I'm Trying To Understand Rules On Event Caches

[+PNWWizard]

I'm organizing an event cache with the help of a half-dozen dedicated cachers in my area. The guidelines say [/i]While a music concert, a garage sale, a ham radio field day or town’s fireworks display might be of interest to a large percentage of geocachers, such events are not suitable for submission as event caches because the organizers and the primary attendees are not geocachers.

 

I'm wondering why this rule exists. I can have an event cache at a coffee shop or pizza parlor, where the primary attendees are not cachers, but not at a festival where the primary attendees are not cachers. I'm not trying to start a flame war, or be argumentative just for the fun of it, I really want to understand!

 

As you may have guessed, my event is part of a large community festival dedicated to art, science, & technology: a great venue for a geocaching event! In accordance with the guidelines, I was turned down by the reviewer. So, why this rule???

[+El Diablo]

It's my opinion that the spirit of the rule is that events should focus on the subject of caching or geocachers. Thee event should not be a small part of a larger event such as the one you are talking about.

 

It would be like me holding an event at my daughters wedding, or graduation, or a event at a concert. So basically an event should be focused soley on the subject of caching or cachers.

 

El Diablo

Edited May 7, 2005 by El Diablo

[+The Leprechauns]

El Diablo accurately summarizes the rules as they existed prior to February of this year. They've changed a bit, so have a read of the event cache guidelines.

 

The rule makes sense to me. Geocaching.com wants to promote events that are organized BY geocachers and FOR geocachers (regardless of what they're about). Without that limitation, every apple festival, school science fair and fireman's carnival would get submitted as an event cache.

[+PNWWizard]

Ok, but my event is being set up BY geocachers FOR geocachers! Just because there's a festival going on, why can't geocachers hold an event? I guess that's what I don't understand. Like the pizza parlor example, the pizza parlor exists for anyone to come have a pizza, and the festival is for anyone to come enjoy the festival. Why can't there be an event dedicated to geocaching organized by geocachers during the festival? If I organize the event again next year, but just don't mention the festival would it be approved?

 

Holding a geocaching event at something like a wedding is different. We plan to have an event just for geocachers. We'll still have the event, the geocachers just won't be able to log it as a find.

 

I understand that just any old gathering of folks, a few of which are geocachers isn't an event. But it seems to me that what we're doing is a valid event!

 

Or am I just not getting it???

[+Isonzo Karst]

I can have an event cache at a coffee shop or pizza parlor, where the primary attendees are not cachers, but not at a festival where the primary attendees are not cachers.

 

Apples and oranges. You can hold an event in a restaurant by booking a group of tables, side of the room or special room. I've seen an event in a pool hall (a nice pool hall), but to hold a event as a sub-set of some OTHER event....no.

It's a rule that DOES make sense. As the Leprechauns said, "Without that limitation, every apple festival, school science fair and fireman's carnival would get submitted as an event cache."

[peter]

I've usually been in agreement with the guidelines, but share PNWWizard's feeling that this one is unnecessarily restrictive.

 

Sure, you don't want someone holding an Event Cache as a sneaky way to get greater attendance at their garage sale, but many communities hold festivals where local organizations are invited to set up separate booths where their members get together and also interact with members of the public who might be interested in their activity.

 

Although the overall event isn't organized by geocachers, that particular booth would be manned and organized by cachers and the people stopping at that booth would primarily be other cachers and people who want to learn about the activity. Seems like an excellent way for local cachers to get together and also introduce the hobby to others in the area.

 

Obviously local caching groups can participate in these festivals without listing it as an Event Cache, but that makes it much less likely that nearby cachers will learn about and come by to participate in the event.

[+PNWWizard]

I've usually been in agreement with the guidelines, but share PNWWizard's feeling that this one is unnecessarily restrictive.

 

Sure, you don't want someone holding an Event Cache as a sneaky way to get greater attendance at their garage sale, but many communities hold festivals where local organizations are invited to set up separate booths where their members get together and also interact with members of the public who might be interested in their activity.

 

Although the overall event isn't organized by geocachers, that particular booth would be manned and organized by cachers and the people stopping at that booth would primarily be other cachers and people who want to learn about the activity. Seems like an excellent way for local cachers to get together and also introduce the hobby to others in the area.

 

Obviously local caching groups can participate in these festivals without listing it as an Event Cache, but that makes it much less likely that nearby cachers will learn about and come by to participate in the event.

