Meet-and-greet on my way to a local shop

[+-CJ-]

I've witnessed several events that happened to be not very popular.

 

• In areas with no geocaching activity, e.g. in a small town in province.
  
• Close to hosts' accommodation or workplace, if even it was in suburbs and far from local transport.
  
• In the middle of a working day when most people were busy.
  
• Early in the morning (say, 7am).
  

 

These events were commonly closed with owner's phrase like "Sadly, I was the only geocacher who attended the event".

 

I cannot say for sure that these events were all organized without any "social aspect" in mind. It's still possible that their hosts just didn't have any ideas of how to make events. We translated the guide published at the website into our language but it provides no recommendations on how to organize a better event.

 

Is there a manual (set of advices) of this sort? (Not necessarily on this website but probably in any local community?)

[+cerberus1]

We heard rumors of one who believed if they held a ton of events, eventually they'd be asked to be a Reviewer.

Is holding a ton, hope that never happens (and TPTB gets imput from locals first).

 

I believe there's a few who hold events only for stats/challenges, and could care less if anyone actually shows, usually odd hours, a lotta weekday evenings.

Often the small group they cache with are the only attendees.

 

The couple of early morning events we've attended (and logged) did have sparse attendance (8am - I thought that was late), and it seems that folks just don't get up early enough anymore for a day out.

Many high-numbers folks, maybe it's dependent on what time all the food joints open.

 

I remember short event primers on this site, might be one of a couple blogs I actually read like this one.

[+wmpastor]

I've witnessed several events that happened to be not very popular.

 

• In areas with no geocaching activity, e.g. in a small town in province.
  
• Close to hosts' accommodation or workplace, if even it was in suburbs and far from local transport.
  
• In the middle of a working day when most people were busy.
  
• Early in the morning (say, 7am).
  

 

These events were commonly closed with owner's phrase like "Sadly, I was the only geocacher who attended the event".

 

I cannot say for sure that these events were all organized without any "social aspect" in mind. It's still possible that their hosts just didn't have any ideas of how to make events. We translated the guide published at the website into our language but it provides no recommendations on how to organize a better event.

 

Is there a manual (set of advices) of this sort? (Not necessarily on this website but probably in any local community?)

 

Hopefully experience, common sense and communication with other caches will lead the organizers to create better events (after one or two failures).

 

Meanwhile, an event that no one attends doesn't really do any harm, except that we think of what could have been. Maybe a better time or place doesn't work well for the organizer. Perhaps this thread will lead to more "how to plan a successful event" articles, guidelines and suggestions.

[+-CJ-]

Exactly, wmpastor - I hope that we (at least in our community) manage to work out some advices for those going to organize an event in our country/city.

 

As for failures, they usually cost nothing to the host (because he's already there) - but what about attendees? It's so cool when you get up early in the morning and travel 1.5 hours (Moscow is a really large city) to some remote district and then "What are your plans for today?" - "I'm going to the city centre, Kremlin, the Red Square, etc." - "City centre?!"

 

There was a meet-and-greet event in the evening somewhere nearby a host's hotel. It took most of us more than an hour to get there because it was not close to a metro station and required some walking. When we were at the GZ we found no suitable place for any event, it was just someone's dirty backyard. It happened that the coordinates were wrong and the host changed them the same day, somewhat 2 or 3 hours before the event. We finally managed to meet because we knew the name of the hotel. No harm for the organizer, of course, he was resting in his room all the time

[RuideAlmeida]

Here in Brazil we have a lot of this kind of Events... mostly only for the numbers... especially close to the Ape Cache.

Usually I try to contact the owner when I can see that a given starting or ending hours won't work very well, because of heavy traffic, difficulty to reach the place, closing hours, etc.

Some times the owner appreciate it and change the listing... some don't.

 

When in doubt, talk to the owner, days before the Event. You can spare a lot of spoiled time... and gas.

[+-CJ-]

Percentage of positive responses when you help hosts, RuideAlmeida? (I'm trying to guess whether it's worth doing)

[RuideAlmeida]

Percentage of positive responses when you help hosts...

 

Around 50%.

 

Mostly related to opening hours of the park where the Ape Cache is located... from 8AM to 5PM (6PM during summer).

So to Attend any Event too soon in the morning will be necessary to sleep inside the park, because we take around one hour to reach the park from the closest hotel outside the park, if the trail is not too muddy, by instance.

Since most of the closest local geocachers live in São Paulo (JRIntervales is the exception), they need to travel more than 240km (4 hours more or less) to Attend such Event.

Edited July 2, 2016 by RuideAlmeida