Cache Up NB 101, Part 2 – What We Do

In part one of our 101 series, I talked about what Cache Up NB started as. It was really meant to serve as a new community website for folks to go to. And at first, that’s exactly what it was.

For the first year of Cache Up NB’s existence, it was all about writing stories and posting articles about geocaching, and personal experiences and just getting the community to share their own passions about geocaching. But over time, as the community began to grow, other things started to happen.

I had been adamant about the fact that I did not want Cache Up NB to become an “association”. In those days, there was still way too much volatility amongst older cachers regarding the MGA vs ACGA debate. I did not want to have Cache Up NB thrown into that mix.

Associations were known for doing things other than just having a community. They did events. They hid caches. They had programs. They did a lot more than just have a website. So for at least a year, Cache Up NB stayed clear of all of that. But in January of 2012, that changed.

In those days, Rev Slippery was the NB rep for the ACGA. The ACGA had done a few events in NB, but the biggest was the Fundy event. Ken had been running the Fundy event in NB for the last few years as the rep for the ACGA. Although the official relationship with Fundy was with the ACGA, Ken was the one doing the hiding and manning the event in May. He had also been responsible for running the Sunfest Geocaching program for the town of Riverview, under the ACGA.

Around Christmas time in 2011, Jim Cyr, then president of the ACGA, approached me and Ken about taking over all of the NB based caches owned by the ACGA. Cache Up NB had now established itself as a reputable website with reliable people behind the wheel. The ACGA was still quite involved in geocaching in general, but where Cache Up NB had established a presence in NB, and the ACGA was mainly based out of NS, it made sense to have Cache Up NB partner with the ACGA, and take over those caches and the Fundy National Park program.

On January 4th, 2012, all of the previously owned caches by the ACGA were adopted by Cache Up NB and a new era began.

From this point forward, we were no longer just a news and information site. I still wouldn’t call us an association, but we were now moving into an area that was outside of just a website. Fast forward to where we are today, and here are some stats about what we’ve done since our start:

• 16 geocoin challenge programs launched
• 96 physical geocaches hidden
• 23 events hosted
• Roughly 13,000 find/attended logs on our caches
• 2,875 (approximate) geocoins produced for our programs
• Only official Groundspeak partner in Canada (that we know of)
• Provided seminars on geocaching for the Tantramar Seniors College, WorksafeNB, Moncton Nature Club, Riverview Fire Department, Girl Guides of Canada, YMCA, Atlantic Industries, Portage Atlantic, and many others
• Built and executed a “detour” for The Amazing Race Canada
• Sponsored the second Maritime Mega event, and is hosting the third
• Supported and hosted the Come Out & Play contest for four years (ScrabbleCache being the 5th year)

The decision to take on the ACGA’s caches ultimately saw Cache Up NB branch out into many other areas. As a result, our reliance on fellow volunteers has increased. Originally, it was just me and Ken running things. Now we have many other volunteers that we lean on to assist us with the many projects that are ongoing.

So if you wonder what exactly it is we do, our focus has always started here on our website and having a community that can connect with one another. Even with things like Facebook groups, we still see a large amount of people coming here to see what’s going on.

In 2015, we’ll host our first mega event. And who knows what else will come…

—

For those who like to crunch numbers, here are some “web usage” statistics that our web host provides us. These numbers are a compilation of all our stats since March of 2010. Web stats do not always represent actual “human” visitors to our site but it does give a window into the volume our site sees.

• 130,000 unique visitors
• 530,000 visits to the website
• 43.3 Million total hits to the website
• 65 Countries have accessed Cache Up NB

Be aware that raw web statistics and the actual numbers of people visiting the site always differ but this does show us that we’re not just some small website for a handful of cachers in NB anymore.