches day. He joined Geocaching.com in April of 2011 and has accumulated more than 1200 finds. The spirit of “never fail” also led João to the 2012 Summer Games in London. These are his fourth Olympic games. The Portuguese Air Force Sergeant competes in Shooting.

João and Arne

He ranked 7th in his first event: Men’s 10m Air Pistol. And he’s not the only geocacher at the Olympic Games. João says, “My coach is and I know two more shooters, I’m sure there are more, but we all aim to have good results in the Olympic Games, and geocaching goes to a second level.”

Geocaching took awhile to hook João. He says, “A friend was in my car and said, ‘Stop, stop I want to go there.’ I asked, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘I’m looking for something.’ He explained what geocaching was, but then I made fun of him. A few months later it was the same thing, but then I found the cache and it was a very nice one. The switch turned on and I was infected.”

João at the Olympic shooting range at the Royal Artillery Barracks

João quickly became part of the tight-knit Portuguese  geocaching community. His wife encouraged his geocaching outings. João says, “My wife loves geocaching as I get off the sofa and go walking or go hiking.”

He attended the Mega-Event 12 years Geocaching – Portugal in May. That’s where he met  Geocaching.com Lackey Arne Moen, username RandolphAgarn – and shared his story about competing in the Olympic Games.

You still have time to root on your fellow geocacher. Leave a message below in comments for João. João’s competing in his final Olympic event, the Men’s 50m Pistol, on Sunday August 5th.