Sponsorship Opportunity

Geocaching Australia governance issues
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Post by Guest » 18 January 09 8:23 pm

theUMP wrote:A: No, but it was coughin' up blood last night!
In the wild west movies they all seemed to move to texas and start gun fights when they happens ;)

geoskid
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Post by geoskid » 18 January 09 9:06 pm

Where ever the sponsorship deal came from - it does'nt matter any more, they are obviously small players, dont know what they want, dealing with people that don't know what they want. Direction is needed if chaos is not to reign.
Last edited by geoskid on 18 January 09 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

geoskid
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Post by geoskid » 18 January 09 9:52 pm

There is obviously a need for a site just like this, however it needs to be funded properly, and a lot of people have expressed support for a paid membership model. Surely the motivation for the establishement of this site is not lost on the founders of this site. The founders have stubbornly held on to the motto of free and open caching, whilst openly commenting on the voluntary time and effort involved in bringing this site about. I dont want to feel guilty every time I log on, I want to pay for a service that enables me to go and find caches listed on an Australian site, log on an Australian site, and perhaps communicate with cachers on an Australian site. This site needs to move on from the ideals that it was founded on and move with the times, or risk being superseded.
I sincerely hopes it moves with the times and becomes financially viable.

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Post by Guest » 19 January 09 12:56 am

geoskid wrote:There is obviously a need for a site just like this, however it needs to be funded properly, and a lot of people have expressed support for a paid membership model.
If people wanted a paid membership model there is always ground speak.

I, for one, hope they don't go to paid membership and have gone out of my way to see that doesn't happen, unnecessarily due to a simple hosting problem.

*prods i!*

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totalube
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Post by totalube » 19 January 09 2:03 pm

delta_foxtrot2 wrote:
geoskid wrote:There is obviously a need for a site just like this, however it needs to be funded properly, and a lot of people have expressed support for a paid membership model.
If people wanted a paid membership model there is always ground speak.

I, for one, hope they don't go to paid membership and have gone out of my way to see that doesn't happen, unnecessarily due to a simple hosting problem.

*prods i!*
I don't think that the choice is groundspeak or GCA, it is about keeping GCA around. It is not a choice of whether we want to pay for something or not.

I already pay for my GC membership and would have problem if we had to pay for GCA, if the alternative was no GCA at all. Unless we get a sponsorship deal that suits our needs then we may have to ask for membership fees.

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ideology
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Post by ideology » 19 January 09 7:12 pm

fear not!
gca is in a pretty good position at the moment:
(a) there is something like $5k in the bank from everyone's donations, so that should be enough for a server on a commercial basis for about 2 years
(b) there is df_2's acquaintance whom riblit will be meeting in the near future - this might get us free or sponsored hosting which means that the $5k could split (say) into $2k or so for a server and then the rest up our sleeve if the hosting arrangement lapses

the main reason for the delay in the last couple of months has been us (i!) so riblit has kindly offered to help out to keep the ball rolling

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Richary
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Post by Richary » 19 January 09 7:44 pm

geoskid wrote:There is obviously a need for a site just like this, however it needs to be funded properly, and a lot of people have expressed support for a paid membership model. Surely the motivation for the establishement of this site is not lost on the founders of this site. The founders have stubbornly held on to the motto of free and open caching, whilst openly commenting on the voluntary time and effort involved in bringing this site about.
<p>Then feel free to donate to the server fund!

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Studit
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Post by Studit » 05 February 09 11:13 am

Here's a challenge for everyone...</p>

A donation swaggie. I have set up the page, and I will release it soon.<br>

Its called <a/ href=http://geocaching.com.au/swaggie/sw0154>5 Roos Loose in the Top Paddock</a>.</p>

Which brings me to another point...</p>

I haven't found a swaggie yet. We need more out there. To me its the best way to promote the website, attract more members and therefore more donations. They're 10 bucks plus postage cheaper than a TB.</p>

What can you do?
Last edited by Studit on 03 March 09 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by caughtatwork » 03 March 09 7:55 am

It's been some 3 months or so since our last contact from the sponsor so in the interests of resolving the situation we're going to call this one dead.

