[awhip80]

I’m posting this to see if anyone else is having the same issue with their WGA 20th Anniversary coin.

First off, I must say it is a very nice design. As I opened it and inspected it, I was confused as to where to find the tracking code. I was doing this in the dim morning light of a cloudy sky. At least a minute of turning and spinning the coin took place before I finally caught a glimpse of some faint lettering that resembled a tracking code. I looked closely at the code and even took a picture with my phone to see if that could help zoom in on it. I jotted that sequence of letters and numbers down and then looked for the activation code on the coin’s packaging. To my dismay, I could not find an activation code either, but I did find a message on the packaging instructing me to visit the oak coins website to activate it. After I enter my tracking code on the activation page of oak coin’s website, I get a message telling me that the code does not exist in the database.

Can anyone help? I just want to register our coin. We don’t normally share our coins with others to log. So not being able to see the tracking code well in order  for that to happen is basically a non-issue. Is there a general activation code available for this WGA coin, like one normally gets along with the purchase of a trackable? Thank you for any help!

[awhip80]

Yay, morning warmth! I wonder if there are any lonely caches in my area? Hmmm

[awhip80]

Wow! I’ve been out of the loop for a while. It is nice to see a thread in the forums with this much feedback!

Although I have never served as a board member, I have given the election an unsuccessful run a number of times.

First, I feel that the two year term is long enough. I, personally, would not have chosen to have my name on the ballet for any longer period of time. Given the responsibilities in life and family along with responsibilities necessary to keep the volunteer organization’s events afloat; it is my belief that the majority of those elected would consider two years long enough.

I believe that Hamfam, JimandLinda and hack1of2 have it right when they make the suggestion of regionalized volunteers handling the beginning to end running of WGA events throughout the year. This involvement by volunteers would give them a greater sense of ownership in the organization, which in turn should make the organization stronger and members more apt to run for election in the future.

So, with this thought, I do not believe the term limits have to change. I believe how the election is held should change. Somehow we need to split representatives into regions when the election is run. Similar to electing your own representative in a statewide election process. It is difficult for someone from a lower population density area to make a decision to run when they know that those from a higher population density area will most likely edge them out simply because of their location advantage.

I think the restructuring of the election and the BOD to better include the state as a whole; to have representation from all corners, is the first step that needs to be taken to make a stronger organization. This would give those elected more sense of ownership, which in turn could lead to a decreased turnover rate and more more people being interested in throwing their hat into the ring.

[awhip80]

Why I accepted nomination?

I accepted the nomination this time, because I feel the time is just right. A few years back, when I was nominated, I had the desire to be an elected representative of the WGA membership but I was a bit unsure if I had the time to devote to it. A busy family life had me thinking that it would be nearly impossible to fulfill my duties as a board member.

Fastforward a few years; we will soon have two teenagers driving themselves to all their activities and the younger whips are getting old enough to be much more self-reliant. Life has gotten so much easier! LOL

Having the support and understanding of my wife is also very important. She realizes that I have the desire to be on the BOD and backs me 100%.

What I can bring to the WGA BOD?

I’m A doer. When given a task, I strive to get it done efficiently and effectively. I also have much experience in lead positions in my profession; directing workers to perform their daily duties. I think these qualities will be valuable when holding WGA events.

I also have many years serving on other organization’s board of directors. This is experience will be helpful in listening to and understanding the views of the other board members. And being able to accept a vote of the majority that is different from my viewpoint.

What should be different or remain the same? How can we grow the WGA?

I am lumping these two questions together,  because we do need to grow the WGA and the efforts could be different. One benefit to the pandemic was a big increase in new geocachers. But the events that have not taken place over this past year have hurt show this new group of geocachers who/what the WGA is. We need to get these events back up and going in 2021. We should look to connect more with young people and their schools/organizations within our communities.

[awhip80]

We have attended 7 WGA events, with our first being in the fall of 2017 at Whitefish Dunes. I say “we”, because the awhips love to attend these events as a family. There are so many fun things to do as a family. As a matter of fact, the fun we had here played into our decision to purchase a camper and schedule a campsite for the next spring at Wyalusing.

The spring of 2018 event at Wyalusing was definitely the most memorable. Not only was it the first trip with our pop up, but our little Brit fell into the fire pit at Hamfam’s campsite. She was quickly swooped out of the burning inferno by Superman and all was well except some singed hair. Wyalusing was also our furthest WGA event we have attended (208 miles from home).

We have already reserved our site for the 2021 spring picnic at Yellowstone Lake and are looking forward to seeing everyone! Chris, thank you for asking a question that brought back some great memories.

[awhip80]

The responsibilities of the BOD are far reaching. They probably are most noticeable to the membership in the maintenance of the WGA website. But, there is are so many more and not having served on the BOD it is very likely that I may not understand every last one of those responsibilities. I do know that they include attendance at meetings, working at certain events throughout the year, and building and maintaining relations with local and state agencies.

As I stated in my question above, I noticed many areas in the tabs of our website that need improvements. I believe that this maintenance can be shared amongst the members of the BOD as to not overload just a few of the members in this responsibility.

Here is an example of some of the things I found just within one tab and its drop down menu items. In the “WGA Awesome Games” tab, 3 out of 6 of the options here seemed to be maintained well. The LCG, Cache Rescue, and Oldest Cache by County options seemed to be maintained well when I look further into those areas for information. The State Park Series, COTM, and Travel Bug Race are areas that seem to need improvements. For instance, in the SPS, the wife and I have found 24 of the WGA caches but it only shows that we have found 2. In the cache of the month, there are 407 caches on the WGA book mark list, but 199 of those caches are archived. Also, I do not believe that the book mark list and related map are current. Reason being; one of our caches had been awarded this honor back in 2017, but it does not show up on the bookmark list or the map. In the Travel Bug Race tab, it shows that the “race is still in progress” for the 2019-2020 race. It also shows that the race page has not been updated since 2/24/2020. This race had once been administered with a third party website, but now is left to a WGA member volunteer to administer through Facebook.

As you can see, the need for improvements in just one minute piece of the puzzle are extensive. I believe member volunteer opportunities are essential in maintaining some aspects of the WGA affairs, but I believe that the greater load should be carried by those that are elected. I also believe that if we can better maintain and keep up-to-date the fun opportunities and information most easily accessible through the website to the membership, there would be higher member traffic.

My thoughts are that the WGA should be seeking more voluntary membership involvement, but only in things like Facebook page administrative roles or hosting some WGA sponsored events during the year. The other items need to be tackled by the BOD and increasing the numbers of members elected to the board to share responsibilities hopefully would help address many issues that need improvements.

[awhip80]

At this time, social media platforms are the quickest, easiest and most far reaching ways to communicate with the membership. The WGA website is another great avenue for reaching out to the membership in sharing important news and information. But, as I stated in a different thread, I believe we can improve member communication, first, with text notifications. So that members can get those quick real time updates directly from a WGA representative  without going through a third party app to get the information.

 

 

[awhip80]

First, I would politely reach out to the person putting these ridiculing logs on the cache pages through a message on geocaching.com. The point of my message would be to ask the person if they could simply edit their log so that any mention of the other cacher being ridiculed is removed from the log. More specifically, no mention of the named cacher at all would be the best policy. I personally don’t think there would be any reason whatsoever to dig further into the why or what of the matter. Obviously, if this negative logging happens on multiple caches there is some reason behind it and it is not done mistakenly, but that really is none of my business.

If the log is not changed in a timely fashion, I would bubble it up. I think at that point in time it becomes a BOD issue to discuss and a decision on what to do with those logs can be made by the BOD as a whole.

 

[awhip80]

I’ll be that salty snack 🙂

Most things we consume need at least a little saltiness or what would they be? Blah! Consider me that large pail of salted movie theatre popcorn.

How does this apply to the BOD? Well, the BOD needs a little spiciness in order for change to occur.

Hopefully, this answer your fun question sufficiently 🙂

 

[awhip80]

Variety in backgrounds and personality is the best thing for a BOD. In order to best fit a tiny snippet of the overall membership’s lives and ideas, that difference in the board’s 9 members is essential. As the long as everyone who has an opinion/idea is given equal time in the discussion and a fair vote is taken, the result should be what is best for a majority of the membership.

I work in the trades and at times in charge of a good number of people on my crews. Not only do I have to deal with all the differences in my crewmembers, but I have to work out situations that occur almost daily with the different trades on the jobsites. After all is said and done, these projects are for a customer; they are not for me personally. I realize that when we can iron out our differences to give the best possible product to the customer we will have success.

I have sat on some type of board for 15+ years. I’m guessing that I have sat next to well over 100 different personalities throughout the years. Yes, some discussions have been much more difficult to come to an agreement on than others, but in the end votes were cast, decisions were handed down and many more times than not success was had.

[awhip80]

In most instances, it is my belief that a CITO event should be run by an individual or team from a localized area. Someone that has familiarity of the area and the people that live in that area. The WGA is always requesting more member involvement and this is one of the best ways that a member can be involved.

The WGA does “sponsor” a number of CITO events each year. In their sponsorship, the host member usually receives items to aid in the cleanup process and other WGA/geocaching items that can be used as prizes or handouts to the attendees.

In 2018, I agreed to adopt the local 12th Annual Appleton Park CITO event from S|S. This is an event that was great fun in the past and had numbers of attendees in some years of 50-100 people. In late April that year, 24″ of snow dumped on Appleton and the event was postponed until the second weekend in May. That was a real killer to our numbers! We only totaled 7 CITO volunteers that year. It would be great to see this event back in full swing again someday!

Maybe something like partnering up with a business or an agency (DNR) in hopes that our efforts could gain us some benefits in the partnership, might make a good WGA hosted CITO event suggestion?

[awhip80]

The WGA SPS caches are some of our family favorites. Every summer we plan multiple camping trips to state parks, with one of the goals of our stay to find the WGA’s cache that is in this series. We are currently at the halfway mark in the series and surely will work on more this summer.

The question is worded, by asking if we would be in favor of updating the hide where possible for hopes of starting a new series. I would have to say that I am not in favor of updating the caches in the series to start a new series. For those of us that have not collected all 47 SP finds, a move such as that would be disappointing. Do some of the cache containers and there contents need freshening up, because there is a lack of frequent owner visit? Yes, some could use some TLC.

I would not be opposed to a completely new series, but only after some of the issues with the current game are cleaned up. The game on the WGA’s website needs to be updated. The map of the state park caches does not work properly. Our number of SP finds is stuck at 2, when we currently actually sit at 24 finds. Is there a designee for administration of the game? So, my vote would be to improve the current game and keep it going before initiating another.

[awhip80]

Great question! In my opinion, in the broad scheme of things; communication between the WGA and its membership needs improvement. Please don’t get me wrong here. It seems that there has been some improvement in different avenues of communication recently, but more can and should be done.

We have heard much talk of using social media to promote what the WGA can bring to the membership. And, I do agree that using social media is very important in spreading the word, but do not believe this is where we should hang our hats. There can be numerous issues in relying upon 3rd party applications to carry the business of the organization. As an example, just look at what is currently happening with Parlor. Who’s to say that this can’t happen with Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform in the future? Another issue with social media is that there is bound to be a pretty decent percentage of members that just do not have any type of social media account for a wide variety of reasons.

I think we have all realized that good communication using strictly the WGA website is probably a thing of the past. The website is a great place to visit to get a few tools and some information about the WGA. It is also a good spot for the administration of the few games that seem to be operable on the site. But, as far as passing along information in the forums, it is cumbersome at best. As an example, even when I want to review current posts made in the candidates corner it takes some time to look down the list to see which one has the least amount of time since the last post in it. To me, it would be much simpler if the thread that had the latest post would automatically move to the top of the thread list, unless of course a thread was pinned to the top of the forum page (e.i. Rules of Candidates Corner). The other thing that we must think about is that not all of our members have a computer and internet connections within their home. More and more are relying on the smartphones for this convenience and the website is not the most mobile friendly for use.

So, implementing change to me would mean putting the WGA into the hands of more of its members. And that means into the one thing that nearly everyone carries around with them all of the time; their smartphone. Yes, I would love to see an app created for the WGA that everyone in Wisconsin and around the world could use in the blink of an eye to do nearly anything that is currently offered on the WGA website. I truthfully have no idea what something like this may cost, but obviously it is definitely going to take a much deeper fundraising campaign than what is currently being done. Until the time a WGA app is attainable, why not use a mass text alert to send out to the membership? These alerts could be used as reminders of events and such that are already posted on the website. This also would take some great effort in gaining and storing the data necessary to put out text notifications, but if we start by asking for that information from the members (at their choice of course) on the website and/or at events held by the WGA, I think we can start reaching more members. And, hopefully, the participation of the membership would begin to climb.

[awhip80]

First, being able to listen and understand many perspectives. It is very likely, that if there are 9 persons sitting on a board of directors, there could nine slightly different viewpoints on the subject matter. Working through differences and coming up with new solutions will be important to move the organization ahead.

Being a great communicator. This does not necessarily mean the person that is the most boisterous or the one who loves to talk all the time. The word needs to get out and be understood by many to understand. And much of the time this does not mean that the person that is willing to jump out there in social media land first is the best choice. Someone that can choose their words carefully and with great meaning can be inspiration to many.

Being a giving and generous person. Someone that is willing to step up and volunteer is very important to the everyday activity in the organization. If everyone does not fulfill their responsibility within the organization, it will begin to falter.

[awhip80]

I am running for the board to serve the members of the statewide organization, with hopes that it will prosper and grow from the position it is in now. I have always enjoyed being an active member within organizations and hobbies that I am passionate about. A few years ago, I was on the WGA BOD election’s ballet and didn’t quite make it onto the BOD. I have have been asked since, if I would be interested in a nomination. Last year I simply could not except a nomination because my work had taken me out-of-state for a number of months a I felt that I would not be able to fulfill my duties. Recently, when I was asked, I knew this would be a great year to except a nomination. Work for me is more localized now and the kid’s activity levels and needs have calmed some. If elected, I look forward to serving the membership and improving on what is already a great organization!

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