Souvenirs: what's coming next

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Although the latest hot topic has been related to the new favorites features I thought I'd revisit souvenirs.

 

The most recent release pattern seems to be releasing them three at time, one U.S. State, one German State, and one designated at a "Feedback site poll winner". For those haven't been following the list of released souvenirs thread in the Groundspeak forum, souvenirs have been broken out into several categories; Mega Events (6 so far), Special (i.e. Groundspeak HQ, 10 so far), U.S. States (20), German States (12), and so far the poll winners have all been countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Portugal). There are only four remaining German states so I suspect the pattern will change once they're done.

 

As I said, one group of souvenirs is designated as a "Feedback Site poll winner". Users have been posting suggestions in the Souvenir section on the Feedback site and suggestions with the most votes have been chosen as new souvenirs. Poland has been select as a poll winner and will probably be the next country souvenir. It looks like the next leading country is Austria. Clearly Europeans are using the feedback site to vote for souvenirs they want much more than others. However, the top vote getters right now are for regions other than countries.

 

"European Countries" leads the list, followed by a region in the Netherlands. In third place is a suggestion for a souvenir for the E.T. trail.

 

In any case, it looks like GS will be selecting at least on feedback poll winner for future souvenirs so if you're interested in a particular region represented you'll probably want to visit the feedback forum and add a suggestion and/or vote for your favorite.

[+bladesedge]

geographical souvenirs are great..... if you live anywhere near those countries. And of course everyone is going to vote for their country, so those with the greatest geocaching population are going to vote for them cos it's an easy find!

 

I'd love some non-geographical ones that I might have a chance of getting. I voted for the 5/5 one. That I can go for.

 

 

[Pup Patrol]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

geographical souvenirs are great..... if you live anywhere near those countries. And of course everyone is going to vote for their country, so those with the greatest geocaching population are going to vote for them cos it's an easy find!

 

I'd love some non-geographical ones that I might have a chance of getting. I voted for the 5/5 one. That I can go for.

 

The number of votes for the Czech Republic souvenir was *really* high, over 1000 if I recall. I know that there are a lot of geocachers in that country but you'd think that the UK, Germany, or Canada would have as many or more geocachers. The Czech cachers just took the initiative to vote so they got a souvenir.

 

I too would like to see more non-geographical souvenirs and the 5/5 suggesting ranks fairly high. Although I'm not into the numbers game I think milestone souvenirs for 100 and 1000 would be popular.

[+Lil Devil]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

You don't. The requests and polls only affect the order that souvenirs are created. Eventually, every country and many regions/provinces/states will get one.

[+bflentje]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

 

Canada is the 51st state, you should see your souvenier by October.

[+addisonbr]

The number of votes for the Czech Republic souvenir was *really* high, over 1000 if I recall. I know that there are a lot of geocachers in that country but you'd think that the UK, Germany, or Canada would have as many or more geocachers. The Czech cachers just took the initiative to vote so they got a souvenir.

 

I too would like to see more non-geographical souvenirs and the 5/5 suggesting ranks fairly high. Although I'm not into the numbers game I think milestone souvenirs for 100 and 1000 would be popular.

Having spent some time compiling a few different lists and tables of caches and cachers from around the world, I've learned not to underestimate Czech cachers in terms of either their raw numbers or their passion for the game. Germans would definitely give them a run for their money, but seeing as Groundspeak has been releasing German state souvenirs since before the Feedback souvenir forum was kicked off, it doesn't surprise me that the Germans didn't bother to flood the system with votes.

 

Just watching the find rates for some of the Czech caches I keep an eye on, I'd have taken the Czech Republic way before Canada or the UK.

 

Interestingly, the marked-as-completed Feedback suggestion was for souvenirs for Czech states (ala the US and Germany), not just for the country itself. What the originator wanted, and I suspect many of the voters were asking for, was a souvenir for each of the 14 administrative regions in the state. I'm not sure that Groundspeak was reading the suggestion clearly when it was marked as completed.

