Newsletter Contents

[Medawisla]

My point is that there probably are some resources among the membership that are being untapped. Maybe an occassional bio is the answer, not to recognize Geo-milestones, but to add some informational background to the cachers statistics. I don't have the time to attend all the events so some of you are just faces to me when in reality you're real people with real careers and lifestyles. The bio's in our individual listings offer little so my impressions are based largely on the logs, some which are very helpful, some which are funny, and a lot that are more or less personal chit chat between cachers.

So my suggestion is to look at our players and spend a little time each month with bio info. By way of example, gob-ler, our caching king here in Maine is not only a techo wizard but a minister, hunter and who knows what else, but certainly an interesting character to whom I think both new and existing members would enjoy learning more about.

Dubord, thanks a lot for clarifying! Isn't it funny how the way you type can be totally different than the way someone reads. I'd like to emphasize that our community is full of diverse cachers with backgrounds that could lend to our community in lots of great ways. I would love to help share these backgrounds for whatever comes of the sharing.

I agree it is great to feel involved, and I think there are many of us who feel involvement is better when it's organized or structured. Leaders can collaborate with others who have skills for a certain project. This makes more sense to me than having cachers with skills, other than leading, trying to lead the projects they're interested in. (Though I am also a firm believer that everyone can become a leader; we each have our own styles of leading, but we can all do it with practice.) And then there are many others of us who feel we should be as unstructured as possible to allow as much freedom as possible. There are some who think our community could be improved with more involvement, more structure, more outreach, but there are some who think we shouldn't fix what's not broken. I hope the discussion continues to comb out:
what freedoms do we really want? what about structure would stiffle those freedoms? how do we to implement improvements without stiffling freedoms?
and to find balance and increase commodary.

In the mean time, I love the idea of sharing our backgrounds through little bios in the Newsletter, or even better: creating a bios thread that would be contributed to monthly (or whenever) and then in the Newsletter I could introduce the latest post with the link to the thread. Would that capture your idea? What does everyone else think?

[darterkitfox]

First off, if you decide to start publishing numbers, leave my name out. I could have more caches than 90% of you if I chose to. This Sunday, I did the 9/11 tribute at the top of Mt Washington. I could have done 25 guardrails instead. Numbers mean nothing to me and I don't want anyone judging me from them.

Something of interest to put in the newsletter would a little more description and experience of a cache site. I have seen in the forums someone mentioning they had quite a story about a cache but it always leads to it just being an inside joke among a couple members. Lately there has been mention about some mountain caches done while 4 wheeling or getting a cache that was archived and turning out to be not the cache. I would like to hear more. We did a cache just up the hill over the bridge from Wiscasset. It is a large meadow with mowed walking trails. There were wildflowers, butterflies, no other people around, and my dog could go lose. If someone has a place that is extra special, I would like to know so I could plan accordingly.

[Medawisla]

Something of interest to put in the newsletter would a little more description and experience of a cache site. I have seen in the forums someone mentioning they had quite a story about a cache but it always leads to it just being an inside joke among a couple members. Lately there has been mention about some mountain caches done while 4 wheeling or getting a cache that was archived and turning out to be not the cache. I would like to hear more. We did a cache just up the hill over the bridge from Wiscasset. It is a large meadow with mowed walking trails. There were wildflowers, butterflies, no other people around, and my dog could go lose. If someone has a place that is extra special, I would like to know so I could plan accordingly.

I like the idea of highlighting special cache locations! Hopefully I'll get that in a newsletter very soon.

[hollora]

I like the idea of highlighting special cache locations! Hopefully I'll get that in a newsletter very soon.

Medawisla - what about that Fort Cache the day we all went to Vinalhaven - that was very cool ~ even though I had to huff and puff on the way back as it was more than the stated 1/3 mile, LOL. I would also be willing to write you up something about the cache on the far side of Vinalhaven.

[Medawisla]

Medawisla - what about that Fort Cache the day we all went to Vinalhaven - that was very cool ~ even though I had to huff and puff on the way back as it was more than the stated 1/3 mile, LOL. I would also be willing to write you up something about the cache on the far side of Vinalhaven.

Awesome! I need all the material I can get.
DKF, feel free to PM me info or for my email if that's easier.

[brdad]

Darterkitfox - lead by example. That is one of the reasons the articles sections exists.

If you had a good cache experience, write an article about it, include some pictures and a link to the cache page. I'd love to see more of these stories.

I am not so much of a story writer, but I did enjoy posting the articles I have posted. I think they are informative and hopefully help. I'd probably make another one if I was given an idea what people needed help with.

I would rather see these stories posted as an article and then mentioned in the newsletter than to just have it in the newsletter. When the board worked out the details of the newsletter, we wanted to keep it as straightforward and unbiased as possible. If a story were posted only in the newsletter, someone may wonder why their cache hasn't been featured.

[Medawisla]

I would rather see these stories posted as an article and then mentioned in the newsletter than to just have it in the newsletter. When the board worked out the details of the newsletter, we wanted to keep it as straightforward and unbiased as possible. If a story were posted only in the newsletter, someone may wonder why their cache hasn't been featured.

More importantly, by having the article, we can come back to it time and again, the newsletter is just a blimp that particular month and then gone (well it is in the newsletter thread, but com'on we all know we'd rather read the articles thread!)

[hollora]

And we all need to remember all people do not feel comfortable writing.

[WhereRWe?]

I for one have always tried to get the members involved in this site. The organizational structure is loose so that the members can contribute as they want.
As with many forums, there will be a high number who just read and never contribute to any conversations.

For the benefit of the newcomers, I'd like to comment that the subject of the organization of "GeocachingMaine' was beaten to death a couple of years ago after another group of geocachers formed "The Maine Geocaching Association". The majority of our members wanted no dues or formal organization. A group of the "old timers" met and hashed out a plan: an informal "Advisory Committee" to make crucial DECISIONS on website content, geocoin selection, etc. Their opinions would take not priority, but they would decide to end debate on a subject, tally the votes, and supervise the action, etc.

To reiterate what BRDAD has said, we are NOT a formal organization. We are a group of people with like interests. We have an Advisory Committee (Made up of myself, BRDAD, TAT, ATtroll and Sudonim) elected by the members (former Advisory Committee members were Beach Comber and Haffy, who dropped out for personal reasons). We are not "officers" of the organization. Some people have complained "What do you do". The proper answer is "What would you like us to do?".

Again, we have no dues and no financial organization. All costs for the website are born by Rick (ATtroll), with occasional pass-the-hat collections to help him out.

[WhereRWe?]

In the mean time, I love the idea of sharing our backgrounds through little bios in the Newsletter, or even better: creating a bios thread that would be contributed to monthly (or whenever) and then in the Newsletter I could introduce the latest post with the link to the thread. Would that capture your idea? What does everyone else think?

Sorry, Medawookie. I don't like this idea. This site is for ALL geocachers. I don't want someone to feel left out because their bio will never be included because they're "not interesting".

I like mentioning milestones because everyone likes having a feeling of accomplishment. But there's no reason to keep mentioning the "big numbers" cachers over and over. Perhaps the Advisory Committee should encourage keeping milestone mentions to a minimum - perhaps at set milestones such as 100, 500, 1000 caches.

As for biographies - who decides who gets a mention in the newsletter/forums? What criteria do we use to decide? We have a LOT of interesting members. Someone would get left out or feelings hurt because they were not profiled.