Does Geocaching Need A National Organization?

[Mighty Tiggers]

Jeremy,

 

No disrespect intended with the bold font. It's just something I've always done on forums when referring to another user. Some usernames don't have a capitalized first letter, so I started to make the entire username bold in my replies. It was not intended as a malicous way to bring attention to anything.

 

sbell111,

 

I probably didn't state that last part clearly, but I'm trying to take a fair and balanced approach to the discussion. Concerning your other point about the number of cachers and impact to land managers who serve the public. In my area, there are dozens of hiking organizations. One of the more popular ones is the Potomac Appalacian Trail Club. Not only do they have routine meetings with policy makers, they've even formed a partnership with NPS. In fact, they have cabins on NPS lands that their members can use (it is also open to the public on reservation basis). My point is, the Director of NPS embraced the organization over time and they work together on policy JOINTLY.

[+Road Rabbit]

Perhaps it's time to ditch the "stealth mode" attached with our sport and proudly let the world know that we're out there using parklands responsibly, obeying the laws of the land, voting and (perhaps most importantly) churning a lot of bucks into the local and national economies.

 

Certainly the manufacturers of GPSrs and Tupperware must be aware of that by now.

 

When it's very visible, it's hard to ignore and impossible to make it go away.

[+EScout]

Like JohnnyVegas, I am a member of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League), the national organization for amateur radio. I have thought about the similarities and differences in the two hobbies/sports/activities. They both have to do with government regulation, use highly refined electronic equipment.....

I am not sure if geocaching is large enough yet to support such a national organization. It would take time to get going and takes a lot of members paying dues. The members of ARRL are very serious about their activity and consider it a lifetime passion. I know people who have been members for 40 years.

 

For those not familiar, these are some of the features of such an org:

1. Country divided up into sections and regions

2. Local elected directors (volunteers), national elected president, full time professional staff, organized committees (such as legal, technical) of volunteer members.

3. Regional and national conventions.

4. Monthly magazine, web site, other services. Big time advertising revenue in magazine. Most articles written by volunteer members, but mag has prof staff.

5. Professional lobby staff.

6. Organized activities, contests. Rules for accomplishments, level of achievments. Awards for the levels of accomplishments.

 

Even with this there are hundreds of local clubs and groups and many national and regional specialty groups. Perhaps it is an evolutionary thing-- ARRL has been around for 90 years.

[+BigHank]

I am also a member of the ARRL, having first joined in 1959 and then rejoining about 15 years ago when I got back into HAM radio. I do support the ARRL, am a volunteer official of the organization, and think that it is pretty good for Amateur Radio....but, there is another side of the coin. Many of the ARRL's positions and decisions over the years have been very unpopular with a large percentage of the overall HAM population. In fact, the ARRL does not have the majority of US HAMS as members. The majority of HAMS chose not to be members. Part of the reason for this is the divisiveness caused by the ARRL's sometimes supporting laws, policies, positions that are at odds with the majority of HAM's preferences as demonstrated in different surveys, etc. This has led to a deep fractionalization of many segments of the HAM population.

 

I am not in favor of a national geocaching organization, because I think that very much the same thing will happen. We will end up with fractionalization, infighting, enmity and a loss of the "community" spirit that now prevails in geocaching and once prevailed in HAM radio. Before getting any more "organized" than we are, maybe we ought to step back and look at what and how "organization" has affected, altered and perhaps taken away from the original fun and spirit of other hobbies.

[+Alan2]

Geocachers hike and use hiking trails. If hiking organization have enough members who cache, could there be a link? With the organizational depth a hiking group has, would any care to include geocaching and geocachers as an offshoot? Cachers gain with the strength of the hiking organization. The hiking organization gains by added membership, money support for the hikers who cache or even those who may not cache. Political clout is extended for the hiking organization as well as cachers. Even hikers who only hike are getting into GPSr's I would assume. The more that use GPSr's, the more that will take up caching. There's this natural link.

 

It could start with one hiking group starting a caching outting. More hikers wil get involved and pretty soon the hiking organization has an interest in "protecting" their member's right to cache.

 

I spent $150 joining a local hiking orgainzation for membership dues, hiking books and ttail maps. Not to hike but for caching. How many others have done that. There's a financial interest for the hiking groups.

 

Anyone in hiking orgainzations who could take this to thier boards and se what the reaction is?

[+briansnat]

Anyone in hiking orgainzations who could take this to thier boards and see what the reaction is?

 

Hiking groups are there to advocate for hiking. I doubt that many (if any) would change or dilute their mission to take on advocacy for another activity.

 

I think land managers want to regulate caching:

(1) because they don't really understand the nature of the beast

(2) they overesitimate the popularity of the sport/game/activity and

(3) mostly, they regulate it because they can.

