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0:00:13.5 Chris: Hello everybody. Welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ, our podcast about what is happening at Geocaching HQ in Seattle. I am Chris Ronan, AKA Rock Chalk, one of the 80 or so lackeys who are privileged to serve the geocaching community. It has been a minute since our last episode, we will try to make up for that, starting with a conversation about the Geocaching International Film Festival. It is happening November 11th through the 21st this year, after taking an intermission a year ago, due to the pandemic. GIFF began back in 2013, as part of the geocaching block party held in Seattle, the films were shown at a park not far from HQ. It happened that way again in 2014. And then, in 2015, my first block party as a lackey, a torrential rainstorm began, just as the films were about to be shown. We had to cancel the screening. But in a sense, there was a rainbow after the storm, because the films were instead, shown at GIFF events throughout the world, that year, and that has been the format ever since, with people from almost 60 countries participating, most years. It is truly one of the highlights of the Geocaching calendar.

0:01:34.6 Chris: And so, we have HQ’s Guest Experience Coordinator and GIFF guru, Ari, here with details on what to expect this year. Let’s get to it.

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0:01:52.4 Chris: Well, Ari, let’s talk about GIFF. But first, let’s talk about you and your role at Geocaching HQ. It still feels to me like you haven’t been here very long, but it’s been over a year now. Time doesn’t work the same way as it did before the pandemic. So let’s just start with how did you… You were a big geocacher before you came to Geocaching HQ. So how did you end up here? And was it like it was for me, where it was, I was a big geocacher too, and I just couldn’t wait to have the opportunity to get to HQ and I would imagine, maybe it was like that for you as well.

0:02:33.0 Ari: Yeah. I think we have pretty similar back stories in that way. I’ve been a cacher of 11 years, I started in 2010, and it was always my dream, to be a Geocaching HQ lackey. So I was always looking at opportunities and when I… It’s a funny story, I actually met Bryan Roth at a mega event in Europe, ’cause I was living in the Netherlands up until 2020. And I mentioned it was always my dream, and we talked about what my skills were and stuff like that, and it started from a conversation with Bryan, at a mega event, so you never know what’s possible. And so then, I landed my dream job and moved to Seattle.

0:03:13.4 Chris: You mentioned that you lived in the Netherlands until 2020. And that’s one of the great things about so many lackeys, is we have different languages being spoke at HQ.

0:03:22.8 Ari: Yes, yeah. I speak Dutch, I also speak German and Spanish, and those are all pretty good languages to speak as a lackey and as a person in general.

0:03:32.5 Chris: Right. I feel like we should have a competition, we’ll see how many… I think Nicole might still hold the record for most.

0:03:39.7 Ari: Yeah. She would always win, she wins every competition.

0:03:42.0 Chris: I think she would win for most languages, but you’re up there, that’s a very impressive number.

0:03:46.9 Ari: Yeah, yeah, thanks.

0:03:48.8 Chris: So you come to HQ last year, and your title is Guest Experience Coordinator, which if people have listened to the podcast, we’ve had a couple of previous Guest Experience Coordinators on, over the years, and they talk about what it’s like to welcome people to the Visitor Center at Geocaching HQ, which, in a perfect world, you would be able to do, but it has not quite worked out that way, has it?

0:04:12.5 Ari: Yep. I love to tell people, I was hired for a job that I haven’t even done yet, one year later, because that’s how it is. Luckily, they’re keeping me very busy with lots of other projects that I love, like GIFF. But yeah, I’ve been working on all kinds of other stuff because our Visitor Center has been closed the whole time I’ve been working here.

0:04:32.8 Chris: And I’m sure people, I don’t really know how much or if anything we can say about it right now, but I’m sure that we want to be able to open it up. But obviously, there’s a lot that goes into listening to the local health authorities and city regulations and all that kind of stuff.

0:04:52.4 Ari: Yeah, absolutely. It’s very complicated. We can’t wait to re-open, I can’t wait to greet visitors in the Visitor Center finally, after more than a year of waiting. But unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet, but we’ll get there, we will eventually.

0:05:06.6 Chris: So you’re not able to quite do those duties that you were hoping to do, but what other kinds of things have you… We’ll get into GIFF, obviously, but there’s a lot of other stuff on your plate. So what is your day-to-day like at HQ?

0:05:20.5 Ari: Well, my main project, other than GIFF is Adventure Lab Support. So if you ever write in through our Help Center, by email, for help with Adventure Lab, I’m usually the one answering that. So most of my routine is, juggling those two main projects, and then there are other various smaller things like donations that I handle, and also maintenance of the HQ GeoTour caches.

