Cache Up NB in 2015
It’s coming the end of the year and with 2015 just around the corner, I thought now would be a good time to open the door for some feedback.
A lot of cool things came out of this year. We announced the mega. We participated in The Amazing Race Canada. We launched a pile of new geocoin challenges in the province. We kicked off the Kouchibouquac geocaching program. We helped launch the new ScrabbleCache contest. Plus, we got a little bit of press in some of the local papers through the work we’ve been doing.
But Cache Up NB has always been about trying to serve the geocaching community of New Brunswick. This last year we saw a lot of things happening but we haven’t had much in the way of discussion from our readers and members about what YOU want. So, here’s another opportunity for you to speak your mind about what you’d like to see from us.
We are always open to suggestions on pretty much anything we can do to help promote geocaching in our area. We know swag has been a request for awhile. Shirts and geocoins have been something we’ve wanted to do for awhile but our other projects have taken our time away from those. I am hoping 2015 will be different. In fact, I have a new idea for a CUNB geocoin that I would like to see made next year.
2015 is going to be a busy year for Cache Up NB with the mega coming. But just because we’re working on that event doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear your suggestions. What do you want us to give you in 2015? More events? More contests? More ham? More geocaching.com interaction? More swag?
The more you can provide to us on what you want, and how we can help promote geocaching, the better we can make it for everyone.
So, speak up!
A way of notifying us when new caches are being published.
It’s called paying the $30/year for a premium membership 🙂
Do you have a vision of CUNB becoming national? Perhaps some news of caching/cachers/events around the country? I think it could if you chose to go in that direction.
I’d like to see more coverage of events complete with photos.
Sorry, personally, I don’t like the Instagram idea, I need to go to an app to get my caching pics out there. I’d like to see CUNB become more of a “one stop” site for posting about adventures. If at all technically possible.
How about a file that is easily found under one of the drop down menus that lists Best Caches, that everyone can add to?
Great comments CG. So here’s a few things to touch on those subjects.
– The idea of going national has already been thought. There’s an article coming up in the next few weeks that will talk about a stalled project regarding that exact concept.
– Event coverage is a nice idea but very hard to implement. In order to cover events, we need people to go to them, take photos, and share them. This becomes a lot harder to do when people who go to events don’t actually take photos. And then there’s the issue of how to share them which brings me to your next point.
– The Instagram thing for the mega came out of necessity. There are already a ton of file sharing sites out there (Instagram, Twitpic, yFrog, Flickr, etc). It doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to reinvent the wheel when it comes to photos. There are plenty of places that do that very well and far better than we could. Plus, it takes a lot of time and effort to build something custom. I should also point out that we do support the ability for people to upload their images to Flickr and they become visible here, albeit hidden under “Media”. That’s been there all along. But that also doesn’t fall under “one stop shop”.
I’ll be the first to admit that the ability for people to upload and share their pictures is something I have wanted for awhile. The last time we tried it, our web hosting account was suspended because hackers were able to upload non-photo code which causes website issues. We pulled the plug on it immediately. Since then, I have had several ideas about how to get photos on here but have not yet found a good way to make it easy, and secure. The upload to Flickr with the “cacheupnb” tag was the best thing we could do for now.
– For Best Caches, I like the idea. Something that has a running thread on it. But I also think that perhaps if people like caches that much, they should be giving them Favorite points on GC, and we could use those to display them.
Great ideas and comments. Keep them coming.