Gauging interest in a possible event. Please vote!

[dcwalker30]

I'm gauging interest in a possible event. Saint Aubie and I were discussing the idea of hosting an Arkansas Geocacher Awards event. There would be a nomination period and a voting period for categories like "Best Camo", "Best Puzzle" and "Best Log". Arkansas cachers would select the winners through a private voting process and the winners would be recognized at a potentially annual event. Let me know if we should continue our planning by voting Yay or Nay. Thanks for your time!

[thefab5willisclan]

I think this is an awesome idea!

[jclaudii]

I think it is a pretty neat idea,

[J1mmykay]

I think any time all Ark. cachers can get togther is great

[Spice]

I think this could be done in conjunction with the "Annual Meeting" event. I think the hard part would be working out the rules and details. ArkGeo members only eligible?? I think only ArkGeo members should be allowed to vote. I think that the voting system used to hold the elections could be used to allow ArkGeo members to vote on the different categories.

[dcwalker30]

If ArkGeo wants to sponsor the event and pay for all the trophies/trackables, then I'd be more than willing to make it Members Only voting! However, I'd like to make it as inclusive as possible and not rule anyone out from the voting process just because they haven't placed membership on the boards. So far, there's been a very SMALL response to this poll. The poll is meant to be a test to see what kind of response we could expect for the voting. Right now that's looking very dim. 7 total votes here and 7 on the Facebook page (possible duplicates). With ~10 voters, that wouldn't be much of an awards ceremony. I'd love to make this event happen, but I'd need to be sure that we could get a large enough nomination and voting turnout to make it worth it. If we started voting today. Someone could win with 2 votes, and that's no fun!

[dcwalker30]

Oh, but I like the idea of doing it in conjunction with a larger event. That could solve a lot of the "when and where" questions I have, as well as making sure there's plenty of people there to recognize the accomplishments of their fellow cachers.

[ronwhite]

As a Board member the problem I have with it is what happens if you miss someone's accomplishment and they start talking and wondering why they didn't get an award. Pretty sure due to this one problem the Board would probably shy away from taking this on. That's just me speaking up, I might be surprised - but don't think so. Probably be better off keeping this outside of ArkGeo.

[thefab5willisclan]

There should be a nomination round where we send in our favorites. Then narrow it down to the top few: More than one nomination or just use some sort of grading system. How many favorite points does it have etc. Maybe use a panel of judges to narrow it down.

[thefab5willisclan]

The actual voting could be at the event, there would be more people vote that way. Not many vote on here for anything.

[ronwhite]

Oh, by the way, I'm all for this and have voted as such! Just not as a ArkGeo event. Wanted that to be noted.

[Saint Aubie]

Our peers in Houston have done awards for a while. When dcwalker30 brought it up to me, I remembered running across the award banner on a couple of caches. I actually used their awards to help me plan a caching day. It was pretty awesome as a visitor to the area to have some local advice available through their awards.

I would suggest this info as a starting place for a how-to:

http://hgcs.org/index.php?/topic/7111-2011-houston-geocaching-awards-categories-and-information/

Also, I had suggested to dcwalker30 that maybe we should also have a Cache Hall of Fame to go along with the yearly awards. We could even use the favorite points as criteria, e.g. if a cache has at least X favorite points, or has at least 5 premium member finds and a favorite point ratio of XX%, it is entered in the HOF.

[TnT]

This used to be done in San Antonio too. The problem with trying to do it statewide is that not many people from Little Rock are familiar with the caches that have been placed in Rogers and vice versa. I would suggest you do it on your own area and see how that goes.

[Saint Aubie]

TnT, I think I agree. I'm not sure how you could expect the average cacher to know all the caches in the state. It's just too large an area. That brings it to the question of whether the smaller areas have enough caches and active cachers to justify the concept. An area like Houston or San Antonio has a lot more resources to draw on than Little Rock.

[Steal Your Cache]

if you look at the link silverjedi provided the Houston area did a county list that would apply. we could do regional. like cage could have a nomination then swag and so on.....