It was a great potential opportunity and there was healthy and rigorous debate in the senate forum with many discussions for and against the idea of sponsorship and the sponsor themselves.

Due to the request that we didn't reveal the sponsor name / nature of their business we kept these discussions behind closed doors. I hope you can appreciate the commercial nature of those types of discussions. It is unlikley that we will ever disclose the potential sponsor to the community, so please don't request the information publicly.

We have some many thousands of dollars in the bank, we have two servicible webservers being built (waiting for two additional disks), we have a place to co-locate them and at this point in time we are not in the need for a large sponsorship program.

A big thanks to everyone who contributed discussions both online, at various events, privately and on the phone. It was fantastic to see people interested in the site and have such passion about who we are, what we do and how we would like to do it.

To the senators who volunteered their time and provided so much input I would like to offer my thanks. It was a large job to sort through the information, go back with questions get more answers and try to balance those responses with their personal feelings and the feelings represented back to them by the community.

The discussions in the senate are there for posterity so future senators will be able to see the robustness of the discussion and we can keep that knowledge into the future.

Again, thanks for the input everyone. We'll just close the door quietly on this opportunity and move ahead.

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Papa Bear_Left
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Post by Papa Bear_Left » 03 March 09 8:04 pm

So, can I take off my Senatorial toga now?

This was always meant to be a single-issue Senate, so how do we want to handle things?
Just untick the "has access to the Senate forum" box on all of us until there's some new crisis?
Discuss a more formal and permanent Senate, with actual elections and State reps?

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Richary
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Post by Richary » 03 March 09 8:30 pm

Yes thanks everyone for all your input. I feel that while we all wanted the best for GCA and obviously with the proposed sponsor there were possible issues, we did the best we could given the lack of replies from the marketing guys. Thanks C@W for all your liason with them.

As PBL says we need to discuss how(if) we move forward as a Senate - having been "selected" undemoctractically due to the short time frame we believed we had - do we continue as represntatives of the states until a better solution can be found?

Personally, I am happy to continue giving my views on things as a rep not only of NSW but considering the views of all the people I know in Oz. But we don't have a mandate from the general caching population to do so.

Though given the lack of objections about the selection process from the general population they might not be too worried anyway. I think like government they probably trust it to just work!

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Post by Damo. » 04 March 09 12:07 am

Thankyou to those that did step forward to become senators and put in time and effort to discuss the future of the website.

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Studit
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Post by Studit » 04 March 09 9:56 pm

richary wrote: As PBL says we need to discuss how(if) we move forward as a Senate - having been "selected" undemoctractically due to the short time frame we believed we had - do we continue as represntatives of the states until a better solution can be found?

Personally, I am happy to continue giving my views on things as a rep not only of NSW but considering the views of all the people I know in Oz. But we don't have a mandate from the general caching population to do so.
Great job guys.<br>
Reps are fine to sort through the forum posts by the general community. Judging by the varying opinions posted it required a panel to come to a decision.<br>
Perhaps we should start another topic and discuss the matter further.

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Richary
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Post by Richary » 04 March 09 10:08 pm

Hmmm, I had posted a message in the Senate forum about that but it seems to have disappeared :? Along with whatever topic we were deciding a couple of weeks ago.<p>

Incidentally, this topic is now exhibiting the erroneous "no logs found" message if you click on the final number for the topic. I assume this is another side effect of the deleting of df2's messages as the message numbering has become broken in the database.
<p>
And I have no strong thoughts either way on whether those messages should have been deleted

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Studit
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Post by Studit » 04 March 09 10:25 pm

This isn't the only topic with that problem...

<p>

Seems to be fixed now that we have a page 12

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