[+sbell111]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

 

Canada is the 51st state, you should see your souvenier by October.

It would have been sooner if those silly Canadians hadn't rebuffed our 'invitations' in 1775 and 1814.

[+Panther&Pine]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

 

Canada is the 51st state, you should see your souvenier by October.

It would have been sooner if those silly Canadians hadn't rebuffed our 'invitations' in 1775 and 1814.

Shouldn't they be the 55th state or something like that? All the current territories would be given first dibs.

We could rename Canada to be 'Great Northern'.

 

 

Disclaimer, I grew up 7 miles from Canada (5 of them were water).

[+sbell111]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

 

Canada is the 51st state, you should see your souvenier by October.

It would have been sooner if those silly Canadians hadn't rebuffed our 'invitations' in 1775 and 1814.

Shouldn't they be the 55th state or something like that? All the current territories would be given first dibs.

We could rename Canada to be 'Great Northern'.

 

 

Disclaimer, I grew up 7 miles from Canada (5 of them were water).

To be honest, I'm not really sure of the process used and I don't feel like looking it up, but...

 

If Canada was annexed in 1775, the new states would certainly have had to wait in line behind the original 13 colonies, but probably not behind ever territory (especially since some territories hadn't even been established as such, yet. I assume that as soon as a territory got itself sufficiently organized, whether it could become a state could be voted on. Therefore, some formerly Canadian territories certainly would become states prior to many 'US' territories.

 

If the territories were annexed in 1814, they would be in teh running to become states right along with the other 32 future states.

[+42at42]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

 

Canada is the 51st state, you should see your souvenier by October.

 

Look at the map, we are on top. We are in the works to make the US our 3rd territory.

 

[+Panther&Pine]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

 

Canada is the 51st state, you should see your souvenier by October.

 

Look at the map, we are on top. We are in the works to make the US our 3rd territory.

 

You know that it was attempted in 1812... it didn't work out so well.

I'm from right by Port Angeles, Washington...

The Pig War also didn't turn out overly well for Canada.

[+42at42]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

 

got me to go to the Feedback site, and try to figure out how to vote, at least.

 

Canada is the 51st state, you should see your souvenier by October.

 

Look at the map, we are on top. We are in the works to make the US our 3rd territory.

 

You know that it was attempted in 1812... it didn't work out so well.

I'm from right by Port Angeles, Washington...

The Pig War also didn't turn out overly well for Canada.

 

I thought is was the other way around. The quote by Thomas Jefferson that capuring Canada was "a mere matter of marching" It didn't work so well. The US couldn't beat the old brit officers and soldiers. The only truly decisive victory for the US happened after the War was over in New Orleans.

[+hzoi]

Apparently what's next, at least right now, is that all of my souvenirs disappeared. Had 30+, now none are found. Presume this is a temporary bug.

[+AlohaBra and MaksMom]

Favorites!! ??? this just popped up last week.....

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Apparently what's next, at least right now, is that all of my souvenirs disappeared. Had 30+, now none are found. Presume this is a temporary bug.

 

Wierd. All mine (16 now) are showing up but I just looked at your profile and as you said none are showing. I'd looked at it once before to see what some of the other German souvenirs looked like so I know you had a bunch of them.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Didn't think that we would have to make a formal request for souvenirs for Canada....

You don't. The requests and polls only affect the order that souvenirs are created. Eventually, every country and many regions/provinces/states will get one.

 

I don't think the GS has promised that every country would get one but I suspect that the Canadian provinces will eventually have them. If they did attempt to create a souvenir for every country it'll be interesting to see some souvenirs for some of the many countries which currently don't have any caches in them.

[+addisonbr]

I don't think the GS has promised that every country would get one but I suspect that the Canadian provinces will eventually have them. If they did attempt to create a souvenir for every country it'll be interesting to see some souvenirs for some of the many countries which currently don't have any caches in them.

A decent rule of thumb might be that if it's available in the drop-down list for placing a cache, no reason not to have a souvenir ready.

