Steve Bukosky

[sbukosky]

1.Experience – I’m currently the WGA treasurer. I’ve been a geocacher since the late fall of 2001, which I’d say was the second wave of geocachers. At the time it was possible to find every cache in the area that a tankful of gas would take me and hope another would pop up so I could find another one. For a while, I was #2 in the state, for those tracking numbers. I’ve been an officer of a local Experimental Aircraft Association chapter, an officer of a local Ham radio club and a member of a local Goldwing Road Rider Association chapter. As a Ham radio operator, Advance class, and private pilot, I enjoy the technical aspects of GPS and its association with navigation. Having gone through the Scouting ranks of Cub, Boy and Explorer, I had an early interest in compass work, orienteering and the great outdoors.

2.Social events – Any organization usually has social events, but I don’t believe that is the primary reason for WGA to exist. I believe that social events can be better handled by volunteer committees of the general membership and those board members interested in chairing the committee. Social events are great to have available but ours have been twofold in that the campout and picnic have also been fundraisers. I want to thank the members who have been so generous with the donations. The WGA funds have been used for incorporating and other expenses. More legal work must be done to protect the WGA, it’s board members and the general membership but I hope that funds over that necessary for the legal stuff can be used for the furtherment of our hobby within the state.

3.Vision – Here I have some hard observations and questions. I believe that the PRIMARY task of the WGA is to see that geocaching under any name is preserved and allowed to flourish in Wisconsin. Many members have done a great job of educating local officials and land managers about our hobby. I believe that facilitating such work is key to keeping public areas open to us and possibly opening areas currently closed to us.

To most of us, WGA is the website. Without it we would be hurting. Presently the site is donated to us by Cachecows who are one of the WGA founders and whom I learned much from when I began the hobby. Many members do not know of the generosity they have given us, so if you get the chance, please show your appreciation to them. I hope the current relationship continues for a long time. However, I have also been a businessman and know that proactiveness and planning is good business. Things happen. Things change. WGA should be planning to make sure that the website continues should something change.

WGA and the hobby as a whole, is also dependent on the generosity of other private individuals. WGA has pretty much tied itself to geocaching.com, which was developed by Mr. Jeremy Irish and to the best of my knowledge is still controlled by him and is a private organization. At any time, it is possible for him to shut the site down. What would we do then? I have suggested among the board members that I’d like to see the WGA website ‘’mirror’’ the Wisconsin caches listed on geocaching.com for two reasons. First it would minimize the weekend slowdowns of the server and secondly the caches would be preserved on our site should geocaching.com shut down whether temporarily due to server problems or for longer periods.

I’d also like to be able to tweak geocaching to how WGA members would like it. We all have our ideas how this or that could be different. Enabling that possibility would open the topic for discussion. For now, we get what is given to us.

I believe that WGA should reach out to other state or local organizations across the country to begin forming a national association. Perhaps in time geocaching.com might be sold to the public which would give such a federation of organizations the opportunity to ‘’buy stock’’ in GC.Com.

4.Miscellaneous – As I previously mentioned, WGA is loosely tied to geocaching.com. There are other sites that support ‘’caches’’ such as Navicache, Terracaching and Letterboxing. Like it or not, I think that land managers will link any box in the woods or parks that has a logbook and trinkets in it as a ‘’geocache’’ and believe WGA responsible for it. Thus, I believe that we must be proactive in negotiating with these sites in order to preserve the acceptability of geocaching in general.

This is all a lot to think about. More about me is on my personal website with a geocaching link at home.wi.rr.com/bukosky Thank you for your consideration.

[This message has been edited by sbukosky (edited 01-09-2005).]

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