 

Thank you, you said it more clearly than I! No, I don't think everyone attending the festival should log a find, but those registering at the geocaching booth (which will be staffed by cachers) for the event (which is a contest of finding temp caches) should be able to log it.

Edited May 8, 2005 by PNWWizard

[+Team Perks]

No, I don't think everyone attending the festival should log a find, but those registering at the geocaching booth (which will be staffed by cachers) for the event (which is a contest of finding temp caches) should be able to log it.

If the only "event" is the registration booth, and then everyone parts their separate ways, that doesn't sound much like an event to me.

 

I attended an event cache tonight. The "event" was to watch a film screening. Now, normally that wouldn't fly; however, in this case, the screening was for a film about geocaching and was put together by geocachers. Ergo, it meets the guidelines.

 

If I were to ascribe to your argument, then I could very well go and watch the new Star Wars movie with my caching buddies and call it an event. Tell me how that relates to caching?

[+tabulator32]

While a music concert, a garage sale, a ham radio field day or town’s fireworks display might be of interest to a large percentage of geocachers, such events are not suitable for submission as event caches because the organizers and the primary attendees are not geocachers.

 

So, why this rule???

I think it has to do with the interaction between the participants. When you go to a true geocaching event, everyone you talk to will be a geocacher (or friend or relative of a geocacher) and they will understand the conversation, the lingo, and the inspiration to want to be there.

 

When you go to a music concert, a garage sale, a ham radio field day or town's fireworks display not all of the participants will be interested or even aware of geocaching. It would be easy to get off track and lose the intended social experience of having everyone around you with a good geocaching experience to talk about or share.

 

When I'm at a concert, I'm all about the band. When I go to a garage sale, I'm there to check it out and I'm there about five minutes tops. As a ham radio operator, I could see a bunch of hams easlily getting side-tracked discussing their new rigs or how far they got with them, or scheduling the next test of the cities early warning system, or the oh-so-many things hams do. Town firework's display? The whole town would be there and that would definitely dilute the geocacher/muggle ratio.

 

When you have a barbeque or a rent a room at a pizza joint, you get geocacher saturation and people who can talk geocaching, hiking, GPS, family fun, cache ideas, preparedness, and other related geotopics.

 

I agree with the intended purpose of the rule.

 

[+PNWWizard]

If I were to ascribe to your argument, then I could very well go and watch the new Star Wars movie with my caching buddies and call it an event. Tell me how that relates to caching?

I agree that going to a Star Wars movie has nothing to do with caching, but our event is about going caching. We meet at the booth, find the caches in teams, then re-group at the booth again to get prizes that Garmin sent us and discuss the event, caching, hiking, etc. Seems like it's pretty much dedicated to caching to me!

[+Team Perks]

I agree that going to a Star Wars movie has nothing to do with caching, but our event is about going caching.  We meet at the booth, find the caches in teams, then re-group at the booth again to get prizes that Garmin sent us and discuss the event,  caching, hiking, etc.  Seems like it's pretty much dedicated to caching to me!

In that case:

 

In addition, an event cache should not be set up for the sole purpose of drawing together cachers for an organized hunt of another cache or caches. Such group hunts are best organized using the forums or an email distribution list.

[+TeamK-9]

Honestly, I don't think you're going to get much sympathy from many people here. My local group recently had their CITO event denied, because we were trying to piggy-back it off of a local highway cleanup group's already scheduled cleanup event. It got turned down because of that, and because it wasn't submitted far enough in advance. But no real hard feelings were felt towards the approver.

 

The other thing here is that you're not actually sharing your idea.

 

The only person here who probably knows anything about your proposed event is the approvers, one or two of which have already posted here with their opinions and the section of the rules regarding event caches.

 

You keep sort of hinting at your event, but you're not actually coming right out and saying what it is.

 

Why don't you explain the idea of your event, and maybe some of us can try and help you with your specific problem.

 

From what you've already said, it sounds like a local geocaching group is setting up a table at some kind of festival or event? You could always just post the info on the group's web page, inviting people to come and visit...

 

It also sounds like you're making some kind of competition with prizes on the day of the festival where you have your booth.

 

Wouldn't it be more fun to have a more organized event, only for geocachers, where you guys could pretty much have the park to yourself, instead of sharing it with several thousand others?

[+EleriandBlade]

I had a response, and then it became an IDEA, so I'm going to make a new thread...

[+Metaphor]

If I were to ascribe to your argument, then I could very well go and watch the new Star Wars movie with my caching buddies and call it an event. Tell me how that relates to caching?

