When: 8:00AM – 1:30PM Saturday, November 14th, 2015
Where: The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
11100 Johns Hopkins Rd.
Laurel, Maryland 20723
For Whom: This event is intended for people of all experience levels! Regardless of whether you made 10 finds, or thousands of finds, or just have a burgeoning interest, we’ll have something for you!
Our symposium will commence with a plenary session, for the entire group of aspiring geocaching scholars, held in the Parson’s Auditorium. During this session, details of the event, announcements from sponsoring organizations, and a brief history of satellite navigation will be presented.
This will be followed by a series of breakout sessions conducted in seminar format on a variety of topics held in the Howard County Rooms, and in Parsons Auditorium. For your convenience, we have inserted a map of the portions of the Laboratory that we will be using below:
Schedule of events:
8:00 - 9:00 AM Meet & Greet social with coffee and donuts in the cafeteria area
9:00 - 930 AM Plenary Session in Parson's Auditorium
9:40 - 1040 AM Breakout Seminars Session One
Geocaching 101 Howard County Room #1 presented by Gr8Caches
How to Create a Wherigo Cache - Howard County Room #2 presented by SpikeP
Puzzle Solving 101: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Puzzle Solvers: - Howard County Room #3 presented by Hixon
Stuff you should know about solving geocaching puzzles, to the tune of the famous “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” self-help book. We will solve a few real-world examples along the way.
1050 - 1150 AM Breakout Seminars Session Two
Caching on the iPhone using the Geosphere Application - Howard County Room #1 presented by Alzarius
Caching on the Android Platform - Howard County Room #2 presented by ProdigiousOne
Puzzle Solving 201: Because These Things Are Seriously Hard Dude, you haven’t solved ‘em all yet? - Howard County Room #3 presented by Hixon
We will further explore the principles covered in the 101 lecture and apply them to some tougher Hixon puzzles, pulling back the curtain on caches like CODE_GAP_A (http://coord.info/GC3KGP7) and one or two of the harder Horcruxes.
1150 -1250 PM Breakout Seminar Session Three
Geocaching 201 Howard County Room #1 presented by Zekester
Advanced cache finding techniques for the intermediate level cacher (75-200 finds), including useful equipment, tips and tricks, and a brief discussion of issues that cause GPS interference.
Project-GC Howard County Room #2 presented by Gr8Caches
Creative Cache Creation : A interactive discussion on how to make a creative cache. Parson's Auditorium presented by WVTim
1:00 -1:15 PM Wrap-up in Parson's Auditorium
1:15 PM Newly placed APLCachers geocaches publish in apart nearby APL
Additional topics may be added, and this schedule is still in flux and may change, but we’ll be sure to keep this page up-to-date as things develop.
A trackables table will be available at this event, manned by volunteers from the Carroll County caching Fellowship (C3F). Please be sure to log any trackables you drop or pick up at the event in a timely fashion.
Parking:
All attendees should enter the campus through the main entrance on Johns Hopkins Road. Parking for this event is available onsite, and can best seen in the satellite image below:
Acknowledgments:
This symposium was inspired by the ongoing series of Geocaching Seminars produced by WVTim in Martinsburg, West Virginia over the last seven years. The format is largely modeled after Tim’s events, and our intent is to conduct this symposium annually in the fall, in coordination with and as a complimentary effort to Tim’s events in the spring. WVTim’s 8th Annual Geocaching Seminar will be held on March 19th, 2016, we hope to see you there!
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has graciously granted us permission to use their facilities for this event. We request that you respect the security boundaries in place, and restrict your attendance to the areas that we have authorization to use, as noted on the graphic above, so that we are welcomed back again next year. More information on APL, including maps and directions, can be found here:
http://www.jhuapl.edu/aboutapl/default.asp
We are grateful for the ongoing leadership, support, guidance and inspiration provided by the officers and numerous members of the following organizations:
