Bloomington Geocachers Monthly Update! 3 Upcoming events and more opportunities!

[Jessica Falkenthal]

Hey gang!

Great news! We're up to 68 members in the Bloomington Geocachers group. In recent months, we've been featured in the IU student newspaper, on WTIU- our local PBS station, held 3 very fun and successful events, and had a spin-off group formed by IU students: the Geocaching Club at IU. We've also seen about a dozen Bloomington Geocachers hide their first cache and seen the number and quality of geocaches in Bloomington grow immensely in the past few months. Several of you have attended your very first geocaching event and for many of you that has reignited your passion for geocaching or gotten you even more addicted than you already were! If you haven't been to an event yet, I hope you'll consider adding one of our 3 upcoming events left for 2009 to your to-do list! I'm trying some different dates and times to help more people get the opportunity to attend their first event.

Here's what's in store for this month's Bloomington Geocachers's Update:

1. Vote on the Bloomington Geocachers Logo

2. Find Bloomington Geocachers on Facebook!

3. Geocaching Club at IU Featured in Indiana Daily Student

4. Planning for the December Event- December 12th

5. 12 Days of Cache-Mas Series

6. IU GIS Day's Welcome to Geocaching! Event- November 18th

7. Volunteer Opportunities for GIS Day!

8. Nighttime GeoAdventures on IU Campus- November 20th

9. Help Setup Nightcaches for November 20th

1. VOTE ON THE BLOOMINGTON GEOCACHERS LOGO

Bloomington Geocacher Logo Submissions are in! Check them out at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=109757&id=126087665826&saved

and vote for them at: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHZYQTRpajRYZEsxUWFoVzktZkZyYUE6MA before November 22nd! It will take less than 5 minutes.

2. FIND US ON FACEBOOK!

http://www.facebook.com/bloomingtongeocaching If you're not already a fan, you should be! We have 49 Facebook Fans so far, and many of them aren't even members of our group! There's alot of discussion on the Facebook page's discussion board about future events and caches in Bloomington, so you should check those out at http://www.facebook.com/BloomingtonGeocaching?v=app_2373072738 Got a great idea for a future trip? Share it on the Facebook page! (Or let me know and I'll share it on the Facebook page)

3. GEOCACHING CLUB AT IU FEATURED IN INDIANA DAILY STUDENT

On October 22nd the Geocaching Club at IU was featured in the IDS newspaper. You can check out the article at http://www.idsnews.com/news/weekend/story.aspx?id=71227  The group also launched their new website at http://www.indiana.edu/~geocache which you should check out. If you know of an IU student that might be interested in the group, please let me know or point them to the website!

4. PLANNING FOR THE DECEMBER EVENT- DECEMBER 12TH

I'm planning for a potluck lunch event on Saturday December 12th at noon, but am looking for a room in a location that would be easily accessible to IU students, Bloomingtonians, families and those from afar that come to visit us that can fit 3-4 dozen people. If you have any suggestions of a location, please let me know. This is going to be a family friendly event and I'm sure that some cachers will be setting up some geocaches within walking distance if there aren't some already.

I was hoping to have a gift-exchange with a twist. 

5. 12 DAYS OF CACHE-MAS SERIES.

I'm also hoping to plan a series of caches that is set out by 12 different geocachers in Bloomington for each of the "12 Days of Cachemas" that have a code that leads you to a final larger mystery cache. I'm looking for:

11 other geocachers interested in placing a "12 Days of Cachemas" cache

People interested in writing a "12 Days of Cachemas" poem

An interesting location and container for the final puzzle cache.

I was hoping we could coordinate with our local reviewers to have one cache released each day for 12 consecutive days. I haven't decided if those would be the first 12 days of December, or released on the 13th-25th, with the final puzzle cache being released on the 25th, which would be a great way to have some new caches to find in town over people's holiday breaks.

6. IU GIS DAY'S WELCOME TO GEOCACHING! EVENT- NOVEMBER 18TH 10AM-3PM

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=b3113ec1-4983-4f96-bb75-a0c2d3f10a4a

10am-3pm at the Wells Library on IUB campus

RSVP and invite friends on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=201540601069&ref=ts

November 18th is International GIS Day, which is a day to celebrate the many uses of GPS technologies. The Geocaching Club at IU and Bloomington Geocachers will be celebrating with an event at the Wells Library on the IU Bloomington campus during IU's GIS Day festivities. We'll have a booth setup during this time amongst the booths from other groups, departments, and research teams at IU and in Bloomington that work with GPS and GIS technologies. You can learn more about GIS Day events http://gisday.indiana.edu/

We'll be setting up 3-5 geocaches with some fun trinkets around the library parking lot and arboretum and borrowing GPS units from one of the campus departments. This should give students and community members all day to stop by and try geocaching for the first time. They'll receive codes in each cache that will allow them to enter to win prizes.

7. VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES FOR GIS DAY

We need volunteers from 10am-3pm. 2 volunteers at a time for 1-2 hour shifts. Anyone interested? Let me know if you're interested in volunteering at the booth to talk about and recruit new geocachers while demonstrating how to use GPS units for 1-2 hours during the time it's open. This is a recruitment event, so being outgoing and willing to chat with everyone who glances in your direction is a must! :)

Here's the schedule I have so far:

Setup: 9-10 Mickey4Jes

10-11 Will+Bill and JollyGeos 11-12 ?? and ?? 12-1 ErWenn and BrightIdeas 1-2 MStoneci and Geomafiosa 2-3 Geomafiosa and ??

Also, we have a Geocaching presentation at 1:30pm in Room E174 in the Wells Library. Fellow Students at IU, who wants to help present about geocaching? (We need people willing to man the booth during the presentation as well) Consider it a conference presentation for your resume/vitae.

Here's a few more ways you can help. Let me know if you're interested:

* Redesign the display board. I'll be getting it professionally printed on a plotter.

* Contact a department on campus about potential prizes.

* Help hide some event-only geocaches in the Arboretum and Library parking lot that show a wide variety of creative and diverse cache hides.

* Designing a flyer about the geocaching event on the 18th to be posted around campus

* Find or design a one page Quick Reference Guide to using the GPS unit model that we'll be using during the event, for newbies to use.

* Flyering campus on Wednesday the 11th or Thursday the 12th

* Redo/make our own Geocaching in Bloomington/IU brochure or handout (maybe a double-sided half page?) instead of using http://www.geocacher-u.com/resources/brochure.html

8. NIGHTTIME GEOADVENTURES ON IU CAMPUS- NOVEMBER 20TH

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=4c2892b1-ad2d-4102-89c7-9203f10e9f3d

Right now this is tentatively scheduled for 6:30pm on Sunday, November 20th, starting at the Showalter Fountain. The idea is to introduce many of the newbies (that we found at the November 18th GIS Day event) to geocaching before the IU students go home for Thanksgiving. (Hopefully, it will be fun enough that they chat about it with their families and ask for GPS units for Xmas!) The event is not just for newbies and we have some fun new night-only caches being planned! Our goal is for the event to last 1-2 hours maximum. And of course, leave whenever you want. Families are welcome.

Invite more new friends on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172949029499

If you've never been on a nightcache hunt before, please join us! There's something quite magical and intriguing about caching at night with a group. If there's too many of us, we'll probably split off into smaller groups. Several of you have mentioned that you would LOVE to attend one of our events, but the day/time always conflict with something else. Hopefully, trying something different here with the time/date will help!

9. HELP SETUP NIGHTCACHES FOR NOVEMBER 20TH

A discussion has begun on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=202663970041&ref=mf about planning a few fun nightcaches around campus. If you're interested in helping set one up (4-5 volunteers setting up one each would be great!) please add to the discussion on Facebook or please let me know via e-mail. (j.falkenthal [at] gmail.com)

Hope to see many of you soon!

Jess (Mickey4Jes)