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Inside Geocaching HQ transcript (episode 39): Catching up with Bryan Roth

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00:15 Chris Ronan: Hello everybody, welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ. This is the podcast about the goings on at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. My name is Chris Ronan, my user name is Rock Chalk, and I am one of the 80 or so lackeys who works at HQ. And on this episode, I am checking in with one of my fellow lackeys, Bryan Roth. Bryan is the president and one of the co-founders of Geocaching HQ, and we had a chance to chat about what’s been happening at HQ during the pandemic. We talked about the new cache owner dashboard, and we chatted a little bit about the adventure lab app. So let’s get into it, me and Bryan, talking about all kinds of stuff. Here we go.

[music]

01:08 CR: Well, we will kick it off here then.

01:09 Bryan Roth: Welcome to the Geocaching podcast. Go ahead, you do it.

01:14 CR: No, you did it right there. We’re in.

01:16 BR: That was pretty lackadaisical. Here, wait. I’ll try a better one.

01:19 CR: Alright.

01:19 BR: Alright. Welcome to the Geocaching HQ podcast.

01:26 CR: I think we should just keep that actually, and I’ll just play that at the start of every…

01:32 BR: Right.

01:33 CR: Every podcast. [laughter]

01:35 BR: The people who know me will be like, “Oh, that’s cool that Bryan gets to do that little piece.” But I think you too you’ve got a good one also.

01:42 CR: Everybody knows you, Bryan. Everybody knows your voice and says, “I know that guy. And if I don’t, I wanna know that guy.”

01:51 BR: No. Oh, oh, Chris. [laughter] That’s pretty funny. I don’t think so, but anyway. I’ll take it.

01:58 CR: Well, it’s been… I guess we last talked in March here on the podcast, and so on one level, it feels like that wasn’t that long ago, but for me personally, it seems like forever ago. So just kind of checking back in since then. Just kind of for you personally and your family, how has everything been going for you guys?

02:20 BR: You know, I think we’re doing okay. We’ve been social distancing and staying home and staying safe, just like everybody else. Just trying to be responsible, wearing masks. I had to run out this morning and get some groceries and so it’s surprising that it’s almost become second nature to know that I have to have a mask with me pretty much to leave the house. And when we’re walking around the neighborhood, it’s not really a problem because the people that are walking, everybody knows they’ll go to the other side of the street or just give everybody kind of a wide berth or latitude, if we’re gonna use some geocaching terms. Give people some latitude.

03:05 BR: But yeah, I think where we’ve been pretty fortunate that nobody has it, and so we’re just trying to stay safe and do what we can, and it’s been a pretty significant life change for us as a family. Otherwise, on a personal level, things have been okay. I would like to be done with this, and I’d like to get to see friends and family and that’s just not easy to do. The sooner we can get through this as a society, the better.

03:36 CR: And for people that don’t know, there is a Geocaching mask available at Shop Geocaching.

03:40 BR: Yes, there is, and in fact, that was the mask that I was wearing this morning. I have two of them. Well, I have a Shop Geocaching mask or a geocaching mask from Shop Geocaching, and I have a Star Wars mask that was made by a person that I know. And it’s just lovely, and so I kind of trade off between the two.

04:03 CR: Yeah, I love the Geocaching one. It’s of course green and little geocaching logo and the word “Geocaching” on it. That’s what I’ve been wearing everywhere, so hopefully people are… Hopefully it’ll help spread the word a little bit about… [chuckle]

04:16 BR: Yeah, I mean, for all of you out there, find a mask that you like and just use it, and let’s try and get through this COVID thing as quickly as we all can.

04:27 CR: Yeah, for sure. In general, how do you feel like HQ and the lackeys at HQ have been handling the pandemic from a work standpoint?

04:39 BR: It has been interesting. I think the last time we spoke was probably maybe a week or so into the remote working… I don’t remember the exact date, but I wanna say this past Thursday… So today is Monday… This past Thursday was 18 weeks of working remotely for a company that has always been a positive kind of office culture where everybody shows up every day and we all work together and have meetings and eat in the Signal Cafe together. To go relatively… Well, literally… Overnight to 100% remote working has been challenging in a lot of ways, but in other ways, it’s allowed us to learn some things about just how resilient and flexible we are as individuals and as a company.

05:36 BR: So I would say as a company, we’ve done quite well. We’ve made the transition. I think everybody has understood what it is that we have to do. We still have to get the job done, and it’s just the environment has changed drastically. And so on an individual level, for some lackeys it’s been really challenging, and for others, it’s been a little bit easier. I guess I would point out some of the lackeys that have young children or multiple young children, that if there’s an absence of daycare or school, well, then you have parents or single parents trying to manage children while also managing their job, and that creates some stress and can be…

06:23 BR: Can be difficult. One of the things that we’ve said to the lack is… Really at the beginning of this and then kind of throughout this time, is we said, “We really wanna be able to look back on this time and feel like we, as a company, made the right decisions and kept the important things as priorities. And so the safety and health of the employees is of paramount importance, and the safety and health of the community members also. And so regrettably, the visitor center at Geocaching HQ will be closed for a while, and that’s just what we have to do, what we know we have to do. At some point we hope to be able to return to HQ in some form. It’s not going to be, “Hey, everybody, come back tomorrow and let’s fill the office with people.” It will probably be a phased approach, just like many of the governments are doing.