0:05:45.5 Chris: So the main event of our conversation, I guess, talking about the Geocaching International Film Festival, GIFF. For people that aren’t aware or haven’t… Or maybe are newer to the game, and don’t know a lot about GIFF. What is the Reader’s Digest version of what this is all about?

0:06:07.7 Ari: So GIFF, yeah, Geocaching International Film Festival is not quite annual, but most years we do it, Film Festival, where we invite filmmakers, geocachers, and otherwise, they’re almost always geocachers, because the films are about geocaching. But we invite filmmakers to submit up to four-minute films about geocaching, and this is the eighth year we’ve done it. Basically, people submit them and then we narrow it down to a finalist reel of about an hour long. It’s usually around 16 films that get into that reel, and then that reel is sent out to GIFF events around the world, where it gets streamed. In past years, we’ve had around 600 events, sometimes more. Everyone watches the films and then gets a souvenir for attending one of those events, on their profile. And it’s a really fun way to share geocaching experiences globally, tell stories, and just enjoy the fun of geocaching, up on the screen, as a community.

0:07:10.1 Chris: You talked about whittling it down to a list of finalists. What does it take, to become a finalist? What are the things that make films stand out in a way, that helps them to become one of those finalist films?

0:07:28.5 Ari: Well, there’re a number of things. First, you have to make sure you read the rules and you comply with all of them. For example, if you’re…

0:07:35.3 Chris: I’m out. I’m out.

0:07:35.7 Ari: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, any submission by Chris Ronan is automatically just deleted because we know it’s you. There are guidelines you have to fulfill, but other than that, we look for various things. The biggest one is, creativity. So, making sure that you’re highlighting… Well, your film is creative. So it could be that you’re highlighting something totally new or you have a new spin on the game, or something. If you’ve seen the past GIFF film reels which you can see on our YouTube channel, people do some really fun, creative stuff. Other criteria is production quality and content also. So making sure, if it’s informative or inspiring or compelling or tells a good story. We also look for contribution to the global community, so does this film bring people together to celebrate the game and the community. So those are the main criteria we will look for.

0:08:35.6 Chris: A bunch of us lackeys watch these things.

0:08:38.8 Ari: Oh, that’s right.

0:08:40.2 Chris: And help to figure out who these finalists are gonna be.

0:08:44.8 Ari: Yes, yeah, we have a big GIFF judging evening, where everyone gets Thai food. It’s everyone’s favorite night ’cause they get Thai food, and we sit down and we watch most of the, or about half of the submission. So, there’s a preliminary selection process, where we narrow down, this year, we had 61 entries. We narrowed down to around 25 or so, and then the group of lackeys watches those selections and then uses a fun rating system, which I then tabulate in a big spreadsheet, and from that, we get a list of finalists.

0:09:20.7 Chris: And how many again? How many finalists are there?

0:09:25.0 Ari: This yea, r we have 17 finalists.

0:09:27.2 Chris: And so, we’ve got these 17 finalists, what happens now?

0:09:31.5 Ari: So, we edit them into a big reel. So we basically put all the finalists together, which is now done, and then we distribute it to the community, and that’s coming up. So GIFF will happen between November 11th and 21st. We do have events this year. So, people can host GIFF events in their local communities, if it’s safe to do so. But this year, because of the current situation and events are not necessarily the best idea everywhere, so we will be adding a virtual option, where you can watch it online on our YouTube channel. So on November 23rd, we will publicize the reel and you can watch it at home and still get the souvenir. So, normally, you would have to attend an in-person event, a GIFF event, in order to get the souvenir on your profile. But this year, the souvenir will be based on a trackable code that’s in the reel. So if you watch the reel and you find the trackable code, which is pretty easy to find, it’s not super hidden or anything, and you discover that trackable, the souvenir will automatically grant it to your profile. So there’s no need to attend an event this year. And that way, we can make sure that everyone could enjoy the fun and creativity of this year’s GIFF submissions.

0:10:48.7 Chris: When I hear you say that it’s super easy to find, I can’t help but think of these geocaches that I’ll go out for and then you click on hint and it says, “No hint needed.” And those are the ones that I can’t find.

0:11:00.9 Ari: That’s true. That’s true.

0:11:02.2 Chris: So, let’s just be clear here, are we talking, it’s really gonna be easy to find?

0:11:07.8 Ari: I can’t guarantee that you’ll be able to find it, Chris, but most people should.

0:11:13.0 Chris: If I have any trouble, I’ll just send you an email and you can help me out with that.

0:11:17.4 Ari: Yeah, just phone a friend.

0:11:19.1 Chris: There will be a signal award again this year?

