Karen O'Keefe, The Snark Hunter

On any given day, I might be doing any of the following with Pompey, 3muddogs, or BBI Dragon:

• Playing poker
• Estimating the size of an extinct cinder cone
• Examining a bus stop shelter for hidden magnetic objects
• Trying to spot a salmon ladder in a natural area
• Translating a message from Navajo to English
• Solving a Sudoku puzzle
• Searching the woods for hidden Tupperware or an old ammunition canister
• Stealthily lifting up lamppost skirts
• Walking a labyrinth in a cathedral
• Lurking near a telephone pole while carrying exactly 67.6 fluid ounces of water
• Sitting on a park bench in a park in Eugene while my sister in Idaho operates a nearby webcam via the Internet
• Cleaning up a local park
• Hiking through the forest and feeling around a desiccated tree stump
• Climbing a rock formation

So, you might ask, am I some kind of government agent? A spy, perhaps? A detective? A scientist? Just crazy?

Nope, I am a geocacher and I am one of more than 5 million people around the world who use Global Positioning System (GPS) technology in a sport called “geocaching”.

In each example, I was trying to “earn” permission to log a “find” on geocaching.com. So far I have logged nearly 1,000.

Geocaching?

I was so happy to discover a sport for nerds! Geocaching started near Portland, OR and has expanded to well over a 1.6 million caches on all seven continents, in over 100 countries. Even International Space Station has a geocache–in locker 218!

This begs the question, what is a “cache” and what might I find? A cache can be a container, an event, a geological formation, a landmark, and even a webcam photo. When the cache is a container, geocachers trade trinkets of various kinds. I once traded a lovely gold coin for a souvenir from the Beijing Olympics, which I then traded for a stuffed animal with a mission to go to Hawaii. To find a cache, I sometimes go online to download latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates to my GPS receiver and then set out to find a container; while at other times, I solve a puzzle to find the coordinates. I often use my iPhone. Other cachers use Droids or Blackberries.

Geocaching Adventures

Let me tell you about one of my favorite geocaching adventures: I was in San Francisco with my sister (aka Pompey), and we looked on geocaching.com to see if there were geocaches nearby (there were). In fact, when we entered the nearest cache’s latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates into Google Maps, we discovered the location was right up the street from us (albeit the steepest street in San Francisco).

The “House of Peace and Grace” turned out to be a “mystery cache” on top of Nob Hill, where we had a 360-degree view of the city. At Grace Cathedral, the cache site, we were required to identify sculptures and artists of some amazing Italian artwork and send our answers to the cache “owner” for credit to log the cache. While we were at the cathedral, we met the bishop and walked the labyrinth in an outdoor rotunda. Without having a purpose, Laurel and I would have missed what we found at the cathedral. You will hear similar comments from most geocachers.

Another favorite cache was the “original stash” plaque, which commemorates the first geocache ever placed. Geocachers are clever—and some create diabolical caches that take some serious observational and thinking skills to find, while others place large containers in fairly easy-to-find areas. The only limit to any hide is the imagination of the cache hider (and some strict rules).

In July 2010, I attended Geowoodstock, where geocachers from around the world gathered to trade stories, trinkets, cache ideas, and look for geocaches together.

Although geocaching has been around for more than 10 years, it is just starting to enter the public domain (now you occasionally hear about it in TV shows and on the news). I learned about geocaching on my round-the-country trip in 2009 and have been hooked ever since. I was happily surprised to find a sport that was ideal for techn0-geeks, who are generally technically savvy, excellent problem solvers, creative thinkers, and quick learners.

I also love that geocaching is inclusive: some caches are wheelchair accessible (referred to as “handicaching”), while others require the skills of a mountain climber or SCUBA diver. With more than 1.6 million caches in place around the world, there are plenty for everyone to find—and in fact if you go on geocaching.com right now, you may be surprised to find some in your neighborhood.