07:18 BR: I have to say that I’m really pleased with how well we have been able to weather this as a company. I think we’ve also been fortunate. So for those of you who… Out there in geocaching world who haven’t noticed, there’s quite a few people that have taken up geocaching as a way to get outside, stay active and social distance at the same time. And so with the new user growth, membership growth and activity in the game, we still have to keep doing what we can to keep things going. And what it’s meant for us financially is unlike restaurants and airlines and hotels, we haven’t really been negatively affected by COVID from a financial sense. And so we’re really fortunate that we haven’t had to make some of the really challenging decisions that other companies have had to make with regard to furloughing or laying off employees and things like that, and I… We don’t take it for granted and do feel very fortunate and our goal remains the same.

08:25 BR: We try and be responsible as individuals and as a company, and at the same time, we try and do our job and make sure that the website and the mobile apps are functioning, and we are continuing to push forward with the projects that we have for new features and functionality and new things that we wanna bring to the game and give to the global community. So that’s kind of how we’re doing.

08:52 CR: You alluded to it just a little bit there, about increase in sign-ups and things of that nature. Geocaching, like any activity, we’ve had to figure out how to do it safely and how you can keep playing during this whole thing. But in general, what have you seen as far as just geocaching activity, sign-ups are up, are people finding more caches? What is the… The statistics that you’ve been able to see, what does it say about how people are playing geocaching right now?

09:29 BR: Well, I think what we’ve seen, it’s been a little bit of a cycle, so as the world went into kind of a COVID quarantine, we saw moratoriums placed on cache placements. Caches were not being published and we didn’t want a lot of people rushing out and getting to specific areas at the same time, and really, we didn’t want a lack of social distancing. And I think that the community volunteer reviewers around the world looked at their regions and said, “Here’s what we need to do at this point for the safety of geocachers,” and I believe that was handled really well. There was a lot of people that were trying to go out and maybe find a lonely cache or two, or bringing hand sanitizer and lysol-ing the cash before they open it and when they close it, and doing things like that. We’ve seen an uptick in people playing with Adventure Labs, which is nice because there’s no containers involved except perhaps for bonus caches, but as things have moved like here in Washington State to phase two, we’ve seen activity start to pick up, cash publications have increased in different countries around the world that as they’ve made improvements in their status.

10:52 BR: It feels like we had a dip where things really did slow down because people were staying home because they had to comply with the law. And they weren’t even allowed to go out, and that was in certain countries, but as the regulations have eased, we are seeing people come back and more people playing the game. And so from a year over year perspective, we’re seeing more geocaching activity this year, than we saw last year. We are seeing more membership growth this year than we saw last year. And last year was a good year for activity and growth, and so to see an increase on that, it feels really positive. When we think about geocaching as an activity, we know that it’s good for people, we know that it’s good to get outside and have adventures and explore the world. And so for us to see more people doing this, and particularly seeing more people doing it as a way to keep themselves happy and sane and engaged during a time where maybe a lot of other outlets are really limited, it makes us feel really good about the work that we’re doing and trying to contribute to making people a little bit happier at a time when that might not be as easy to do it as it used to be pre-COVID.

12:16 CR: You have been involved with this company for so many years, one of the co-founders, but no matter how long you’ve been a leader of a company, nobody, I don’t think is educated in how to lead a company through a pandemic, and so this is absolutely a new experience. I’m just curious. From that standpoint, what are some of the things that you feel like you’ve come away with over these past few months or maybe things… I don’t know, things you wish you would have known before this happened, or things that you feel like you’ve learned that will be valuable in the years to come?

12:24 BR: It’s a great question. There’s really so many aspects of this that have presented new decision points and moments where we have felt like it is not a choice to not make a choice. You have to do something. And so really early on, we were hearing about things happening over in Kirkland. So near Seattle, the first nursing home… Seattle was kind of ground zero for COVID in the United States really early on because of that one nursing home.

13:31 BR: And so we were very, very well aware of what was happening. And I had been over in Bonn, Germany, for the Beethoven Mega, and I got back to the office. I flew back on March 1st, which was a Monday, and so Tuesday 2nd, I was in the office, and on Wednesday as a senior management team, we met and we had heard that… I believe it was Microsoft and Amazon… Were basically sending their employees home. And so we sat in a room and we said, “Okay, what do we do right now?” I’d been in the office for two days and we said, “Look, the responsible thing to do for the safety of our employees, safety of the lackeys, ourselves included, is hey, it’s Wednesday, let’s get an announcement out to the company. Starting tomorrow, everybody is working from home.” It is, I believe, the first time it was strongly recommended that everybody work from home, and then within a very short period of time, we got more guidance from the local government, and we made it mandatory that everybody work from home.

