Will they have the capibility to upload the caches to PDA’s for paperless? I use plucker/spinner. Cant wait till this Saturday to meet everyone!

I almost hate to reply to this line since whatever is said may offend someone but……
It is suppose to be an open forum.

It think it is time that the WGA board recognized that the membership can be trusted with advance information and GPS data without violating the intent of the event.

At the New Glarus Event the coords were provided prior to the event and it worked fantastic.
Some cachers even started early, the night before the event, which even helped by not having so many people at one cache at a time.
While this may not want to be done for the WGA events, I noted it as a point of reference to the subject.

I realize that the WGA hosts the campout and picnic and hence has waivers that release them of liability for the event. If a starting time is announced and the parties are told that they must sign the waiver prior to starting at that time, this issue could easily be avoided. If anyone did the event without signing the wavier, their logs could be deleted as they were not part of the event and hence not a liability problem.

I can think of no other reason that the data could not be released prior to the event.

WGA is an association meant to enhance geocaching in Wisconsin. Enhancing it would be providing the data early to those who would like it.
I think all of us like to have our GPS loaded prior to caching. How many people wait until they get to a cache to load the coords?

This is meant to make this a point of discussion not win an appeal.

2 cents … I agree with the WGA decision, I don’t think there should be any chance for some one to pre-hunt the picnic, then it’s not the picnic. I’m hoping to meet tons of people, strike up friendships and hunt with them (if that’s what’s done, sorry, I’m new).

A question … I’ve never upload to my Garmin except via my Mapsource software (which creates .mps) files. Assuming I bring my eMap’s cable, will what you have directly support uploading to my eMap … or do I need to bring my own software. Again, I’m new to the group activities, so this must be a dumb question.

I am glad that wzbt03 brought this up, as I’d almost forgotten about some of the thoughts expressed by many cachers at the New Glarus event.

[tongue placed firmly in cheek]
Team GeoPink is the “guilty” party who had the audacity to seek caches placed prior to the official start of the New Glarus event. As a result the event was a complete disaster, ruined by the inexcuseable misbehavior of this rogue team of ne’r-do-wells. It is a surprise that the event even happened as a result.
[/tongue removed from cheek]

The caches were there. The waypoints were known. We were camping in the area for an extended weekend. The event made for an excellent time and place to do some caching with my family. We had a great time and enjoyed putting more faces to more names of some of our Southern caching neighbors. I will make a few points here so please be patient and here me out.

1) I have a large family. Team GeoPink consists of myself, my wife and my four daughters. (and soon to be increased by one member by next year) The opportunities for me to cache with the entire family are few and far between. Events like this are some of the best opportunities for us to get some “quality caching time” together. That said, we also are not able to progress through alot of caches at once. A morning or afternoon of more than ten caches is unheard of, even in the close confines of a state park. A weekend getaway give us the opportunity to have plenty of time to spend together and to maximize the value of each placed cache by one additional find. The caches are already there! Why shouldn’t we go find them?

2) To be perfectly honest, while I understand that the WGA as an organization needs to be cognizant of its responsibilities, especially in this litigious society; liability is a crappy excuse. There are a plethora of avenues to avoid liability by the organization including but not limited to:
– The disclaimer on the cache page.
– A separate disclaimer in the cache description.
– A disclaimer used in conjunction with event registartion.
– A disclaimer used in conjunction with recieving the .gpx file.
– A disclaimer placed in each cache.
– A disclaimer signed as a requirement of membership.
– A disclaimer signed and filed as an option of membership.
This is an option able to be overcome and should not be used as an excuse. Maybe, I am just showing my ingorance, and if so, please forgive me; but in this world of lawyers who wiggle thier way around the legal system every day, I find it hard to imagine one who would not be able to “solve” this little obstacle. To be honest, in the end, if someone’s gonna sue, any type of disclaimer, signed or otherwise, is not going to be a deterent.

3) The reason we have events is to bring cachers together to cache. By releasing the waypoints ahead of time you would not in any way be thwarting this effort. The caches will still be there. The people will still come. Everyone will still meet new folks. Cachers will still cache. Pictures will still be taken. Cachers and families will only be able to enjoy this for longer and more folks will be able to enjoy the handiwork of the hiders. I as a prolific hider want as many folks to be able to find my hides as possible.

If, as has been stated in these forums, these temporary event hides are “as good as, if not better than” many permanent hides; why aren’t we encouraging and allowing more people to participate in the hunt by finding a way to distribute the waypoints as early, as reasonably, and as responsibly as possible.

[edit for spelling]

[This message has been edited by arcangl7 (edited 08-17-2004).]

quote:

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Originally posted by Trudy & the beast:
I felt that the early release of the new caches we placed for our cascade breakfast was a mistake. Cachers went after them and skipped the breakfast.

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The difference being that a breakfast is a short hour or two meet-up before caching; whereas the picnic or New Glarus type event is a full-day type event with a much longer time frame for folks to meet and greet.

I’ll chime in again, for those who WOULD like the info released ahead of time, please state the reason this is needed. I could only come up with one reason, to avoid the upload station. If you have additional reasons, please share them.

We always have at least 3 people with laptops uploading the waypoints. The lines have always been short. I’ve never noticed more then a few people in line.

Some reasons against this idea:

• People would be searching early for the caches. Competetive cachers may feel this is an unfair advantage.
• While it’s highly unlikely, someone could take this data and remove all the caches before the event started. This would ruin the event for hundreds of people. We would be totally screwed if this happened.
• WGA loses control of the registration process. People may decide to skip registration all together. We then lose control of our counts and cheesy liability waiver forms.
• Morning registration and uploads provides the board a chance to meet and greet everyone, including new people. We may otherwise not get to have any one on one conversation with them.

As you can see, the con’s out number the pro’s. We have a great board that is experienced in running these events. We have plenty of hands on deck to make sure the job gets done. We also have plenty of laptop computers to help keep the upload lines short.

In a smaller event which lacks some of the technical resources, I can see how beneficial an early data release would be.

I personally do not see the need to start releasing the info before the start of the event. The current system doesn’t seem broken.

Please feel free to add some pro’s to the list. I can’t think of any additions.

BTW, I think this is a great discussion. I think as a board we should welcome new ideas and embrace them. I think it’s great that our members come to us with new ideas or different way of doing things. We don’t want our events to get stale, so it’s good to get ideas from others outside of the board room.

Brian
WGA President
Grousetales at wi-geocaching dot com

[This message has been edited by GrouseTales (edited 08-18-2004).]

Okay, a response was requested so here goes:

Pros

1- Not have to upload points to gps the day of the event.

2- Be able to scope out the terrain and plan the days route

3- Be able to make your own map (RPaske did a great map for the New Glarus Event)

4- Save on expense and time of those who have to put the paperwork together for the event. We could be sent all the paperwork and print it ourselves.

Also in regard to the waiver – Those who wish to get the waypoints early could print off and mail in the waiver in advance to be eligible to receive them.

As far as the board members getting to meet all the people at the registration process, it seemed to me at the campout that they were all rather busy at registration time and the intros and conversations seemed to occur much more throughout the day.

I like all this discussion of pros and cons but the main con seems to focus on whether or not the geocachers can be trusted. This theme does not excite me very much.