Thoughts on Our Recent Cacher Diversity Training

[Badwolf1197]

Now that we completed our month-long Cacher Diversity training...I am interested in hearing what everyone's thoughts are.

First, I want to thank the admins on designing and running a great contest with a lot of great prizes. It was really a lot of fun.

Before I share my thoughts...here is a little of my background. Before the contest started I was already at Munzee Level 53, had already captured 16 monsters, had hidden 5 caches on OCNA, created 1 sighter, and had accounts on most of the cache listings.

The best new thing I got out of this contest was that I found out about Opencaching Australia. I loved their locationless caches and wish I had visited that site before the last week of the contest. But I know I will be going back there quite often. I was familiar with Terracaching's locationless caches...but as much as I like the look of their new website...for me it doesn't function well and some things that I think should be easy to find,are a little difficult to figure out. I also enjoyed web-finding a few GPSgames.com shutterspots.

Surprisingly, I don't think I captured more then 2-3 Munzees during August. I had grown tired of having to shell out money for points in Munzee and it has not really taken off much in my area (NW Indiana). In fact, during August, my premium membership expired and I wasn't going to renew. My son loves Munzees, so it was fortuitous that I won a Munzee Premium membership...that will keep me somewhat active during the next year.

Sighter doesn't work well on my phone (an out-dated galaxy S2) and that is due to GPS issues more than anything else. I really couldn't get a good location lock to create a sight. And there are none near me except in Chicago (about 30 miles from me).

While MonsterCache was fun...I think I will take some time off from that. Since the monsters don't move...after I cleared out the reachable ones, it was frustrating seeing a couple dozen monsters on my 25 mile commute to work that were unreachable...and would never move to be reachable And without being able to plan out a trip online before traveling, I don't think I will be actively "hunting" monsters.

I am interested to hear others' thoughts.

[DisneyScout]

My background. I signed up for a geocaching.com account in 2008. In 2012 I went with my daughters on a trip to Savannah, Georgia and they earned a Geocaching badge while they were there. So that was the first time I had ever helped actually look for a cache. We found 2. In 2013, I went with another group of Girl Scouts and they earned their Geocaching badge. We only found 1 of the caches we were looking for. In June 2014, I finally downloaded the geocaching.com app to my smart phone and in July 2014 I had another trip to Savannah, GA with another group of Girl Scouts that earned their Geocaching badge. While I was there, I looked for more geocaches on my own with another friend that also enjoys Geocaching. (BTW, if you get to Savannah for Geocaching, I HIGHLY recommend the geocaches in the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens by RangerDoc. For that matter I recommend ANY of RangerDoc's geocaches)

I've been on the Maryland Geocaching Society's distribution list for years as well and I happened to see the information about the Diversified Cacher Contest there. I looked at it and decided it was much more worth it than some graphic images. I was really intrigued by the large variety of geocache type activities from all the different sites. I signed up for as many different sites as I could, but waited until August 1st to actually start working on any of them.

I was quickly hooked by Monster Cache and still open the app once I start driving anywhere and let it catch the monsters while I drive. Some it doesn't pick up, but I do get a lot of them that way. I asked for referrals from friends and eventually decided to just go ahead and purchase unlimited nets. There was at least one day I strapped my youngest son into his booster seat, handed him the phone and told him to direct me to the nearest monsters and we drove around for a few hours catching monsters. I will also freely admit driving around up until midnight on August 31st to capture those last 40+ monsters to raise my score higher. Capturing 150 monsters at 5 points a piece did wonders for my score.

I also really liked Sighters. They're easy to make and there are quite a few in my area. Munzees are EVERYWHERE around here, so they were also easy to do. I haven't even looked at the Premium Membership there, so I don't really know what it does. I've thought a few times about deploying my own, but the Leave No Trace instructor in me cringes a bit at it. That may be part of why I'm hesitant to place any geocaches. I was talking with a friend once and we were discussing Munzees as sort of high tech vandalism.

The Terracaches took a little while to figure out. I was looking for an easier to use Smart Phone interface I guess. I think I ended up having to take pictures and then took pictures of the things I needed for the clue to log the find and then went home to log the find.

I never got any of the GPSGames to work.

It was pretty neat realizing I could actually participate on the Australia Geocaching board with locationless caches. I plan to do more of those.

I found it interesting that I found so many more Bit Caches than I did regular caches in OCNA. Some of the cache attributes weren't anywhere within 100 miles of me, so I didn't bother with them.

I am intrigued about GeoKrety and have thought about releasing a Travel Bug and a GeoKrety at the same time and having them race against each other.

I did really enjoy being introduced to so many free options for geocaching. I've been talking up a storm about opencaching.us to anyone that will listen. I got a friend hooked on Munzees and it's interesting that I kept telling her about the contest and she could have had entries, but she never followed up on it.

Thank you for the contest! I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to finding more OCNA caches. I have more milestones to reach and report about.

Kim

[TermiteHunter]

I started geocaching in 2007. I currently have just over 1000 finds. I went for 4 years as a regular member and only added the PM when I got a new GPS. I'm not a big numbers grabber but I'll do any that are nearby but do tend to favor certain hiders and styles. I like the more creative ones especially those hidden in plain site.