[TnT]

Yes, Houston did a list of counties, which are the counties surrounding Houston. Again, making it a regional award. While I do think awards for this are great, they should be area specific. Yes, CAGE could do some, SWAG could do some, etc. But, other than your peers recognizing you in a formal setting, I think that making good use of your favorite points will achieve the same purpose. Personally, We don't give a favorite point unless a cache is very much above average. Probably why we still have well over 300 favorite points un-awarded, LOL.

Don't give up on your idea, but I think you should try to sell it to your local cachers. I just don't think it would work on a statewide basis.

[drmo913]

I think this could be done in conjunction with the "Annual Meeting" event. I think the hard part would be working out the rules and details. ArkGeo members only eligible?? I think only ArkGeo members should be allowed to vote. I think that the voting system used to hold the elections could be used to allow ArkGeo members to vote on the different categories.

I like the idea of having it during/part of the festivities of the annual meeting, but I don't know about isolating it to members only. I like the idea of having "everyone" involved. Thought would need to be given to the process of nomination of the logs/caches.

I think the voting would be good to do at the meeting.

But the prizes... They need to be some cool stuff. Ideas to that... :rolleyes: um.... nope!!!! I'll work on it...

But I love this idea!

[dcwalker30]

If I'm hosting (read: funding) the event, it would NOT be members only. ArkGeo is a fun group to bounce ideas off of and share stories with, but there's no way I'd limit a Geocaching Awards event to ArkGeo members only. As it stands. 16 Yeas and 5 Nays means this event probably won't happen. If the voting on the poll (Facebook was even fewer with some assumed doubles) is any indication as to how many nominations and votes we'd get, that's not a very large pool of contributors to make an award feel special. You could essentially win an award with 5 votes. That wouldn't be much fun. I'll keep putting the bug in everyone's ear though :) Maybe eventually we could spark enough interest in it to get something like 50 voters.

[jclaudii]

There are some caches or cachers that went above and beyond or who have an epic tale of getting there that should be mentioned somewhere and somehow. Even though, if it was statewide, the population around caching centers would be where the votes would come from. But it would also help those who are father away to put a "hot" cache on their radar before something happens to it. I have "saved" caches for another time when I had more time to do them or something only to find that they would be gone next time I came through. A couple examples was the Tool Man cache Series in Glenwood, EVERYONE that done that cache said it was great and fun and now my kiddos are old enough to enjoy it. Another one was the Infamous Travel Bug Prison that was hidden in a cave. We have not had alot of "caching adventures" lately because of our little one, but we used to always get ourselves into a pickle finding a cache or two.

For the persistent cacher type award, there are so many tales that we hear around meet-n-eats and on the logs that I'm surprised some cachers don't take out extra insurance for their hobby. We have also came across some great accidental find logs that completely make you laugh! These types of logs will never be on the website as the person just stumbled upon it and actually wrote in the log book. Which is another thing we miss reading actual logs that people write in a cache but then again it has been awhile since we were somewhere for a cacher to have something noteworthy to write. Our first caches as new cachers, our first "race" to get First to finds (beating out ORR and RKLMBL and someone else too), and still remain some of our favorite to venture out and find are Saddlebags up in the Ozark National Forests. I'm not sure if she has been recognized as placing quality caches away from the city in areas where there is no cell phone signal...I always think those are the types of caches geocaching was created for. The caches that take you to a pristine overlook, a hidden waterfall, a long windy dirt road, a forgotten grave yard, etc. Her caches capture the adventure for geocaching for us and she had to put up with the NFS to do it all.

I think on a state wide level, we could find some common ground to have easy votes for like "most awesome cache", "most difficult", "best puzzle", "best log", etc...basically we nominate caches. Then those who have not found it can go and find it, read it, review it, etc and either vote or award those points that we never do anything with. In the course of 6mo or a year I think we would have enough info to tally up what was a clear winner.

Sorry for the long post.

[Steal Your Cache]

what if smaller groups that are underling support for ARKGEO had a nomination process for the finals then there could be a voting for the nominations.

[the-snowlight]

I think this is a great idea.
In addition to the Houston categories I suggest the "Most Kid's friendly/liked cache".