14:39 BR: What was interesting about that, and I alluded to it a little bit earlier, is that we were never a company where there was a lot of remote working. There were people who would do one day a week, and some people would do two days a week, but by and large… To give you some idea, in 19 and a half years, I worked remotely less than five days in 19 and a half years. Because being in the office was important, and that’s where a lot of the dialogue was taking place, and things like that. And had you asked me pre-COVID, “Hey, what do you think about testing out remote working? Let’s have the whole company work remotely for a month and see how it goes,” I would have said “You’re out of your mind. That’s absolutely crazy. I don’t know. It’s a big risk. Look at what could happen. Things could go wrong. We might not be able to communicate.” Like, there’s plenty of plenty of things to be fearful about in the absence of knowing, but here we were, here we are being forced to test the theory.

15:42 BR: And it wasn’t just a week or a month. Now, it’s been many weeks and our expectation is this is gonna go for quite a bit longer. One of the things that we’ve said to the lackeys is that nobody will be required to return to the office until at least January 4th of next year at the earliest, and so it may even go longer than that, but we didn’t feel it would be responsible to force somebody to come into the office when there is a substantial risk to their health. That doesn’t feel like something that a good company should be doing. So that was a lesson. That’s a decision point. There have been a variety of other things. What tools do we use for communication? How do we do collaborative projects together? How do we set timelines? What are we willing to accept in terms of a balance for employees who are having a harder time at home? And so one of the other decisions that we made was, essentially, if you are an employee and you are struggling for whatever reason with COVID, we are just asking that you find… And the phrase we used is ” comfortable balance.”

17:00 BR: We don’t want the lackeys to suffer during this time. And everybody’s kinda suffering in their own way, and everybody’s got different challenges, but it’s important for us to get through this as a team, as a company, and as a community. And so being a little bit flexible with ourselves as individuals and our team members is something that felt really important to us. And I guess one thing that I would say that I’ve been able to reflect upon is over the years, we get asked like, “Hey, look, this company is 16 years old, it’s 18 years old… Now, it’s 19-plus years old. How did you get to be this kind of company?” And we’re proud of a lot of the things that we’ve accomplished. We’re on Outside Magazine’s best place to work. We are helping millions of people around the world have a fun and exciting outdoor activity. There’s a lot of good things to say about what has been accomplished by the team here at Geocaching HQ with support from cash owners and community volunteer reviewers and moderators and translators. And it’s this full community effort that has created what it has created, but we never sat down and said, 20 years ago, “Hey, here’s a business plan for the kind of company that we’d like to create.” The truth is we had no idea what was over the horizon. We didn’t know what came next, and so.

18:29 BR: What we see today, I believe, is the result of 10,000 individual decisions that have been made with a good set of values, and compassion, and caring, and the type of things that I think we would all want from leadership in any form. And so bringing that to this company… Yes, some of those decisions that we’ve made have been bad decisions and we can’t get them all right, but by and large, we brought good values to it. Here’s where we are, and it’s an exciting place to be. And I think that when we look at where we are and how we’ve responded to COVID, it’s pretty much the same thing. I don’t know what tomorrow’s decision is gonna be. We don’t know what the next question on the horizon is going to be, but… And it’s not just me.

19:19 BR: It’s the board of directors, so it’s Jeremy, and Elias, who are thoughtfully considering this alongside… It’s the senior leadership team, and it’s the lackeys themselves who are coming up with ideas and the dialogue and suggestions for how we can do better or make a better decision or respond to a specific thing that we need to respond to. And so when you take a series of good values across the company and across the community, and then you take guidance of, “Hey, we wanna be a good company, we wanna do right by the community, we wanna do right by our employees, well, then the next decision that comes by, we’re gonna do our best. We’re gonna make a decision, and we’re gonna go forward, and if it’s not the right decision or if we need to adjust it, well then we’re gonna try and adjust it as quickly as possible.

20:09 BR: So what we have learned is we’ve learned how this company with almost zero notice goes from a non-remote working company to a fully remote working company. And I have to say, I’m proud of the team, I’m proud of the company, and I’m proud of the overall community for how people have responded and come together and the dialogue that we see on social media. People welcoming new people, helping out new geocachers, answering each other’s questions, that’s one of the main reasons why this is so cool is because I think that the geocaching community, particularly now, has demonstrated why it’s such a positive model for any type of community out there.

20:57 BR: I’ve said this a number of times before, but in a world where there are so many things that divide people, geocaching is one of those things where everybody is welcome and people come together as a community to raise the bar for everybody and make things better. And so as a company, as a geocacher, as one of the many leaders at HQ, I’m really… I’m excited about the future. I’m proud of how we’ve done so far. And I’m looking forward to getting to a… Whatever that new post-COVID normal is so that we can get back to kind of hugging our friends and shaking hands and really going to mega events and giga events and even regular geocaching events. I think of all the things, that’s probably what I miss the most is getting to see our friends in person and welcoming visitors to HQ. So this won’t last forever. Between now and whenever we can get back to it, everybody should be focused on staying safe, staying healthy, staying active, and look at the person next to you and if they need a little bit of help, maybe reach out, have a conversation or do something to help your neighbors.