Geocaching and Content Strateg

What does Geocaching have to do with Content Strategy? Geocaching:

• Develops technical skills: I know much more now about maps, GPS technology, public benchmarking and city planning, Web coding, and availability of various tools. I’ll know even more after the next caching adventure.
• Supports relationship building: I once took my boss caching at lunchtime, where we found a couple of caches within walking distance of the office. Our short outing gave us time to get to know one another while doing something fun.
• Fosters team building: One day I planned a surprise geocaching activity for my writing team. I showed up for work with a picnic lunch, and we set out to find two nearby caches, which we couldn’t have found without concentrated teamwork.
• Enhances problem-solving skills: Some geocache hiders (which can be any geocacher, by the way, including me) are especially tricky and like to place caches that take real problem-solving skills. Puzzle caches are good examples. I often feel successful just figuring out how to approach solving a puzzle. Some are easier than others (transposing Braille into letters) and some are wickedly difficult.
• Hones observational acuity: When you know what you are looking for and your GPS has brought you within 5–10 feet of a cache, you learn to start looking for what is out of place (does that pole look EXACTLY like the one next to it? Why is there a pile of sticks in that stump?).
• Provides a wide variety of opportunities for learning: I never would have expected myself to be lying in bed at night pronouncing Navajo words out loud—words that were used by Indian Code Talkers working with our US military to send messages to our troops overseas during WWII.
• Sends us outside: Many people look at geocaching as walking (or biking/hiking/kayaking) with a purpose…and are using it to lose weight!

Oh, and you may call me Karen, but I also answer to Snark-Hunter (a nod to Lewis Carroll’s great poem The Hunting of the Snark).

Preparing for the Intelligent Content Geocaching Adventure

New to geocaching? Then attend my session, Geocaching: Business or Monkey Business?, Friday, February 24 at 7:00am in the Sunset Meeting Room (Hotel Zoso Conference Center, lower level). I’ll teach you everything you need to know to get started, demonstrate key facets of this activity, and prepare you for Saturday’s group adventure (sponsored by Adobe). Bring your laptop, tablet, smartphone, GPS (or just yourself) and learn everything you need to begin participating in this fun, new game. And, if you choose to join us on Saturday morning (meeting the Hotel Zoso lobby at 9:15am, we’ll depart at 9:30am) I’ll guide you to some of the many geocaches hidden in and around Palm Springs.

More information on Geocaching

Listen to my podcast interview for more information.

Our flagship title is The Complete Android Guide, the world’s best selling how-to book about using the Android phone and tablet operating system. We solicit user contributions and dramatically lower the cost of creating, editing, and distributing our titles, which are available on the web (for free) as eBooks for all popular e-Readers and on a variety of mobile devices via the Android and Apple App stores. Authors and editors share in the revenues of our titles, which to date have sold over 7,000 copies.

In this session we explore some real-world examples of companies and nonprofit organizations that have benefitted from user testing—including some entertaining war stories from the usability trenches.

We’ll walk through how to conduct a usability test from start to finish, including both paper- and device-based testing. We’ll also dive into topics such as subject recruiting, task development, video recording, permission forms, incentive payments, and preparing/presenting the results to stakeholders.

While we’ll focus primarily on mobile, most of what we’ll discuss is relevant for desktop user testing as well.

Russ White, former engineering manager for Apple’s product documentation group, will present an overview and demonstration of iBooks Author, and moderate a discussion about intended and unconventional implications for these new and engaging eBooks.

To prepare for this session, we recommend you attend Geocaching: Business or Monkey Business?, Friday, February 24 at 7:00 am.

You’ll leave with a roadmap for choosing platforms, planning app functionality, determining mobile ROI with your audience, and running the project through an internal team or outside development firm.

In 2010, 38% of Americans accessed the Internet from their cell phone. This was up from 25% in 2009 (source: Pew Internet & American Life Project). While younger adults are the heaviest users, mobile Internet access among older adults is growing by leaps and bounds—up 12 percentage points in one year for 30-49 year olds. For these consumers, there’s a whole new world of functionality that didn’t exist just a few years ago. And the choices are endless: dozens of powerful smart phones to choose from—each with its own unique features and style.

