[Team Deejay]

@K0rpl wrote:

Wild Parsnip…

Leaves Blisters that looked like Baked Beans under the Skin. It is a Phytophototoxin. The urea of the Plan needs to contact your skin, and when it is exposed to Light, it takes effect, and that is when the Burn happens… I have had it. it sucks…

Me too. Makes poison ivy look like nothing. It is very common in the southern part of the state. The good news is that usually you need to break a leaf or stem to get the burn, unless you are really sensitive to it.

[Team Deejay]

Well, I’m one of those omnivorous geocachers. I find all types when they are “in my way”. I will say, however, that the trips I enjoy the most are those that involve a short (1-5 miles) hike in a forest or prairie. If I can find 3 or 4 without having to return to the car, that is even better. Being located close to both the KMSF and Bong RA, I have lots of places to do this sort of caching.

But, to be honest, any sort of geocaching makes me happy. Now that I have procured some snowshoes, even the deep snow doesn’t bother me. Now, if I could just convince people not to hide micros on the ground….

[Team Deejay]

@marc_54140 wrote:

@Team Hemisphere Dancer wrote:

@marc_54140 wrote:

But ……….

EACH member of a Team gets to vote. Husband and wife? Each needs to have a separate registration with the WGA, and then each can vote.

Does Sheila have and account?

Hmmm…. Never thought of that! How about MacKenzie as well?

Remember, vote early and vote often!

Anyone remember when Marc changed his last name from “Blagojavich?”

[Team Deejay]

Umm, I already announced the prize for January. Want to make the stick for February?

[Team Deejay]

1. WGA sponsored social events in all corners of the state. Note that not all events have to be a big production to be fun and enjoyable. I think Alex’s event this weekend probably cost, oh, around $0 other than the door prizes. (I won a match container, yea!) Of course, we might need to define just what “sponsored” means, but the publicity would be golden.
2. WGA sponsored “Learn to Geocache” events held at libraries/schools in all major population centers on an annual basis. (What pop centers? SE Wisconsin, Madison, Green Bay/Fox Cities, Wausau, Eau Claire, LaCrosse, maybe Hudson/Menomonee and Hayward/Rhinelander (yes, I know they aren’t that close together))
3. A “lending library” of popular geocache models, so that people in the market for a new unit can try out different models before buying.
4. Free beer (Oh wait, they only said 3. Darn.)

Maybe I don’t dream big enough, as 1 and 2 seem achievable to me.

[Team Deejay]

Further clarification – you can only vote for each candidate once. No “American Idol” style ballot box stuffing allowed.

[Team Deejay]

But don’t we need the guns for the snipe hunting? I’ve heard that the snipes in Calumet County are really big.

[Team Deejay]

Wow, this set of questions is kind of surprising, especially the third one.

1. I’ve never been very good at self-promoting, so I’ll just say that my goal is to make geocaching in Wisconsin as good as it can be, and I’m willing to put in the time to make that happen.

2. I think I would vote for Ralph Edwards/Zuma if I only had one vote. He has made significant contributions during his past tenure on the board and has demonstrated competence, temperance, and diplomacy in his posts to the forum.

3. This was the surprising part. I’m not sure there is a huge movement away from the WGA. If you are referring to the logo “discussion”, I think I spoke with all the disgruntled parties and no one seemed to be what I would call disgruntled. People can disagree with a board decision without being ready to jump ship. What I did find was a lot of people who are emotionally invested in the game and deeply care about what happens with the WGA. If that is disgruntled, we can use a bunch more of them.

On the other hand, I do know several people who have grown tired of geocaching. These folks don’t like the way the game has evolved (micros, puzzles, guardrail/lamppost hides, flash mob events, number runs, etc.) and choose to do something else with their leisure time. I think all we can do here is try to place good caches and events for people to find. Maybe they will come back, maybe not, but at least we reduce the number of people who follow the same path.

[Team Deejay]

Man, I thought I was slow passing out prizes…

[Team Deejay]

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.

[Team Deejay]

In my case, I look to serve as a way to give back to the sport. Like many of our numbers, geocaching gave me the motivation to get out of the house and out into the woods, prairies and marshes. Prior to finding the geocaching, I only rarely had reason to visit parks or otherwise get out and explore. The game opened up a whole new world to me that I was apparently just ignoring. It also was just the right activity to share with my wife, instead of us often going our separate ways on the weekends. I feel like I’ve gotten so much from the game that I should give back when the opportunity presents itself.

[Team Deejay]

Many will remember the angst that we went through with the institution of a permit process at Milwaukee County Parks. During that time, I spent a large amount of time communicating with park personnel, hoping to get some changes to their process and keeping them informed of all the new caches being placed while the policy was being formalized. They did make some (but not all) of the requested changes, and I think we ended up with a reasonable permit policy that we can live with. Latest reports are that the permits are processed and returned fairly quickly, and I am only aware of one case where a permit was rejected (due to the cache being placed in a sensitive area).

I’m also in fairly regularly contact with the head naturalist at the DNR to manage earthcache placements in SNAs under the new policy. I will say that I have found Mr. Meyer to be a quite reasonable person, who seems to be open to further use of these areas in the future.

As I said in an earlier post, I also make it a point of stopping by park headquarters when I visit state parks. This is actually something we all can do. Most of these guys like to meet the folks visiting their parks and when we let them know that a lot of geocachers are visiting, they are much more likely to keep their parks “geocacher friendly”.

I’ve had some smaller contacts with Waukesha County Parks and Town of Brookfield parks, with Renee taking the lead on these situations. These contacts were related to those departments considering implementing a geocaching policy for their parks.

Finally, I have had the opportunity as a reviewer of dealing with park personnel who find caches placed without permission in areas where they are not wanted. Surprisingly, these people are usually still reasonable, looking to have a cache moved, rather than trying to ban them altogether.

[Team Deejay]

We only log caches where we meet all the requirements, including ALRs, find all the stages, and sign the logs. I’m not a big fan of these ALRs, but now that they are all given the mystery designation, I guess they are ok.

[Team Deejay]

I try to build a consensus by encouraging discussions between all the affected people. Sometimes people will just not understand someone else’s point of view unless they actually hear it “from the horse’s mouth.” Once people get an understanding for the other people’s points of view, it is much easier to achieve a compromise solution that will make all the parties happy (or at least less unhappy).

I also have a philosophy taught to me by one of my early bosses, which he summarized in one phrase:

“The question is not “Who is right?”; the question is “What is right?””

If you can convince people to leave their personal issues at the door and consider what is best for the organization as a whole, managing from conflict to compromise becomes much more likely. Of course, sometimes you cannot convince everyone and decisions will come down to a vote. But organizations who can keep those “voting” situations to a minimum will have usually have better results.

[Team Deejay]

OK, sign me up, Brian. I’ll take the shelter duty. Can I pre-run the snowshoe course before the event?

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