 

Well, see, Luke Skywalker and the rebel forces had an event scheduled on the hidden planet, and Darth Vader had to get the coordinates to find said planet to go to the event. Unfortunately, because Darth Vader wasn't invited to the Geo-event because of something he said in the Galactic forum, he turned cache pirate and tried to blow up the cache, umm, planet...

 

In all seriousness, hold the event as you wish, and announce it on your local site's forums. Attendees won't get a smilie, but if that's all they are coming for, you wouldn't want them anyway. Schedule enough of a group cache or temporary cache search and have fun with it...

[+Hemlock]

From the submitted cache page:

July 15, 16 & 17 Corvallis Oregon will hold its annual da Vinci Days Festival: a celebration of art, science, and technology. The geocaching event will be held on Sunday, July 17 from 10:00 - 4:00.

...

This event is being sponsored by: Corvallis da Vinci Days, Peak Sports, Corvallis Custom Kitchens & Baths

I just followed all of those links and I don't see geocaching mentioned anywhere, so I fail to see how this is a geocaching event

[+TeamK-9]

From the submitted cache page:

July 15, 16 & 17 Corvallis Oregon will hold its annual da Vinci Days Festival: a celebration of art, science, and technology. The geocaching event will be held on Sunday, July 17 from 10:00 - 4:00.

...

This event is being sponsored by: Corvallis da Vinci Days, Peak Sports, Corvallis Custom Kitchens & Baths

I just followed all of those links and I don't see geocaching mentioned anywhere, so I fail to see how this is a geocaching event

And by Hemlock's posting of a piece of the cache page, he's showing another reason that you're event probably isn't being approved.

 

The line "This Event is being sponsored by..." technically turns it into a commercial cache...

[+Hemlock]

I was wondering if anyone would catch that

[+TeamK-9]

The line "This Event is being sponsored by..." technically turns it into a commercial cache...

And as anyone, who takes the time to read the cache guidelines, specifically this section about commercial caches, knows that "Commercial caches attempt to use the Geocaching.com web site cache reporting tool directly or indirectly (intentionally or non-intentionally) to solicit customers through a Geocaching.com listing. These are NOT permitted."

 

And by posting links to "sponsors" you are (intentionally or non-intentionally) soliciting customers through a Geocaching.com listing...

 

Edit: I specifically like the capitilization of the word "NOT" throughout the listing guidelines. Specifically relating to stuff like Commercial caches that are NOT permitted.

Edited May 9, 2005 by TeamK-9

[+Renegade Knight]

I have to go with peter on this one. A community wide event is too large of an event to not have sub events that are the main focus. This isn't a Ham radio event in a single area. It's a comunity event with focal areas. It's like day three of the now defunct Boise River Festival, you can have a rock concert, the Parade, the Fly fishing clinic and so on.

 

Geocaching is Door #3 and most likely the entire focus of everone who shows up. The larger event just gives them a larger potential audience.

 

As an aside Garmin sponsors events. They supply prizes for some events. Anyone is entitled to supply prizes. What's Garmin get out of it? Advertising. Same as any other business. If these businesses merely paid for a cache page link that's different. Commercial in cache events is arleady an established practice. The only question is where to draw the line.

 

Looking at the three links. The first is the larger community event it brings more people in who can be shown geocaching. The second is sporting goods. Never met a cacher who didn't talk hydration packs and equipment. The last...I'd like to see the tie in, maybe they did donate prizes, or fund the event itself. These things are not cheap and the demise of some events arleady is a testament to that.

Edited May 10, 2005 by Renegade Knight

[peter]

This event is being sponsored by: Corvallis da Vinci Days, ...

I just followed all of those links and I don't see geocaching mentioned anywhere, so I fail to see how this is a geocaching event

I clicked on the first one and that led to:

http://www.davinci-days.org/festival_2005.php where one of the activities listed is geocaching with a link back to geocaching.com.

 

As for the commercial aspect, I'd note that any pizza parlor where there's an Event Cache benefits financially both immediately and by bringing in new potential customers. If they give a discount to participants in the event does that make them a sponsor and violate the guidelines? I wouldn't think so.

 

I thought the purpose of calling them "guidelines" rather than "rules" was to allow some discretion based on the particular nature of a specific event. So things like weddings, garage sales, ham fests can still be eliminated while allowing this type of community festival with a significant geocaching-specific "event within an event" to be listed.

[+fly46]

Think of it this way.

You hold a party. I don't care what kind of party.. Uncle Loyd's 50th anniversary. Whatever. Your nephew shows up - along with six frat buddies from college. He decided to use your party for Uncle Loyd to have a get together with the frat boys that he hasn't seen since graduation. Hence, not a good idea for the nephew.

