Geowoodstock Founder in His Own Words

>>> Joe Armstrong: My name is Joe Armstrong, and my geocaching username is JoGPS. I started geocaching in 2001 in September. It was 8 years ago, we had 75 people show up. I did it in a town that was 150 miles from where I live. I had a lot of help from Show Me the Cache, Deermark and Daggy. Helped me put the first one on. The cost of the first one was less than a hundred dollars. And we have grown now. It's not your mother's caching event anymore. I promise you. We talked talked over the phone about this, about all getting together. I came up with the weird solution, why don't we make it an event and see if anyone else wants to meet us too. That's how it all got started. But 75 people, for that point of time, even to be at one event, was kind of unheard of. I'm not saying it hadn't happened before, but not in this area it had never happened. After I got the idea of doing an event I started out with the first annual. Of course the second year I was expecting to have a second annual. So the second year I brought it to Nashville where I live. So I was able to put it together better. The cost was about ten times more. From there what really picked it up was a group in Florida. They wanted to host the event there. First thing that I learned, we have to be sure of the host that are going to host GoeWoodstock. That has to be a very caring group. We don't charge anyone any money to host the GeoWoodstock, but we want you to give the geocacher the best value for his dollar. To make him happy, and put on the best and biggest event, that's so laid back, it looks like no one is doing anything to make everything flow. It's just naturally there. And we've been blessed. It's been going that way ever since. And each new host gets to add a new theme. This year is was a Hawaiian Luau kind fo thing. In Beltbuckle last year, it was just a small town, we actually rented the entire town and had this happened. And the year before that it was in California at a small family type , with farm animals and everything and it worked great. And of course this year it was at a vegetable, vegetable and fruit farm, and it worked out good too. We've had them state parks, state fair grounds. Our next one, next year, in Warren Pennsylvania, will also be in a state park, excuse me a county fair ground. Of course the fair grounds people always want to work with us. We do bring a considerable amount of dollars. We never have tried to pursuade to them, like other convention type things are, that this is the amount of money we're going to bring to your area. We're able to show them the numbers that we have brought. We've had good relationships with all the city planners and tourism departments work with us great. They're willing to do anything they can to get us to come. It's actually turned into something now, that's like, you know before we had to beg them to help us, and now they're begging us to help them. Because they know we can bring it. Becasue We've been consistant. Our numbers grow larger every year even in a depression, or a semi-depression our numbers keep growing. You can only take so much fun away from somebody. People are going to have fun, that enjoy a sport this much. It's just great. Back in the early beginning, on the forums, believe it or not this is one of the things that got this started. Jeremy - a lot of the people and myself - Jeremy was along said "This game is not about the numbers." And I was on the otherside saying sometime it is about the numbers. That was why I was doing it. I was accumulating a lot of numbers at one time. I was third in the world for two to three years. Everyone assumed that everyone was in the top ten were kind of like bitter enemies going back and forth over one another, but we weren't we were friends. We'd email all the time, sometimes we would talk over the phone. I asked eveyone in the top ten, where would be a good place for us to get together for one time and actually meet each other and every person in the top ten, except one, was able to make it. And they came from Minnesota and New Jersey and Missouri, everywhere, and we had two from Tennessee. It was all about the numbers. The high numbers people wanted to meet each other, and that's how it all got started. Over the years, that's changed for GeoWoodstock. It's still about the numbers, the number of friends you make, the number of smiles as you're walking around. It's just about having a good time.