Groundspeak
| Groundspeak, Inc.
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Inc. |
| founding | September 2000 |
| Seat |
Seattle ( Washington ), United States
|
| management |
Bryan Roth and Elias Alvord |
| Number of employees | 78 employees (2016) |
| Website | www.geocaching.com |
Groundspeak, Inc. ( ) is a for-profit company founded in September 2000 and headquartered in Seattle , Washington state . It operates the largest geocaching platform on the Internet, Geocaching.com . According to the company, over 15 million geocachers are registered on the portal (as of February 2016).
Departments and personnel structure
Around 80 employees, called Lackeys (German: Lakaien ), take care of the maintenance and design of the website, as well as financial and legal matters, marketing and advertising. Groundspeak also develops software for geocaching for use on navigation devices , cell phones , PDAs and smartphones .
They are a group of more than 450 volunteer working for Groundspeak players, the community volunteers , supported the translation of the website, the apps and the newsletter create -Contributions check newly submitted geocache listings and activate, work as presenters or other special tasks perceive.
Public influence
Groundspeak actively maintains contacts with the Seattle city council . This has made it possible to have the annual "International Geocaching Day" declared by Groundspeak since 2013 as Seattle Geocaching Day, the city's official public holiday .
Trackables
In addition, Groundspeak sells and manages trackables . On the one hand, there are geocoins and metal tags on a ball chain, so-called travel bugs , to which objects can be attached and which geocachers take from one geocache to another. The distance covered by both variants can be traced on Geocaching.com or other websites.
Groundspeak offers cooperations on a commission basis for other companies in order to use geocoins and trackables as advertising media. So far, such partnerships have come about with Expedia , Geico , Jeep , John Grisham , Magellan Navigation , the television network PBS , Ranger Rick (children's mascot of the NWF ) and Timberland . In Germany there was two cooperation between Groundspeak, Magellan and Techniker Krankenkasse , where special trackables were distributed to all registered participants as part of the campaigns “Always on the move” (2010) and “Become a fitness scout!” (2011).
Side projects
In addition to the geocaching platform, Groundspeak also operates the platforms Waymarking.com and Wherigo .com .
Main entrance on the office floor (2010)
Corridor area with visualization of your own mission (2010)
The workplaces of the "Volunteer Support Team" (2015)
The workplaces of app and software developers (2015)
Server room for Geocaching.com by Groundspeak (2015)
Seattle Geocaching Day Proclamation Deed (2013)
Presentation in the company's reception area on cooperations as advertising measures (2015)
Web links
- Groundspeak platforms: Geocaching.com , Waymarking.com and Wherigo.com
- Article in the Spiegel "Geocaching pioneer: Treasure hunt for big money" from May 2, 2014
- Podcast interview with Lackey Annika Ledbetter “Inside Groundspeak” from August 18, 2015
- Interview with co-founder Bryan Roth on cachingwelt.de on February 2, 2013
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.geocaching.com/
- ↑ Who are the Volunteers? on Geocaching.com, accessed February 22, 2016.
- ↑ Podcast interview , minute 00: 25.52 to minute 00: 26.58.
- ↑ Short message ( memento of March 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on the TK Facebook site , accessed on March 30, 2016.