 

So here's this organizer holding a large event. Geocacher X decides that this is a good place to have his own friendly get together on the side - piggy backing off of their rental for the land, stuff to do, free midway games, etc... Hence, not a good idea for the cacher.

[peter]

Think of it this way.

You hold a party. I don't care what kind of party.. Uncle Loyd's 50th anniversary. Whatever. Your nephew shows up - along with six frat buddies from college. He decided to use your party for Uncle Loyd to have a get together with the frat boys that he hasn't seen since graduation. Hence, not a good idea for the nephew.

 

So here's this organizer holding a large event. Geocacher X decides that this is a good place to have his own friendly get together on the side - piggy backing off of their rental for the land, stuff to do, free midway games, etc... Hence, not a good idea for the cacher.

Bad analogy since in this case a main goal of the community festival is to highlight various community organizations and the organizers actively seek their participation. As I pointed out, their page describing the overall festival already lists geocaching as one of the activities - it's clearly being planned with their cooperation and support.

 

If you want a fraternity analogy it's more like the university sponsoring an overall rush week for the fraternities/sororities and as part of that each individual Greek house is having its own events. The university provides publicity, some introductory events, and space on campus. But most of the displays, information, and activities are done by the individual houses with the audience being both the current members and prospective new members. The university is the official organizer, but each house is still having its own event.

[+JMBella]

This thread has a LOT of bad analogies. That being said, the OP made a few mistakes when listing his event cache the least of which was saying it was in conjunction with another event.

 

It's closer to someone holding a cache event in a park that just happens to have a car show going on the same day. There's no correlation between the two but if geocachers want to go look at some old cars they can. Likewise, there should be no mention that there is any correlation between the cache event and the festival but, if cachers want to enjoy the festival that just happens to be going on in the same park at the same time, they can.

 

If I organize the event again next year, but just don't mention the festival would it be approved?

 

As long as you follow the guidelines, I can't imagine it wouldn't be approved.

[+Divine]

One of the weirdest 'events' I've seen is certain geocacher's change of residence. AFAIK, it wasn't approved before the owner offered an option to attend the event once the actual transferring of stuff had ended.

[peter]

It's closer to someone holding a cache event in a park that just happens to have a car show going on the same day. There's no correlation between the two but if geocachers want to go look at some old cars they can.

Clearly there is a connection between the festival and the geocaching activities since the festival description explicitly lists geocaching as one of the attractions. Both you and Fly46 seem to be trying to paint this as the geocachers crashing someone else's party when in fact community festivals actively seek organizations to participate and run their own activities as part of the overall event.

 

I don't know specifically what's planned for this event, but rather than 'looking at some old cars' I'd expect the people visiting the geocache area at this festival to do the types of activities I've seen at other Event Caches - exchange some travel bugs, check out each other's latest GPS toys, look for some temporary caches placed at the event, and general chit-chat about caching and related (or non-related) topics. The only significant difference I see is that there will also be people stopping by who are not yet geocachers but are interested in finding out about it.

[+JMBella]

It's closer to someone holding a cache event in a park that just happens to have a car show going on the same day.  There's no correlation between the two but if geocachers want to go look at some old cars they can.

Clearly there is a connection between the festival and the geocaching activities since the festival description explicitly lists geocaching as one of the attractions. Both you and Fly46 seem to be trying to paint this as the geocachers crashing someone else's party when in fact community festivals actively seek organizations to participate and run their own activities as part of the overall event.

 

I don't know specifically what's planned for this event, but rather than 'looking at some old cars' I'd expect the people visiting the geocache area at this festival to do the types of activities I've seen at other Event Caches - exchange some travel bugs, check out each other's latest GPS toys, look for some temporary caches placed at the event, and general chit-chat about caching and related (or non-related) topics. The only significant difference I see is that there will also be people stopping by who are not yet geocachers but are interested in finding out about it.

Actually, you misunderstood me a bit. It had nothing to do with cachers crashing someone else’s party. All I'm saying is that just because there is another event happening the same day doesn't mean the cache event shouldn't be approved. As long as the cache event has all of the necessary elements, than I don't see the issue. If the cache event can stand on it's own without the concurring festival, then all the event planner did wrong was tie it in with the festival. The first purpose of the event is to get cachers together to talk about caching. Subsequently they'll have non cachers from the festival visiting the cache event. Does that make the cache event null and void?