opencaching.com

Renegade Knight · Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 151

The purpose of this statement is to gather support for creating a national and international geocaching organization. The reasons for doing this are given below. What started it was simply the fallout from what it takes to do a stats site. The reason for the vision statement is to put the intentions behind the effort out in the open for everyone to see. Because I’m asking for support people need to see where their backing and efforts will lead. The goal is for geocachers to create their own organization. If you or your organization would support this effort I think we can make it happen. Please contact me with questions or comments.

Organization of Geocachers: Vision Statement.

In order to continue accessing public and private lands for the purpose of geocaching and to remain independent. Geocaching needs to be self regulating.

There are a lot of reasons to head down this path. The primary reasons are that a member owned site gives members control over the destiny of their sport. Another critical reason is that unlike most sports a database is absolutely critical because the history of finders logs and the cache database is vital to the entire endeavor of geocaching. Ultimately we as cache owners and finders need to be willing to entrust our information indefinitely to the keepers of the data. (Geocachingworldwide appears to have gone already)

As we move forward and win some battles and lose others, the land managers and other interested parties will continue to develop policies regarding geocaching. By being self regulating and proposing responsible but reasonable policies for agencies to adopt we can promote uniformity of rules and keep policies reasonable. Being self governing and non-profit we also gain credibility in the eyes of the landowners who we depend on for our entire sport.

As a community we can not afford to be fractured if for no other reason the integrity of the database of caches and logs must be maintained. This is already starting to happen. Discontent with the way things are is pushing people towards other options.

What I am proposing is to start a national and international geocaching organization created, owned and maintained by its members. There are several elements to this that will need to take place over time. Put simply the organization would essentially move geocaching from it's current private roots to a member owned organization.

There are a lot of paths that can be taken to accomplish this. However this is what I propose.

1) Gaining the cooperation and support of the local groups both in the US and world wide. It's these local groups who have taken the time to organize. It is my opinion that their support is critical for success.
2) Putting together a team of people with IT skills. The initial task would be stats since that's the immediate need of members. However forums to discuss building this organization are also important. This one piece can not be glossed over and underestimated. At a minimum we have to figure out how to incorporate data from other geocaching sites into ours, or how to move ours into other databases should that come to pass. The bigger picture has to be in mind during the entire development process to minimize future problems. Work here never goes away even as the rest of the start up teams wind down and the organization settles into normal administration.
3) Putting together a team of people to figure out the administrative structure of the organization. This is a very complex task. I'm proposing a non profit member owned organization.
4) Putting together a team of people with talent in the graphic arts to give the organization a look and feel.
5) Putting together a team of people to handle marketing. Marketing of promo items is one way to keep dues low or non existent.
6) Putting together a membership team. How do we gain members? What should dues be? Should all members be registered? Do we want separate team names?
7) Putting together a legal team. There are legal consequence to site usage, member terms and becoming a non profit member owned organization. We don't want to get into legal jeopardy unnecessarily. Nor do we want to put ourselves at risk.
Cool

Putting together a financial team. We have to pay for all this. It can start with volunteers and donated equipment and bandwidth. Down the road this organization needs to stand on its own.
9) Developing a licensing team. To license our logos, use of 'our data' etc.. This is a long run effort and will not be something tackled out of the gate. It is something that we need to keep in mind. Not all great ideas will come from within our organization. There needs to be a mechanism to try them out or let others try them out and see how it works.
10) We need a name

This list is not comprehensive. Already I can see that I’ve left off someone to keep track of volunteers because the potential is there for more people helping than one person can keep track of while working on other parts of the project. There will be problems that come up that need solved. My entire job in all of this is to keep it all coordinated and moving forward. I am willing to step aside when it reaches critical mass and the success of the organization is assured. When that time comes if I get a lifetime membership and a nice certificate, while being shown the pasture, I'll be a happy camper.

Do not get me wrong. There are ways to do this that don't involve what I have proposed. Others have started working towards this goal also. It may be worth us folding into their efforts or folding their efforts into ours. The existing geocaching sites can choose to go public and non profit. If they do since they have most of the infrastructure that we would have to build already in place it would be worth negotiating combining groups. As a member owned organization decisions like that would be made by the members. The reason for this entire effort is that this needs to happen now while this can still be a unified effort and before several national groups spring into existence each with good intentions but each competing for legitimacy. Whether you back this effort or another, the time has come.

This is what we start from. Where we go depends on the solutions to the problems we face.

Scout · Joined: 16 Sep 2003 Posts: 235

Let me be the first to wish you well on your mission. There are many local geocaching groups. If you can bring them together under the auspices of an international umbrella organization, you will serve the hobby well. If you can return control of the hobby to the geocaching community as a whole, the hobby will thrive and prosper. Good luck.
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Scout http://GPSgames.org

nilsk · Joined: 03 Oct 2003 Posts: 9

Hi!

You started the discussion and I think you are totally right, we have to get this organized. I think currently this is developing into chaos.

The legal issues are totally open. Making this a member owned non-profit organzation can be the only way to go, I think. But this requires to take the legal obstacles, to get this status. And to start taking these steps one decision must be made in advance: Where will the organization be residing? We should decide about the legal system, we want to fight with.

Next thing is getting real teams: Currently there are some people writing (more or less) regulary in the forums. Forums are very hard to read and organize, as soon as a thread gets longer. When we go into detailed planning of topics other ways of communication will be needed. Here a Mailinglist with a web archive comes to mind. For short term realtime comm IRC may be used.

Then we have to decide on leaders for the teams. These are not the guys making the decisions, but rather the people who channel the results from the teams and ensure communication between the teams. And maybe from time to time setup timelines and other organizational things.

When we have all that, then we can really start the doing and get something useful out of it. While the current situation is a nice brainstorming, it isn't something that promises to have a result in the end.

Who will start the teams? How will the "leaders" be announced? Voting seems fair, but just assigning them is okay for me, too.

Nils

geowyz · Joined: 16 Sep 2003 Posts: 9

Perhaps this is a bit "duh!" but why don't you create separate pages for the different teams. Then have a table with 10 or a dozen slots for team members names on each page. There's nothing like passing around a "sign-up sheet" so-to-speak to get people to sign up. As I said, a little simplistic but it might be effective. Later, the pages could act as rallying points for the teams and be a place where news/updates relevant to those individual teams could be posted. It might be a little less chaotic than these posts.

Renegade Knight · Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 151