[+DragonsWest]

Seasonal souvenirs are worthy of consideration. I just returned from a week in Michigan, caching at times in 15F temps, through snow and some winds. Blue fingers, an icicle or a cache in a snowdrift would be appropriate for winter. Spring could be cherry blossoms or tulips, while Autumn could be a collage of colored leafs. Summer could be represented by a mosquito.

[+bflentje]

Seasonal souvenirs are worthy of consideration. I just returned from a week in Michigan, caching at times in 15F temps, through snow and some winds. Blue fingers, an icicle or a cache in a snowdrift would be appropriate for winter. Spring could be cherry blossoms or tulips, while Autumn could be a collage of colored leafs. Summer could be represented by a mosquito.

 

To get rewarded for just another day of caching in MN.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I don't think the GS has promised that every country would get one but I suspect that the Canadian provinces will eventually have them. If they did attempt to create a souvenir for every country it'll be interesting to see some souvenirs for some of the many countries which currently don't have any caches in them.

A decent rule of thumb might be that if it's available in the drop-down list for placing a cache, no reason not to have a souvenir ready.

 

I agree. It'll take quite some time to get to the bottom of the list (Zimbabwe) at the rate that souvenirs have been released. I realize that it takes some time to create the artwork, but I suspect that the primary that regional souvenirs are released only a few at a time is due to the computing resources necessary to reward them retroactively. In other to award a souvenir retroactively they have to iterate through every user in their database then iterate through each users finds list see if one matches the souvenir being released. I can't help but wonder if, instead of auto awarding souvenirs in this manner some sort of request system might work better. Suppose GS published a page that had a "catalog" of souvenirs available. Users could go to that page, select the souvenirs they felt they earned, hit a submit button, and the users list of finds could be compared to the list of available souvenirs and the appropriate ones added accordingly. That would certainly solve the complaint from those that are not interested in souvenirs, and because the load on the system would likely be much lower and spread out over time GS could release souvenirs more frequently.

 

In some ways I like the idea of using the Feedback forum to dictate the order of souvenir releases. On the other hand, I've found caches in Tanzania and the aforementioned Zimbabwe and I suspect that they're not going to get a lot of votes. To me, finding a cache in a developing country in Africa is a lot more notable then finding one in the State (excuse me, Commonwealth) of Pennsylvania (this is still pick on Pennsylvania week, right?). In the case of the one in Zimbabwe, not only is it the last in the list of countries alphabetically, a place where there are relatively few people visit, but the cache is located at Victoria Falls, a place that appears on just about ever Natural Wonders of the World list I've seen.

[+Tuena]

What's coming next is a good question to pose.

 

I just got a souvenir as indicated below:

 

Congratulations! You have been awarded the Maine State Souvenir. This Souvenir was retroactively awarded to you based on your Geocaching.com find history.

 

I've never been to Maine & all my finds apart from 2 arm chairs have been in Australia.

 

One of the arm chairs was in Maine so I am getting a souvenir for ONE find - surely not.

[+addisonbr]

One of the arm chairs was in Maine so I am getting a souvenir for ONE find - surely not.

Surely so.

 

Without looking, I'm guessing you logged "What in the World"?

[+Harry Dolphin]

One of the arm chairs was in Maine so I am getting a souvenir for ONE find - surely not.

Surely so.

 

Without looking, I'm guessing you logged "What in the World"?

 

Umm... That is NOT an arm-chair cache. I was there, and enjoyed it! (Though Bears in the Bushes got my favorite vote.)

I even got my Missouri veneer! (Though I have no idea why. I haven't been in Missouri in forty years!) Oh, well. I'm sure it will disappear.

[+hzoi]

Apparently what's next, at least right now, is that all of my souvenirs disappeared. Had 30+, now none are found. Presume this is a temporary bug.

 

Wierd. All mine (16 now) are showing up but I just looked at your profile and as you said none are showing. I'd looked at it once before to see what some of the other German souvenirs looked like so I know you had a bunch of them.

We've cached in all 16 Bundesländer, so we'll eventually have 'em all. If'n they come back, that is.