I started to answer this quickly, then decided to think on it for a while. I wanted to say that I could support this in a modified form, but after considering I realized that our organization isn’t ready for this yet. If you look at the current slate of board candidates, you will see that there are no candidates who live north of the 45th parallel. I expect that several were nominated but chose not to run. That is certainly their choice, but I think it reflects the problems we would run into if we reserved certain board seats for specific geographic regions. I’m afraid that, at this point, we would need to “beat the bushes” for those board candidates and would possibly end up with uncommitted or unwilling board members, who took the role because someone “twisted their arm”. Some people will recall that I have previously taken a different stance on it, but I guess I had to change my mind. I would certainly be willing to consider such a change in the future, as participation grows from the northern half of the state.

The question seems to imply that the current board is somehow doing an inadequate job of representing the northern regions. I’m not willing to concede that this is true, but I will say that there are already a number of people on the board who would be very willing to present proposals from those folks living in the regions without a board member in the immediate area. If you are not sure who to contact, send me an email and I will point you toward a like thinking board member. Communicating directly with board members will be much more effective than posting in the forums. And, of course, everyone can choose to be on one of the committees we have organized, which is a really good way to get your ideas in front of board members.

I personally think the question we need to ask is “How do we expand our membership among geocachers in the northern half of the state?” We already have “logo on cache pages” program, but that isn’t doing much up there. We have talked about welcome wagon type programs and mentoring programs in the past, and I think these programs all have merit. Perhaps another good program would be to harness our “recent logs” information to send an invitation to each person who finds their first cache in Wisconsin. And, of course, more events (both regular and regional) in the northern regions would go a long way toward getting more northern membership.

Now to the meat of your question: Should the WGA be split up into 4 regions?

No.

There are better ways to address the needs of the WGA, grow our membership, and improve geocaching in the state.

Take a look at the folks in your area that geocache, and you will notice that there are essentially 2 types of geocachers that you know.

Type 1: The traveler/explorer. This is the type of geocacher who travels over a wide area and caches often, and probably works on things like the DeLorme Challenge or the Lonely Cache Game. This is by far the minority of cachers in Wisconsin, though they tend to be the ones most active in the WGA and in the forums.

Type 2: The local pro/home turf lovers. This is the type of geocacher that likes to stay near to home, and get out and explore and fully enjoy their own back yard. They are the type that may get every cache in their home area, but when the reach the county line, might figure that is far enough to go. This is the majority of cachers in Wisconsin, and the ones underserved by the WGA.

Splitting the WGA into 4 regions does nothing to help the many home turf lovers, so offers no real advantage. They dont really care to travel thru a whole 1/4 of the state anyway because that is still far too large of an area for their interests.

One way that we could better serve the home turf lovers is to allow for the creation of local chapters of the WGA. For example, there could be a Wausau chapter, a Fox Valley chapter, a Waukesha chapter, a Madison chapter and many others. In general, chapters would be small geographic areas about the same size area that the home turf lovers like to cache in. In that way, the people in the chapters would be friends and neighbors who have a lot in common, finding each others caches and confronting the same issues with local parks and land owners.

The local chapters could hold local WGA events, much like what the Minnesota Geocaching Association does with their highly successful “Breakfast Buddies” local events. The local events could be any type of event or day or time of day that the local people thinks works best for them, and would not have to be the same statewide.

The primary goal of the local chapters would be to build community of the local cachers. The local chapters could also be very useful in working with local land managers, with the support of the statewide WGA. Building those relationships are important now, and will grow in importance as the sport evolves.

The local chapters, as I envision it, would start with small groups of people in the local area, and would be charged by the WGA to grow their local membership and build community in their area. The local chapters, as I envision it, would select there own chapter President and choose their own goals for the chapter. The local chapters, as I envision it, would be encouraged to hold local events under the WGA’s name and the WGA would financially support to the extent possible start up of these events. The local chapters, as I envision it, would each have their own forum tab in the WGA forums so that they could easily post to each other topics of interest within the chapter.

Anyway, I think that the best way to meet the needs of the “home turf lovers” type of geocachers is to create an option for local chapters. I think many of those “home turf lovers” are not currently very active with the WGA because we dont do what they need or offer anything of interest to them, but by giving them ownership of the local chapter’s goals we can meet their needs and grow the WGA.

This is a proposal in very rough form, and if I am elected to the BOD I will propose we proceed with this idea in a careful manner. I recognize that the idea of starting local WGA chapters needs much more discussion, exploring options, member input, and other fine tuning to get it right, and I am very open to that.

zuma

I continue to hold to my opinion that dividing the state into regions is unnecessary. One of the things I think the organization needs to do is support WGA-branded events in every corner of the state. The details can be worked out later, but the complaint that the WGA doesn’t support the outlying areas has been a recurrent theme, and there is no reason we can’t change that. Again, this is going to require something from members in that area, as the majority of the board will continue to be from the southeastern portion of the state, and they can’t be expected to be the best persons to bring a local event to fruition in Superior, or Ashland, or Eagle River or Mountain. But with help it can happen.