Highlights included:
– This great video by Dave Socky of Charles Kahn crawling through CaveSim:
Dave Socky's video
– Over 200 people explored CaveSim for free at Convention this year.  That’s about 1/3 of all registrants!
– We worked with 22 under-privileged high school students (and 7 college students) in the Upward Bound program for about 2.5 hours on Monday.  Most of the students had never been caving before, and they had a fantastic time exploring CaveSim.  They asked brilliant questions, and it was a great opportunity for us to teach the general public about cave conservation.  A big thank-you to Mary Sue Socky for helping us so much by teaching during this great event.
Upward Bound students
Dave gives a closing talk to Upward Bound students, telling them to pursue education in order to create things like CaveSim. Photo by Juli Jackson

– We worked with the JSS for 3 hours on Monday. In addition to exploring CaveSim, they experienced sinkholes with a hands-on activity, did patient packaging and transport with a real sked, played with real cave phones (field phones), played a bat migration game, and played a bat ecolocation game.

Sinkhole activity        JSSandSked
Dave leads sinkhole activity. Girl in blue eats some sugar!     Dave teaches patient packaging. Photos: Juli Jackson

– Quite a number of university students from right here on campus have stopped by during the last few days to explore CaveSim. We’ve had several football players explore caves for the first time, and it’s a good thing their first trip was not in a real cave!

BeatriceInCaveSim
Beatrice (Dave’s godsister) explores CaveSim.

– I brought 3 high school students with us from Colorado. These 3 students (Brian, Emily and Sierra) are all cavers back home, and they’re learning about educating others about cave conservation. They’ve done a great job of teaching the younger participants.

Sierra and Emily (center) help JSS participants get geared up while Brian (seated) runs the computer and Dave (right) looks on. Photo by Juli Jackson
– The wife of a long-time NSS member experienced caving for the first time by exploring CaveSim. She told us CaveSim was the highlight of the convention for her, since she had never been caving before!

The woman above was thrilled to make her first caving trip in CaveSim.

– We’ve had quite a number of people compete in the speleolympics thus far. Our best scores so far are:
Women: 0 damage, 2mins, 41secs
Men: 1 damage, 2mins, 7secs
Youth: 0 damage, 2mins, 49secs

Field phone challenge
The field phone challenge involves running communications wire and military telephones through CaveSim. Photo: DJ
Thanks to our fuel-money sponsors: Dick Blenz, SpeleoSoapSWAYGOInner Mountain OutfittersMET GrottoYork GrottoBaltimore GrottoPhilly GrottoBoston Grotto, the Pennsylvania Cave Conservancy, the Cave Conservancy Foundation, the East Tennessee GrottoCentral NJ GrottoFlittermouse GrottoCentral Connecticut GrottoCommander Cody Caving ClubCentral Ohio GrottoCleveland GrottoPhiladelphia GrottoNittany Grotto, Frederick Grotto, Charlottesville GrottoPine Mountain GrottoFranklin County GrottoHelderberg-Hudson Grotto, and Bubble Cave LLC.