22:17 CR: One thing I think we would have been shaking hands and high-fiving over if we were together was this new project that was released not long ago. The new cache owner dashboard. And if people haven’t seen it, you can find it on the website or go to the geocaching blog and read more about it. And it was a really big project and you spoke about collaboration, and I think it was a great example of a team of folks that kept pushing forward on that and getting it done, and the reviews, I think in general, have been really, really positive, what… Why did HQ feel that this cache owner dashboard project was an important thing to put these resources into?

23:00 BR: You know, there’s a lot of different ideas and different projects that either come from the community or come from the lackeys that really feel like things that we need to do. When we consider the game of geocaching, we know just how important it is to have quality geocaches that are well maintained, and to be fair, we haven’t put a lot of effort into cache owner tools in the past. There’s certainly some effort and there’s information there and there’s a number of systems and communication protocols where people can report a DNF or for a needs maintenance and things like that to ideally get cache owners to upload where their caches are or maintain their caches. In this case, and we’ve talked about this in the past, just the concept of keeping the game board fresh and accessible and positive for geocachers so that when a family with kids go out or an individual or a couple and they find the cache, having that be a positive experience is what leads to more positive experiences. Maybe they go become a cache owner. It leads to a better game of geocaching overall. And so when we looked at the list of priorities, we came to the conclusion that it was time for us to do something big for cache owners.

24:30 BR: As you said, this was a… It was a big project that was in the a cross-team collaboration. A lot of research and a lot of really thought and care that went into identifying things that cache owners would like to see on an effectively a dashboard that would give them the information that they want in a quick and easy way and set them up to action things that they need to action and get a good understanding and overview of the caches that they have out there. And so for a variety of reasons among those, the team set out and did a lot of research, worked with a lot of cache owners, worked with a lot of internal stakeholders, and yes, last week was the release, and I dare say that in all of the recent releases that I can remember, this one was received the most positively. And for us, when we do any type of project we wanna make the geocachers happy, we want to make the community happy. Sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes we get it right. Thankfully, it feels like more often we’re getting things right, which is exciting. But this one feels like a real win, and so if you are a cache owner or an aspiring cache owner, please do check it out.

25:47 BR: For a number of you who own multiple caches, I think you’re going to find it to be a really useful and valuable tool, and if you have suggestions, please send them along, ’cause we do wanna know what else we can do to focus on and how we can make it better for everybody.

26:05 CR: You touched on the Adventure Lab App briefly as something that a lot of folks were turning to when they didn’t, maybe, feel comfortable with physical caches, and more adventures are out there. It’s getting more and more use. I’m certainly seeing a lot more talk of it as there are more opportunities for people to play with the app and use it, and as a result, of course, as with any product, there are suggestions and ideas for how to make it better. How does HQ go about trying to take in all of the ideas and the suggestions that might come in for how to make the app better and just things that they’d like to see be a part of the app?

26:47 BR: Well, first of all, I can say that even internally, there’s a lot of ideas for how to make it better, it needs… It’s still an early stage product and project. And we have a number of ideas for things that we wanna add and adjustments that we wanna make. We have a full team that is focused on adventures full-time, and they are reviewing suggestions that come in from the community, they’re reviewing suggestions that come from internally. And then we kind of stack rank them and prioritize them and investigate them and say, “Well, what exactly does this mean? How much effort would it make to build it? Is this a good long-term strategy? Does this make sense to go build it?” Another thing that I would add is that a number of us, myself included, are engaged in some of the Facebook groups around adventures and we are listening and contributing, and when we hear suggestions that make sense we’ll bring those back to the company. Or when we see something that’s really cool, we will bring that back to the company and share it and say, “Look at what this group is doing with the Adventure Lab platform.”

28:03 BR: Look at this really cool adventure and wow it’s a… ” I think I mentioned this one before, but it’s one of my favorites, but in Turkey, there is a James Bond adventure where you can go to five different locations where different James Bond films were made, and… I’m a James Bond fan. I really like those movies and I would love to go to Turkey to see that… To visit that adventure. And so as I look through the directory of adventures that are being created and even the ones that are being shared on Facebook, I’m looking at these things, and like with really cool geocaches, I’m saying, “How do I get to do all the ones that I wanna do?” And right now with travel completely limited, it feels like that’s ways away. There are quite a few of them coming online in the Seattle area, which is really exciting. But there are Adventure Labs being created all over the world now. We are giving out a lot of credits, and the goal was to keep giving out credit.

29:09 BR: So what I can say about what’s coming next in terms of credit distribution is the first phase that we tested with, we created a list at some point last year, and we said, “If you want one of these and you meet these requirements, fill out a form.” And we took those forms and we started out by giving out a couple hundred credits. And we got someone out in Adventure Labs, and then we said, “Let’s give out more credits and more credits.” And we went through most of that list that we first got, and then after taking that list, we said, “Let’s try randomly distributing them to premium members who meet a set of qualifications.” So I believe you to have found at least two lab caches. You had to be on the promotional email lists for geocaching, so that we could email you and say, “Hey, we’ve given you a credit.”