 

I think you nailed it. The key is educating these land managers. You read them say things like "It caused some problems for us because it concentrates the use" and "It's certainly a growing concern" and you know that in most cases they've never visited a cache site and are going by what they've read and heard other people say about the sport.

 

If this were true, then please explain to me why state after state, park after park, agrees to permit geocaching (sometimes under a regulated permit program, but still...), even though the "premiere" U.S. Park System, the National Parks, banned geocaching many years ago? Or the National Wildlife Refuges?

 

In most cases they agree to permit only after they move to ban and we fight back. Nearly every article written about geocaching mentions the NPS ban. Local authorites who know nothing about the sport read this stuff and think "If the NPS thinks its bad, it must be bad". These bans do influence other land managers.

 

I'm not sure if I'm sold on the idea of a national advocacy group (not a regulatory body as some people here seem to fear it will be), but I think it is worth discussing. Its wonderful that the Alabama Geocaching Assn is there to deal with the Alabama State Parks and the NYGO is there to deal with NY parks, etc... But when the National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Svc ban geocaching on their lands, should the Texas Geocaching Association, or Michigan Geocaching Organization be the ones to deal with them?

Edited February 12, 2005 by briansnat

[+D-cachers]

Here is a great example of how Geocaching can continue to flourish...by working on the local/state level...

 

Several months ago, at the Oklahoma Geocachers Morning Meeting, we had two representatives from the state park service presenting info to us on how we (Geocachers) and them (Parks) can work together....by US (Geocachers) using their lands and resources.

 

In particular, we talked about increasing cache placement on state park lands (thats right...I said cache placement!), using state parks for annual geocaching events, and finding ways to support programs the park service is trying to publicize.

 

There you go. We'll see what happens...

[+crimestopper]

You may find this strange or even objectionable, but there is a national organization, formed because of similar problems. Those similar problems involve banning of their activities on a local basis, even passing laws against them, although the activities of the individuals are inherently legal, moral, and ethical and partaken of by hundreds of thousands of people world wide.

 

I'm referring to the American Association for Nude Recreation (http://www.aanr.com). Take a look at their web site and notice the national, regional, and local aspects of the organization. A collection of local groups and individuals, both commercial and co-op and just people and their families who come together in a single organization to promote their activities and permit them to practice their activities in freedom.

 

It seems to me that Geocaching could get some ideas from the AANR experience.

 

Crimestopper

[+AuntieWeasel]

It seems to me that Geocaching could get some ideas from the AANR experience.

Not too many, let us hope.

[+trippy1976]

I've been noodling about national stuff over the last year. I don't think we need any sort of "one org" (and agree with Auntie... at this stage it's highly unlikely it could be successfully organized without imploding) but I think it sure would help to have a resource out there dedicated to the "soft" part of caching.

 

Tutorials, curriculums for schools & day camps, lending materials, etc.

 

One single national group? Probably not. And if it were to happen, it'd come from the existing grass roots efforts out there. Smaller groups that are well established partnering to form a larger mass.

 

I do think there is a gap between the functionality to facilitate caching (provided extremely well by gc.com) and the availability and consistency of good geocaching information, presentations, videos, etc. for the public.

 

Edit: I'd like to give a shout out to Geocacher-U for this part of it. Cybret does an outstanding job there with materials and articles and also Today's Cacher is becoming a good resource for "out of the norm" information and stories.

 

I see a phenominal amount of work going on out there by groups and indepedant persons as well to produce such materials. There is so much duplication of effort right now it's unbelievable. Seems like everyone asked to do a small presentation for a park on geocaching uses a slightly different set of slides, all created from scratch. I think it'd be great to have a resource with downloads of various kinds of presentation files, links to other presentations, etc.

 

The inspiration of Geommunity initially was my frustration at the duplication of effort. I was surfing around looking at other orgs sites to get ideas for new features for the MiGO site and then duplicating many of them. Same with documents like bylaws, presentations, etc. The purpose of Geommunity is to provide an open roundtable for leaders and tech people from geocaching groups around the world to join and share ideas, work, etc. to help reduce this duplication and to speed development of those groups.

 

I don't even refer to it as a "group" but as a project. I found many people willing to share their work, but no forum for doing so to a broader set of leaders & tech developers. We tossed Geommunity together to see what would happen and it's been a fairly successful thing. There's very little on the surface, as Auntie pointed out, but that's kind of the point. We're careful about how it evolves because the open and free exchange of ideas there is critical to the project's success.

 

But yeah, things like Geommunity and Terracachers are trying to fill that gap, in my mind. There's a lot of room for improvement out there though.

Edited February 17, 2005 by trippy1976

[+Alan2]

It seems to me that Geocaching could get some ideas from the AANR experience.

Not too many, let us hope.

Where would I keep my spare batteries?