As soon as OCNA, then OCus, started I was in. I populated my area with opencaches of as many types and numbers as I could. I was sold on the totally free aspect of OCNA from the beginning. I tried everything to get others to try it with only limited success. My local contest (mentioned by Mr. Yuck) was just my latest attempt to get others involved in the lesser known / used sites but primarily OCNA. The other sites are virtually non-existent in this area.

I had done a handfull of Munzees before either contest. That one just didn't interest me too much. Kind of anticlimactic. Yep there it is, done.

Monstercache was ok but the fact that they never move or otherwise change location would be a problem but I never got that far with its pay to play format. remember it was FREE that was a big draw for OCNA.

I did add GCAU to my mix as a result of the DCC

I didn't participate as much as I would have liked but still had a good time getting what I did and enjoyed getting logs on some lonely caches over a three month period.

[DudleyGrunt]

I've been on the Maryland Geocaching Society's distribution list for years as well and I happened to see the information about the Diversified Cacher Contest there. I looked at it and decided it was much more worth it than some graphic images. I was really intrigued by the large variety of geocache type activities from all the different sites. I signed up for as many different sites as I could, but waited until August 1st to actually start working on any of them.

Thank you for the contest! I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to finding more OCNA caches. I have more milestones to reach and report about.

Kim

Cool. I was sure you were relatively new to the game around here, but I hadn't realized that our contest was so integral to actually getting you active with geocaching. Glad you enjoyed it. I'm systematically working on checking on all of my caches in the area, so if you aren't sure if it has been visited in a long time, check for a recent log from me in ref to my maintenance visit.

[Mr.Yuck]

Sorry, been busy with prize distribution, although I did read the first 3 responses when they were new. And I love the Cacher Diversity Training title.

Thanks for those responses, too! C'mon, no one has any negatives? I know we generally don't get much negative feedback around here, because everyone knows we totally do this for free, and pay for web hosting with a personal credit card (it's really not that much, but it's certainly not free), but go ahead, let us know what we could do better.

One thing for certain on our end, we should have capped Monster Cache. We thought to cap Munzee's and Sighter Sights created (not found), and we even thought about capping GPSgames.org shutterspots (which are very similar to Sighter Sights, and almost, but not quite, as easy to create), but Monster Cache just never occurred to us. Don't get me wrong, I don't care if anyone scored 500 or 600 points on Monster Cache alone, but some people might.

I've said it before to NT and DG via email, and even once or twice in these forums, 22 players was less than expected, and I'd have to say disappointing. Not a total embarrassment like 10 or less would have been, but I'd have to say slightly disappointing. You see how many prizes we had, that will tell you right there we planned on more than 22. I suppose leading up to the contest, I was figuring about 50. TermiteHunter had 12 alone in Charlotte with a game ending a month earlier, so I suppose that's what I based 50 on.

And of course too many prizes. But I'm glad you people won some great stuff. (Hint, if you didn't win, you're still going to win, we just haven't contacted people yet). I would suspect next year, should we do this again, the prize pool will be half the size, if that. Even though it will be our 5 year anniversary. I can tell you one thing, there should most likely be 5 year anniversary pathtags floating around, different from the 1st edition.

[DisneyScout]

Maybe one of the things for the contest next year should be something along the lines of introduce someone new to OpenCaching.us?

[DudleyGrunt]

I've been thinking on this for a while, but realize I haven't shared here. I have a couple thoughts.

1) I generally like how the contest went off, but am thinking that maybe doing it closer to how NativTxn had done her 2 contests. Each item is simply completed once and checked off. Personally, I think this would encourage more diversity since you'd need to do more different things to get more points.

2) I thinking of the possibility of doing 2 (or more) contests a year with August being OCNA specific and doing the Diversified Cacher one at another time of year. August is our birthday and doing something OCNA-centric would seem reasonable. Also, not "competing" with whatever contest Groundspeak decides to do in August for our big DC contest, might allow us to get more attention from the geocahcing community. We couldn't offer the same range of prizes for a ONCA oriented contest, but I think that we could do something.

[TermiteHunter]

The diversified cacher concept is fine but I really like the idea of a VERY OCNA centric if not exclusive contest. Maybe fewer places to draw prizes from but this IS OCNA

[Mr.Yuck]

Maybe one of the things for the contest next year should be something along the lines of introduce someone new to OpenCaching.us?

I like that one! Of course people would have to be honest, and not creating sock puppet accounts. I can see IP addresses. Not that I ever need to. Except for spammers. Who have been generally leaving us alone for months. Of course there are blocking methods in effect, but they still get through when we're in their crosshairs. Babbling aside, good one, and thanks for the suggestion.

[Mr.Yuck]

The diversified cacher concept is fine but I really like the idea of a VERY OCNA centric if not exclusive contest. Maybe fewer places to draw prizes from but this IS OCNA

Agreed with what you and DG said about the OCNA centric contest, and August would be good. And I suppose we were competing with The Frog this time, and I've said numerous times the numbers were OK, but slightly disappointing.

I don't know about a diversified cacher type thing every single year to go along with an OCNA centric one, but possible. We do want to keep our name out there, but we don't want to go overboard either. Plus, with all the people we went out to, I doubt we'll ever be able to come close to the amount and value of prizes again. I mean do we want to hit some of the people up every year?