Candidates for 2013/2014 Chairman elections

[Maple Leaf]

This thread is for the CV/Manifestos of the candidates and will be locked.

There is a discussion and Q&A forum here

The two candidates standing in the 2013/2014 Chairman elections are (in alphabetical order):

• Maple Leaf
  
• Puzbie
  

The election of the Chairman will be by SurveyMonkey email ballot between Friday 01/11/13 and Tuesday 5/11/13 and will be run by Ladybug Kids (Michael Malvick) who is serving as our Independent Returning Officer.

[LadybugKids]

I currently hold the position of Chairman, having been on the committee for the past three years and an active member of the GAGB forums since 2005.

I believe that with the interest in the elections last year (the biggest turnout we have ever had) and the activity on the Facebook group and Twitter, the GAGB is gradually becoming a recognised name amongst the UK and Irish geocachers. During the past year, the whole committee have contributed to raising the awareness of the GAGB through hosting and attending events and this is something I want to continue with.

It has certainly been a quick year and I hope to be able to remain in this position so that we can continue the things we have started.

I live on the edge of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, but travel all over the UK and Ireland with my job, which gives me the opportunity to attend various events and meet cachers around the country. This year we spent our summer holiday in the Shetland Islands, so am pleased to have found the most northerly cache in the UK and fill in another colour of my county map – just the Western Isles to go now!

Jen (Maple Leaf)

[LadybugKids]

I have been geocaching since 2006. I took up the hobby when I read an account of somebody who had heard about geocaching and decided to try it for themselves. They described how they went rambling through some woods, and eventually found a tupperware box containing, amongst other items, a paperback book, which they swapped for an old CD. I was immediately intrigued by this, as I like family walks in the countryside, and the idea of exploring and finding treasure would certainly appeal to our children.

For me geocaching has never been a numbers game, it has always been about a decent walk, possibly with a puzzle element, followed by the hope, no matter how small, of finding something interesting to swap. With that in mind, it is natural that I tend to shy away from powertrails and microcaches. That is not to say I think they should be banned though. Far from it, when I have cached abroad, in Cyprus especially, and exhausted the larger caches, I turned to some of the microcaches, and they in turn led me to some hitherto undiscovered locations that would never appear on any tourist map.

So why am I standing for chair of the GAGB? Well, I live in Surrey Heath, an area which where the available countryside is predominantly owned by the military. Earlier this year, it was announced that caches were no longer permitted. It was during this period that I became aware of the existence of the GAGB. I was not impressed with what I saw. There seemed to be a wall of silence between the committee and ordinary members with regards to the MOD negotiations. I saw people volunteering information and being completely ignored. i can't really comment on previous negotiations with the Royal Parks, but that seems to have resulted in similar results; ie a complete failure by GAGB to represent their members' interests. The only, repeated response people received when questions were raised about the negotiations, was that if you didn't like it, you should stand for election yourself. So I investigated what the position entails, and here I am.

So what would I do? Firstly, I would acknowledge that the members of GAGB have a useful role to play in such negotiations. I would ask interested members to provide a list of skills that would be useful. For instance, if you were ex or current military, or a council worker in the relevent dept, and you felt your knowledge might be useful, I would want to know. If you had legal experience, I would want to know. In the GAGB membership there must be a significant pool of knowledge, this should be drawn upon rather than ignored.

Now, it may be that such a database of knowledge already exists, in which case I would ask the committee to use it, rather than ignore the voices of the rank and file membership.

I am not saying that the GAGB committee are useless. Looking at the current permissions database, they quite clearly perform a useful function, and in the main, would seem to perform it well. However, when dealing the MOD, they certainly seemed out of their depth. I am sure that had they utilised member knowledge and experience to a greater extent we could have received a more positive result. Also, we wouldn't have seen the outright ban that was put in place before a decision had even been made. Dartmoor received especially shoddy treatment in this respect.

I am not just a one trick pony though. On a more positive note, I would like to see us explore more ways in which the image of geocaching can be improved. One such option is the concept of charity geocaches. As a geocacher with children, one of the bugbears I have with geocaching is that the caches tend to get filled with junk. Items from Happy Meals or from the 25p rack in Hawkins Bazaar (if your local one is still open) do not really make for an exciting find. Charity shops, on the other hand, are full of little nicknacks which can be purchased, sometimes for pennies or one or two pounds. I would like to explore promoting the idea of using charity shops as a source of treasure for caches. Done properly, you would be able to monitor roughly how much a specific cache has raised for charity. It wouldn't matter what the charity was either, provided the treasure came from a charity shop, it would qualify. I did this recently at a local charity shop, and I could see the ladies there were intrigued why I was filling a tupperware container with their nicknacks. I explained to them what geocaching was, and they certainly seemed keen on the idea. I have yet to successfully place this cache though, as the location I picked turned out to be on military land! Done properly the charity geocaching concept could provide a huge image boost to geocaching in the UK.

I apologise if I have rambled on a bit too long. Thank you for reading.

Puzbie