Planning for the Calgary location for the 5th World Wide Flash Mob event is quite straightforward. We’ve selected the location, figured out a theme and submitted the event write-up for publication. Cache Effect reviewed and published GC1Q4GN WWFM V – C of Red this morning. Since we’ve asked the participants to bring their own log sheets, the only event preparations left are to prepare the little bags of handouts for the attendees and ensure we have enough volunteers to handle the various tasks so that we stick to our 15 minute time slot.

 

For the WWFM III, it worked really well to set up a couple of new geocaches for publication right after the event. This provided us with a couple of draw prizes (for example, the final coordinates for a new multi-cache – basically guaranteeing the winner FTF honours) and encouraged event attendees to hang around for a while afterwards. Here’s where things have been difficult this year.

 

Confederation Park is a long, narrow park – basically a narrow valley with a small creek running down the middle. As a result, it’s easy to run into proximity issues. When we first scouted the park on Sunday, we took a quick look on Google Earth before we headed out and we came home happy that we’d found a couple of good hiding spots. After Mr. GeoK spent a few hours fabricating location-specific camoflage, we took a closer look via geocaching.com and Mapsource and discovered we had proximity issues related to both hiding spots!! Aaargh!

 

We’ve since returned to the park twice and have managed to find one spot within the park and another one a short distance away. We’re still hopeful that we’ll be able to work out the proximity limitations on one more geocache before the event.

 

 

What have we learned from all this? First, don’t rely on a quick look on Google Earth when you’re trying to find geocache hiding spots in an urban park. Second, if we decide to host another WWFM event, we’ll either forego hiding new geocaches or we’ll pick a location that’s bereft of geocaches!!