30:03 BR: The next phase… And this is something that I’ve seen on Facebook, and I know others have seen it, is we see examples of people getting them and saying, “Oh, I didn’t even know I… I don’t know how I got it. I didn’t really… I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it. I may or may not want it.” And other people are saying, “Oh my goodness, I’ve been waiting for so long. How do I get one? I never seem to be chosen,” and it feels like it’s not an ideal result. It does allow us to see sort of what’s the response rate if we do random distribution. At some point in August, and I believe it’ll be towards the early end of August, we are going to put out another sign-up sheet. Similar requirements, again, you have to be a premium member, and that’s the premium members are the folks that are paying for the premium membership and they are… In doing so they are helping to support the teams that build these projects. And so of course, as we promised in 2002, or whatever, we are going to give premium members the earliest access to new features and functionality. So that’s why we are giving these credits to premium members. But if as a premium member, if you meet the other qualifications, you will fill out a form and we’re gonna take those forms and we will be giving out X number of credits per week.

31:20 BR: And if you fill out that form, and I don’t know how long we’re gonna leave it open for, but we’re gonna leave it open for a while, if you fill out that form, you will get an Adventure Lab builder credit. So that’s a way of saying, “Hey, if you’re out there and you wanna build an adventure lab, come fill out the form, you’ll get to do it.” And if you’re not a premium member, we would hope that maybe consider becoming a premium member. It’s $30 a year still, we have never raised the price in 18 or so years. We felt like it was a good value then. As we continued to add things to premium membership, hopefully that becomes more accessible and more enticing to people. Premium memberships are the primary way that Geocaching HQ makes money and allows us to pay for employees, pay for our office space which we’re not exactly getting to use as often right now, but really do the kind of work that we wanna do to support the company now and in the future.

32:15 BR: So for those of you premium members out there who wanna build an adventure, your chance is coming. I would encourage you to get out and find at least a few lab caches because that will be part of the requirements. I don’t know if there’s going to be any other requirements, but when the form goes live, we’ll make that perfectly clear. But the end goal is… Adventure Lab is a platform that allows people to create, share and play a different type of adventure and experience in the real world. We’re seeing some really nice adoption by geocachers. A lot of people are having fun with them, and people are creating some really, really cool experiences. Some with bonus caches, some without bonus caches. If you haven’t checked it out, the app is called Adventure Lab, and you can download it on iOS or the Android store.

33:05 CR: We’ve been talking about the Adventure Lab app now for a couple of years now, I’m wondering, has your… Or not just your, does the company’s vision for the Adventure Lab app evolve over time? And I guess one of the things I’m thinking about specifically is you and I have chatted before on the podcast about how much or how little it would be integrated with geocaching.com, or seeing adventures on the Geocaching app, things like that. Has the view of that evolved at all? Has it changed at all or is it pretty much as it has been?

33:44 BR: I think the view continues to remain the same. It’s really just a matter of us going in and doing the work to have the app and the ecosystem match with that view. So I can tell you, we have a lot of things in mind for what we wanna do with adventures, it just takes development time to build it and test it and release it in the right way. And so we have talked about having Adventure Lab caches on the Geocaching map. That is something that I still believe is going to happen, it should happen before the end of the year, I think maybe when we talked last I might have said August, but we’ve had other things come up, and so it might take a little bit longer. And that’s just the normal course of business. I wish we could do everything as quickly as we aspire to do it, but unfortunately, that’s not reality, and it’s just not practical.

34:41 BR: But in terms… For long-term with geocaching, we do see Adventure Lab as a tool-set that geocachers can use to extend the game of geocaching in different ways. We also see opportunities for other communities out there. So if there are people that are kayaking or mountain biking or they’re bird watching or they’re historians, and they see this platform as a way to create content to engage an audience, that’s something where, I think, we would love to have them come and use the platform and play with it. And we may find that maybe there’s somebody who is an expert at a different field that’s not related to geocaching, and you put the Adventure Lab tool-set in their hand and they go build this really cool experience related to the discipline that they’re familiar with. Well, all of a sudden as geocachers, we have access to this new type of experience that we wouldn’t have otherwise had before. So as with geocaching, it’s a platform for creating, sharing and playing outdoor experiences.

35:49 BR: And geocachers have done some incredible things over the years with core geocaching that has helped people to get outside and have super fun experiences. Well, likewise, as we put maybe a more robust tool-set in their hands that provides for multi-media and different kinds of triggers and things like that, well, then the opportunity to create more robust experiences is available and the beneficiaries of that, the people who will benefit are the community members, are the geocachers. So long-term, we think the platform continues to have a lot of promise. We are continuing to keep it integrated with core geocaching because it makes sense to do that. And I know we’re having a lot of fun with it, the players are having a lot of fun with it, the builders are having a lot of fun with it. Like with regular core geocaching, we wanna do more of it. So some of those… The other things we have in mind from for the vision are things that you will see in the not too distant future. We are excited to bring those to the community, and we’re excited to see what people do with them.