For businesses looking to engage consumers via smart phones, the diversity of manufacturers, operating systems, and device capabilities can be overwhelming. Which platforms should you build for? Does your business even need a mobile app? Would a mobile-optimized website be a better investment? How much do mobile apps cost to develop? What’s the difference between the lowest bid and the highest bid?

We will explore these topics and more, beginning with a look at some real-world examples of businesses that are using mobile in surprising ways to grow their reach. We will also talk about how to determine ROI and audience usage, how to decide which platforms to support, and explore the types of functionality that are particularly well-suited to mobile. Finally, we will walk through a process for storyboarding enough of your application functionality to get solid bids from development firms.

In this presentation, we look at some of the successes and mis-directions in the new field of eBook solutions to help you think about the best approach to choosing an eBook solution for your business. 

There are three big lessons to remember to help guide your strategy:  

• Not re-creation — re-imagination. You shouldn’t just reproduce your content for mobile; you should reconfigure and reimagine it for how the user will experience it on a handheld device.
• Find your audience. Figure out where your audience is engaging with your content—and where they gather. Then deliver them ebooks, apps, websites, or even just emails in the place where they’re most likely to engage.
• Scale Quality. One-offs are great for some situations, but it’s a lot harder to build a “Cruise Ship” app than it is to build many eBook “yachts” that ship quickly and can keep you ahead of trends. But you have to remember: when you scale, you must have quality. You must scale quality.

Some examples:

Icebergs: Vook and the “Medical Company”: How a tasty looking business deal became overly complicated; i.e., eBooks aren’t the ultimate solution for everyone—they’re often part of a larger whole. 

The NorthWest Passage: O’Reilly Figures It Out: O’Reilly developed an eBook strategy that encompassed delivery to a diverse variety of mobile devices, platforms, and audience expectation and were able to launch a very successful eBook publishing program for its content in multiple formats, both complicated and straightforward. 

Cruise Ships: Workman and Apps: When Masterpiece Cruise Ship Apps Work for Complicated Content: Workman had struggled with turning its richly laid out book content into digital—until it hit on the perfect strategy for its title 1,000 Places To See Before You Die, which successfully integrated the print and digital versions of its title. 

Great White Sharks: … and When Masterpiece Apps Turn Into Monsters: Sometimes spending a lot of money leaves you with a beautiful app, but also with a program that can’t successfully scale. Examples include the Conde Nast app brouhaha, where the complicated Adobe apps aren’t producing the results Conde Nast is looking for. 

Yachts: The WSJ, NYTimes and Vanity Fair—Shipping eBooks Fast: Newspaper and television and media companies are the future of digital book publishing. In 2012, anyone who has a website and traffic can become a digital book publisher. Here’s what they’re doing right. 

The Narrows: Hanley Wood Works with Complicated Content: B2B publisher Hanley Wood had a very successful web program called “Cost vs. Value” that was part of the subscription for their magazine Remodeler. The web program analyzed the return remodeling efforts can deliver to homeowners on resale. Hanley Wood pursued the traditional channel of producing a PDF based magazine for Remodeler through R.R. Donnelly, but they couldn’t fit this feature into that approach. So they spun it off into a separate app called Cost Vs. Value, which let users check the cost vs. value of remodeling while mobile. They figured out where their readers lived and delivered value to them on the go. 

RadioMan: How Tasting Table Used eBooks to Turn Emails into Books: Daily email company Tasting Table is using eBooks in an innovative way to transform its content type—cooking culture—into eBooks, using Apple’s fixed-layout solution. But TT isn’t just publishing any eBooks—they’re publishing fixed-layout, one-off, complicated books—and only releasing them through iBooks. What to most publishers may seem like a limited window, TT exploits because the goal isn’t to drive revenue through sales, but awareness. So they made their eBook free on iBooks, and picked up big, powerful download numbers, thereby increasing user engagement. 

1. Useful content lasts forever
2. Visual content engages better
3. All content should be portable

Millions of visitors have confirmed that the strategy has worked and users praise having iFixit repair manuals available in the office, in the kitchen, and under the car: on the web, on the phone, and on a tablet.