0:11:20.3 Ari: Yep. So just like in past years, we have two awards. We have Signal Award, which is chosen by the reviewers. So we sent out the finalist’s reel to reviewers, to have an early look at them and vote. We have a winner for that already. And we will also have the People’s Choice Award, which is where people can vote in a survey, online. So anyone who attends a GIFF event can vote for the People’s Choice Award winner. And those will be announced after GIFF is over. So some time after the 23rd.

0:11:50.2 Chris: That’s very cool. And I know you wouldn’t say exactly which film it was, but do you have some favorites of the ones that… Well, you’ve seen every one, you haven’t just seen the finalists. You also saw everything that came in before. So were there ones that stood out for you?

0:12:06.8 Ari: Yes, I have several favorites. It’s actually impossible for me to decide ’cause I have three top contenders. But of course, I’ll leave it to the viewers to make their own decisions on what they think are their favorite films, ’cause there’s something for everyone, I have to say.

0:12:22.4 Chris: Right. And I always just think it’s funny, thinking about how we’ve gotten to this point because having the film festival used to be part of the block party and probably would have continued that way, or you think that it might have, if it wouldn’t have been for the big rainstorm that we had at the last block party, and so it got…

0:12:44.9 Ari: The legendary rainstorm.

0:12:46.2 Chris: Right. And so it got rained out, and so we ended up pushing it to this new format. And it’s so great, to be… It’s even better really, because I think there’s just another example of the community coming together in a special way, to be able to see the creativity of people all over the world. And one thing we should talk about is, just the process, obviously, you’re very involved with this, but then we have other folks that are editing these together and then doing translations with subtitles and stuff like that.

0:13:21.6 Ari: Yep, absolutely. It takes a village, as they say, to put on GIFF. So we have people helping out with vetting the events, that get submitted, to make sure that they work as GIFF events, and we have our translators who help us translate the subtitles, we have the person who helped us edit the reel together, who is the same person who does it every year, and they do really great film editing work. Who else? Of course, our creative studio who always does amazing work with all of our digital graphics. Yeah, and I’m sure I’m forgetting even more people who have helped out.

0:13:57.6 Chris: Well, it’s gonna be fun again, to see… Just to see all the creativity on display. I know, being one of the lackeys that watches and helps to vote for the finalist, every year, I’m just blown away by being able to see how the game is interpreted all over the world, but then also having the sense that even though we’re all in different places, we all have this commonality too. I just think it’s really nice, that GIFF is able to do that for us.

0:14:34.1 Ari: Yeah, absolutely. And I think especially this year, that’s been even more beneficial in a time when travel is not as possible as it once was, and you can still see amazing videos from Scotland and Finland and France, of what they’re doing over there, and you can feel like you’re traveling from your couch.

0:14:54.4 Ari: Right, right. Well, but before we let you go, I always like to ask people that are on our HQ podcast, the lackeys, about just geocaching and your favorite ways to geocache, and what are your favorite things about the game, and do you have favorite cache types or any of that stuff. It’s always fun, to hear that sort of stuff from the lackeys at HQ.

0:15:21.5 Ari: What a good question. I could talk for hours, about this. I hope you have the time. Well, actually, and what you were saying before, this is something that I really love is, how geocaching is like a common language, ’cause I’ve been lucky to geocache in a lot of different countries, and I’ve run into people, while there, who don’t speak English and I don’t speak their language. And yet we’re able to communicate and have this connection, based on this shared hobby, and I’ve always found that that is one of the most special human connections that I’ve experienced, because it’s not common that you can just instantly make that kind of connection to someone with whom you share nothing in common. You don’t share a language or any kind of other background. But yeah, and still moving back to what I love about geocaching, other than that is just really the places it takes me and the interesting pieces of history.

0:16:15.1 Ari: But I would definitely say I’m sort of an omnivore of a geocacher. So I like all the different styles of caching, whether it’s going on a 15-mile hike for one geocache on one day, or power trailing all day in the desert. I like all those different things. I love challenge caches. If I had to choose, my favorite cache type would probably be challenge caches, which now I know who I’m talking to there, so I’m not able to compare. But yeah.

0:16:45.3 Chris: Well, I know, folks are looking forward to GIFF, and I know, some day they would love to be able to meet you in the visitor center.

0:16:53.7 Ari: Yep, I hope so too. And we’ll see if I’m in the Visitor Center at that point. I hope so.

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0:17:03.5 Chris: That was Ari, Geocaching HQ’s Guest Experience Coordinator, and the guy who is heading up the Geocaching International Film Festival for 2021. Again, GIFF is happening November 11th through the 21st. Learn more about it at geocachingfilmfestival.com. If you have an idea for our podcast, something you would like to hear us cover, drop us a line at podcast@geocaching.com, that is podcast@geocaching.com. We always enjoy hearing from you. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. From me and Ari and all of the lackeys at Geocaching HQ. Happy Caching.

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