36:55 CR: Alright, well, we’ve covered a lot. Is there anything else you wanna get off your chest?

37:01 BR: I guess I would just say, for those of you who I’ve seen at Megas and gigas and at other events, or if you’ve come to visit us at HQ, from the bottom of my heart, we miss you. We miss seeing you in person, we miss getting out on the trail and playing with you. And those times will return at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. And until then, we hope that you guys are doing your best to stay safe, stay healthy, stay active, and we’ll see you as soon as we possibly can.

[music]

37:36 CR: So there you have it, Bryan Roth, the president and co-founder of Geocaching HQ, talking about a variety of topics. If you have something you would like to hear us cover on the podcast, you can send us an email to podcast@geocaching.com. That is podcast@geocaching.com. We always love to hear your suggestions and your feedback. So until we talk to you again, for me and for Bryan and for everybody at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.

[music]

Episode 39: Catching up with Bryan Roth

Geocaching HQ’s president and co-founder Bryan Roth drops by to chat about the new Cache Owner Dashboard, the Adventure Lab app, and more!

We recorded this interview remotely, so we apologize if the sound quality is not as crisp as usual.

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 39: Catching up with Bryan Roth
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Episode 38: Memory Lane

Memory Lane is underway and Brigitte from Geocaching HQ’s marketing team is here with lots of fun details.

We recorded this interview remotely, so we apologize if the sound quality is not as crisp as usual.

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 38: Memory Lane
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/ Chris

Inside Geocaching HQ transcript (episode 38): Memory Lane

[music]

00:13 Chris Ronan: Well, hello, there. This is Inside Geocaching HQ. This is our podcast about the stuff that is going on at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. My name is Chris Ronan. My username is Rock Chalk, and I am one of the 80 or so lackeys who work for Geocaching HQ. Thank you so much for checking out our podcast, hope you enjoy it. Today, we are going to be talking about the Memory Lane souvenir challenge that begins on June 1st. So I have found Brigitte from the marketing team. She and the marketing team are the ones who come up with these great ideas for souvenir challenges, and then work with a lot of people from throughout Geocaching HQ to make it all happen. So we’re going to check in with Brigitte and see how this promotion works. And yeah, that’s what we got this time. So here we go, me and Brigitte from the marketing team.

[music]

01:23 CR: Hi, Brigitte.

01:29 Brigitte Charest: Hi, Chris.

01:32 CR: How is it going? 

01:33 BC: It’s going well. How about you? 

01:35 CR: I’m okay. I was just saying we haven’t seen each other since this whole thing started. It’s been a couple of months now. What is it… We started working from home I think on March 5th in HQ.

01:45 BC: Yeah.

01:46 CR: And so, it’s been almost three months and we haven’t been in the same… Sometimes, at work, we do these virtual happy hours and virtual lunch rooms. And I know we’ve been in a couple of the all-company meetings together, but it’s hard when you’ve got 80 people in a Zoom call to see everybody.

02:05 BC: Yeah. Well, it’s been funny seeing everybody and how long their hair is getting and untamed and unkempt. But you seem to be a…

02:14 CR: Am I holding up? [chuckle]

02:15 BC: Yeah, you seem to be holding up pretty well.

02:18 CR: Not a whole lot of difference. I thought about if I would have been thinking about it when this whole thing first started about doing some sort of a big, thick beard or something, I could have done that, but I didn’t. And now, we’re three months into it and I’m like, “It would be silly to start it now. I’m just gonna keep going.”

02:36 BC: Well, you’ll never know how long this is gonna last. It might be a pretty long haul.

02:38 CR: That’s true, that’s true, that’s true. Well, we wanted to talk about the Memory Lane promotion that was just announced. Before we do that, it’s been a while since you have done the podcast, so maybe we can just start by refreshing people on what your title is and your day-to-day work at HQ.

03:00 CR: Sounds good. So my name is Brigitte, but my username is melton.moose. And I am a Senior Marketing Manager here at HQ, so I work with a few other people on the marketing team, but I specifically focus more on content and product marketing. So if you are a subscriber to our logbook newsletter or geocaching monthly, I help create, curate and send that newsletter. And I also work with our product teams to help communicate when there are new feature and product releases that come out.

03:37 BC: And the marketing team works on these occasional souvenir challenges and Memory Lane is this new one. When does the work for something like Memory Lane begin? When do you start trying to dream up what one of the souvenir challenges will look like? 

03:56 CR: Sure. So we actually have a shared Google Doc where we always are just adding ideas to them when we hear fun things in the community, or have a fun theme idea. But Memory Lane was a little bit different because it was gonna be celebrating and is celebrating our 20th year of geocaching. So we actually started thinking about this in early 2019, but the idea really started to come together and we started involving more people at HQ in the fall.

04:27 CR: And how many people are involved? And this is something that tends to span most of the company, doesn’t it? 

04:34 BC: Yeah, it’s definitely a labor of love across HQ. So, of course, marketing is involved, our product and engineering, our design and creative teams, shop teams, community. These challenges pretty much touch nearly every team in the company.

04:54 CR: So you’ve got this Google Doc, you’ve got ideas that you’re always looking at. When do you say, “Okay, Memory Lane. This is going to be Spring of 2020.” Was this last fall? Was it first of year? How far in advance exactly? 

05:17 BC: The idea for Memory Lane actually came up when we were brainstorming for Cache Carnival our spring campaign from 2019. But we thought it just fits so nicely with looking back at the past 20 years of geocaching that we kind of put it in our back pocket and revisited it in the fall after we had completed mystery at the museum and we’re ready to really start gearing up for the next souvenir challenge. And that’s when we then have a brainstorm with our creative teams and community teams to bring the idea to life and figure out more of the details of what it will look like.

05:58 CR: And of course, a big wrench was thrown into the whole process with this pandemic. I think this challenge was supposed to start around the 1st of April or the first week, wasn’t it, originally? 

06:10 BC: It was supposed to start in early April, but the world had other plans for us. So we actually had to move our start date for Memory Lane back two times, just because we wanted to be mindful of the situation going on worldwide and to make sure that we could present the challenge in a way that was gonna be safe and accessible to people wherever they were.

06:38 CR: And besides starting in a little bit later, it’s also been extended throughout the end of the year, correct? 

06:44 BC: Yes, that’s the other part where typically these challenges are time-based, so it adds a little bit of a sense of urgency, but that just didn’t feel like the right thing to be encouraging right now when restrictions are still in place. Some are easing, some are going back into stay-at-home orders. So, extending it through the end of the year, we felt, was the best way to still celebrate this geocaching milestone, but allow people to participate at their own pace.

07:13 CR: There’s a blog post about Memory Lane, you can read all about it there. But for folks that haven’t gotten a chance to take a look at that yet, or seen it in the log book email, what’s the overview of what Memory Lane is all about? 

07:27 BC: Sure. So Memory Lane, as I mentioned, celebrates these different milestones that happened in the past 20 years of geocaching. So, we created a really fun game board that you will move along as you complete the campaign that’s in the colors of the original geocaching logo. So, it’s a little bit of a throwback there. But the souvenir milestones are the first Geocache Hidden, the first Geocoin, first mega-event, the first time Geocaching hit one million geocaches, and of course 20 years of geocaching. So, Memory Lane is actually built off the infrastructure of the leader board, which you may be familiar from past campaigns, if you’ve been geocaching for a few years. So, you will earn points through different geocaching actions, which will move you along these different spots on the game board. So, you can earn points for finding geocaches, finding Adventure Lab caches, mystery, multi’s, and extra points for caches with higher favorite points.

08:34 CR: And what’s the point structure like? 

08:39 BC: So, the point structure is any find-it log is five points. A find-it on an Adventure Lab cache is also five, multi-cash is seven, a mystery is seven, and finding a geocache with 10 or more favorite points is 10 points. But in terms of the souvenirs, the first souvenir requires 10 points to achieve, the second is 50, third is 100, fourth is 150, and the final souvenir, that 20 years of geocaching is 200 points.

09:16 CR: Something that we’ve talked about each time that we’ve done something on the podcast about one of these souvenir challenges is the balance that your team tries to find in trying to create something that is accessible and that people can enjoy, hopefully, it also adds a little bit of a challenge, but how difficult it can be to create something that can be both accessible and challenging for the entire community. It’s pretty much almost impossible to do something like that.

09:45 BC: Yeah, it definitely becomes more challenging too when we extend the campaign to seven months long. So, some of our geocachers may look at this and be like, “What? This is so simple, this is so easy. I can finish this in a day,” which maybe they would not have said that if we had time boxed it to our four-week intention. So, this one is definitely unique and hopefully we can get some learning for it in the future, but as you mentioned, it is always a balance that we try and work to get a little closer to in every campaign.

10:19 CR: We were talking before we started recording here, and I was saying how much I enjoyed the Geocoin, the Memory Lane Geocoin. It’s got that game board look to it. And I’m gonna snatch one of those up, because it was so cool looking. What is the process like, just in general, of creating the artwork that goes along with these souvenir challenges like Memory Lane? 

10:41 BC: Sure. So the creative team, and Ainslie in particular, did a really great job with that coin. It’s just so fun and the colors are great. But I think what’s interesting is when we have one of these souvenir challenges that has merchandise that accompanies it, we actually start with the design of the Geocoin first, and that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the theme and all of the art assets that come to it. And that’s because the Geocoin has the longest time frame needed in order to get it produced and to get test samples of it back, so we can review and make sure the colors look right and you can still read everything. So, we start with the Geocoin and then build everything else off of that.

11:27 CR: In general, what kind of, when the marketing team does these souvenir challenges, I know you’re always looking for feedback and trying to see how the community enjoyed it, any ideas they have for the future, how do you guys kind of take in that information and try to apply it to future souvenir challenges that might be coming up? 

