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My thoughts as a former BOD. I voted to keep it at 2 years and here’s why. I don’t know that i would have made the commitment if it was 3 years. However, I do understand the desire for more continuity from board to board.
I think the bigger issue of burnout is very real, and truly the issue here. Personally I got burned out after two years. I understand some have done longer terms, perhaps they are stronger than I. Either way, as WA mentioned above, how many BOD members sign up for repeated terms?
I’ve had a thought before and discussed it a little while I was on the board and it never went anywhere. Perhaps, I didn’t explain it well enough, so let me try again. Admittedly, this is just an idea, I haven’t thought it all the way through and obviously there would be bugs to work through.
While I was on the board, we had an event that we had some of the BOD from the Iowa Geocaching Association at our event. I may even be screwing up the states, and details here. I asked how they ran things and wanted to get some new ideas. I’ll try to recap what they do, and how they do it. This is my memory of my understanding from a 15 minute conversation from 3 years ago. If the details aren’t correct, my apologies, but listen to the idea in the end please.
They require an annual membership to be part of the organization. First let me say that I don’t support that. I think having the WGA free to it’s members will be key to the longevity of the organization. I don’t recall all of the benefits of the membership, but I recall they have a formal dinner once a year for the members, food catered in etc. That’s not the part I support either.
But they do have this other side, that always intrigued me. They still have their annual events similar to our Fall Picnic and Spring Campout. However, they have members do most of the leg work for them. The BOD chooses a group of cachers, that are volunteers. These volunteers are responsible for creating a theme for the event, manning the event, creating a pathtag for the event if its needed, cleaning up after the event, picking a location for the event, etc, etc. The BOD has the ultimate say on any and all decisions, and the purse strings.
I think all of the above is what is causing the burner out for the BOD. It becomes more of a list of things that have to get done and a deadline for them, rather than free flowing ideas. I believe we have enough creative members that would excel as these “party planners”. I think the Fox Valley alone would spawn one or two of them. And all the folks down in the SE region, I can just imagine what would come from them. Long term, I envision the events building on one another, and the teams trying to out do each other. Which I think is a good thing.
The idea of being on the board again, going to the meetings every month, attending all the events (I know only 3/4 are required), setting up all the events, tearing down all the events, making decisions about how many shirts to order and what design, and coming up with a potential theme for the year, and crawling the internet looking for a park that accommodate our needs that hasn’t been used in the past, and working the tent at Cache Bash and missing out on so many cool caches, and all the other things… can be daunting. I’m not trying to scare anyone from running in the future. It can be fun, and rewarding, but it’s also a lot of work. My point is, we need to find some other way of getting help, rather than dropping it on 9 volunteer BOD members. If we can find a good long term solution to that, then we’d be a lot further ahead. And I think people wouldn’t mind being on the board whether 2 or 3 years.
I know my idea here would require a lot of thought, and logistics, and maybe it just won’t work, or just isn’t a good idea. Here’s another example, as many of you know Cache Bash is a big event every year, and usually has a lot of really cool caches, the people that are putting those out are volunteers, that just have some extra time, and really cool ideas, and are thinking outside the box. Imagine, if the Cache Bash was run by a group of people, that were forced (essentially) to set it all up, and multiple times a year? After a while, it wouldn’t be as good as it could be.
Rather than forcing someone to a 2 year or 3 year commitment, why not allow them to do one event or a year of events? Thoughts of the Mardi Gras/Carnival season down in New Orleans and those fantastic floats comes to mind. Those are manned by volunteers, although again volunteers that pay to be a part of the organization.
Anyway I look forward to your thoughts, sorry I bogarted the conversation, but I think it’s fitting.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
The password issue maybe a glitch with geocaching.com’s system. Best to send a request to them for help.
Otherwise, I know a lot of people have their e-mail set up on multiple devices. That way you could send to just one and access from multiple places.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I like the idea of this series, but I’m not sure that it should fall to the WGA BOD to own it. Even if this Board has the resources to maintain it, the next may not. Good idea though. I only learned about this a few months back when finding one of your caches.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I think this is a good idea.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
Hodag, thanks for pointing this out.
King54130, thanks for bringing the garbage bag and remembering to do this.
Also just logged the Rover trackable.
Woohoo!
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I think keeping some of these issues at our forefront is important for the future. Was it wrong to intern 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry after Pearl Harbor? At the time, maybe it made sense. At this point I can’t imagine anyone agreeing with that idea. If important things aren’t discussed, in public, then aren’t we destined for failure?
I agree we likely won’t know if any of this was necessary or not for a long time. But time has a way of causing amnesia, too.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
This is an unprecedented time to say the least. My thoughts are that the open parks provide one small glimmer of joy in peoples lives.
Only under extreme circumstances should they be shut down.
It is spring and most of us are wanting to get out and stretch our legs as usually happens.I think people should voice their opinions. As long as conversation is respectful by one person, I would shame another that attacks someone.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I agree with that statement. I know it was talked about previously, but apparently no traction.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
How about these: suggestions: Geocache Log Photo of the Year – Picture must be from an online geocache log; it makes it more closely tied to geocaching (but hopefully no spoilers?) Geocache Log of the Year – It could make for some fun and interesting reading, and might inspire people to write more creative logs. This could potentially be voted on by the board only or by the general membership.i like this idea
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I don’t see a down side to this. Theoretically, if a cache owner isn’t able to maintain their own stuff, they have the option to put it up for CR. And if the CO is out of the game, maybe its better for the cache to go away as well. Looking forward to what the new BOD has in store for us.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I don’t see a down side to this. Theoretically, if a cache owner isn’t able to maintain their own stuff, they have the option to put it up for CR. And if the CO is out of the game, maybe its better for the cache to go away as well. Looking forward to what the new BOD has in store for us.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I think it has morphed into a 2021 possible change.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
Better for us would be moving the dates around every year – not always the same weekend of the same month, as we almost always have conflicts.
This is a good idea, but it may be challenging to find a weekend that is early enough in the year, to avoid the summer crunch, yet late enough that it’s not terrible weather. But again, I’m sure the new board will love the feedback. Keep it coming.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
I don’t think it’s been discussed yet, why this was brought up. Here’s my thoughts. I’ve always thought the Spring Campout was more of an adventure. Sometimes, we have crappy weather, sometimes we don’t. I think this conversation stemmed from the thought that maybe the crappy weather was too crappy, too many times. I will always remember the year that Kelly King and I threw on rain gear, and went hiking for some caches while at a Spring Campout. Now fast forward to the fall picnic. I don’t remember a bad weather picnic. Later in the year, the weather is just better. Personally I enjoy the adventure of the crappy weather. It makes for great stories. It’s like finding a T5 cache, it’s probably going to be story-worthy. I think the thought was that swapping around would make it more appealing. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. But one thing I am really excited about is that we seemed to have started a conversation on here. In my opinion, it’s really difficult to get our members to speak their mind about these things. Whether we change it or we don’t, it’s nice to see a conversation started. Too, often the board doesn’t get enough feedback and it’s tough to make sure we are doing what our members want. Remember this is your Association.
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
Just one of the many reasons I don’t do the travel bug thing….
The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.
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