11:56 BC: Yeah. So, we get a ton of qualitative data every time we do these campaigns, and those come in through blog comments, and social comments, and emails, and whatnot. So, we try and see are people writing into our community engagement team with positive feedback or more critical feedback? Do they have a lot of questions about the campaign? And then we also send out a survey to a cohort of users after every campaign to ask them for that feedback. How did you find the challenge level? Was it just right, too challenging, too easy? How about the time frame? How far did you get? Did you have to travel really far to complete the campaign? And we try and compile all this data to make the next campaign even better.

12:43 CR: Outside of Memory Lane, you are responsible for a lot of blog writing. People will probably see your name quite a bit on HQ blogs. And one of the things that HQ has been trying to do is communicate during this whole COVID-19 situation, and you’ve been very involved in that. And with just marketing, in general, it’s been an interesting thing to experience from that standpoint. Maybe we could just talk a little bit about how HQ has tried to approach communications and trying to keep the community informed about what’s going on from our standpoint and how you can continue to enjoy geocaching while there are restrictions in place.

13:28 BC: Yeah. Well, Chris, I’m sure you’re familiar with this, having been an author in a few of the articles on that subject, but I think it’s definitely been tricky, because for many people, this is the time of year when geocaching is usually in full swing and people are out there, and they’re finding geocachers, and kind of getting geared up for, at least in the northern hemisphere, a summer season. But it’s important to know that such a large part of geocaching is the community that surrounds it. And so we really, really wanna define ways to keep this community strong, even in a way when we can’t physically go geocaching, and we have to either stay super local or can’t even go out at all. So, we’ve been trying to get really creative with our content to find ways to keep that spirit alive, whether it’s watching past gift film reels, or planning future adventures, finding lonely geocaches, or we have content sneak peek coming up around how to safely geocache in these times, like what other tools of the trade might you need in your geocaching tool kit right now that were not necessary this time last year or even last Fall. So, but we’re definitely trying to be mindful that in many places, people can go geocaching safely, but also other people are really having a hard time not being able to go right now. So, it’s a balance, but we’re trying to keep that positive spirit and sense of community with geocaching.

15:00 CR: Well, I know, I think we’ve talked in the past when you’ve been on the podcast about your own geocaching, and you tend to do some pretty significant hikes during the summer time here in the Northwest. Has that been able to start for you just yet? 

15:17 BC: Not just yet. A lot of the hikes that I enjoy are still snow-covered, which makes it a little more challenging to find geocaches, but I have really been enjoying the logs that I get on my geocaches. I feel like during this time, people have been writing longer logs about their experience, because geocaching’s almost like a treat to get to do right now. It’s something, at least in the Seattle area, you can do locally and safely as long as you’re social distancing properly. So, I’ve seen a lot of fun logs of people who found it as a fun escape with their family or they’re rediscovering geocaching after several years of not playing it. So, it’s been fun to see those.

16:00 CR: So, have you got a plan ready for how you’re gonna attack Memory Lane then? 

16:06 BC: I need too. I’ve been so focused on getting this out the door in a safe way that now I can finally transition into being a geocacher again.

[laughter]

16:16 CR: And of course, I’m sure the marketing team is already looking ahead to, if not just the next souvenir challenge, probably the next couple of souvenir challenges, right? 

[chuckle]

16:26 BC: We just might be. Mum’s the word.

16:30 CR: Oh God, I thought I could trick you into saying something about it.

16:34 BC: Nope, I knew this was coming.

16:37 CR: You knew it was… Yeah, I know. I probably gave it away. I said I was gonna go all Dateline on you and you probably prepared too much.

16:45 BC: That’s true.

16:46 CR: I’ll have to fly under the radar next time a little better.

[chuckle]

16:50 BC: Yeah, we definitely have some ideas brewing and I think that there’ll be more information soon enough, but we’ve got Memory Lane to focus on and keep us busy right now.

17:02 CR: And so, for people that wanna know more about Memory Lane or any other souvenir challenges, [chuckle] what’s the best way to stay in the loop about this stuff? 

17:11 BC: The best bet is definitely sign up for our newsletter. If you’re a premium member, you can sign up for our log book newsletter and you’ll learn about all these things first. And otherwise, you can take a look at our Geocaching blog and social channels.

17:28 CR: Alright. Well, Brigitte, thank you, and hopefully we’ll see each other sooner than three more months.

[laughter]

17:35 BC: Yeah, looking forward to that hair.

17:37 CR: Yeah, right? And I’m gonna go read more of that Memory Lane and start planning my plan of attack for this thing.

17:46 BC: Sounds good.

[music]

17:48 CR: So there you have it, all the details about the Memory Lane Souvenir Challenge on geocaching.com. Thanks to Brigitte for her time. If you wanna learn more about Memory Lane, just go to the Geocaching blog or go to the homepage at geocaching.com, and you can link off to more Memory Lane information from there. If you wanna see the Memory Lane Geocoin and the tag, and I think there’s a patch, some really fun looking stuff to buy, that’s on Shop Geocaching. So, you can check that out. So again, thanks to Brigitte. And if you have anything you want us to cover on the podcast, why don’t you send us an email? Podcast@geocaching.com is the address. For Brigitte, for myself, for all of the lackeys at Geocaching HQ, until next time, happy caching.

/ 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.