Outreach - Ingress

Ingress is about 2 things. Taking gaming out of the sitting on your posterior and seeing new things, and meeting new people. This creation of contacts is what led to Operation Bucket List. It was the brainchild of a chap in Denmark called Pascal V, or, as he is known in the Ingress world, Agent @DrKaosDK. The lofty goal for this operation called for the creation of 100 Level 8 portals in 100 different cities in 100 different countries. Creation of a Level 8 portal requires a minimum of 8 agents (players) of Level 8 or higher to gather at the portal and power it up. Powering up 100 was something that would take time, as it would involve travelling to 100 different portals. If more manpower was available, the sensible thing to do would be to split up and cover different areas simultaneously.
No one has accurate information on how many portals are online in the game, but finding cities hosting 100 portals is not easy. In Sri Lanka, it can be done easily enough in Colombo, and it actually has been done, when we executed what we called a P8 Drive, teams of agents in 2 cars following a route starting at Viharamaha Devi park and ending up at a dinner party for a visiting agent from Australia so he could add as many portals as possible to his visited and captured portals statistics. The aim was as many as possible, the result was over 100. However, Colombo already has a large number of standing Level 8 portals, and it wasn't interesting.We weren't sure, however, that the other cities in Sri Lanka would have sufficient portals for us to reach the goal of 100. As luck would have it, Enlightened agents in Kandy confirmed that Kandy had enough portals, and due to relatively low numbers of agents, Kandy portals rarely reached Level 8. So Kandy it would be!
The next challenge was finding enough agents to make the portals. The date set was the 17th of January. The event was turned into a Kandy Meetup for Enlightened, and with that on the cards, agents responded. The Op was a go and off we went.
We all have our mini goals, of course. In my case, I wanted to qualify for my Gold Explorer badge, which is awarded to agents who visit 2000 unique locations. Something plenty of Sri Lankan agents have already done, but it was a landmark on my Ingress journey. I was 12 short when leaving Colombo, and I achieved this goal shortly after reaching Kandy. Impressively, I personally visited 118 portals through the day that I had never visited before, bringing my total tally to 2093 by the time I got home. Others were after other personal goals. Everyone wanted to do their part in creating 100 Level 8 portals.
On 17th January, we set off to Kandy. Initially the idea was to take the train, but I decided it would be easier to go in my jeep, so picking up agents along the route, off I went. The rendezvous was at 10.30am at Peradeniya, and we were only 1/2 an hour late :) We had a slightly worrying moment when a Resistance agent showed up there just before we arrived, but he seemed to have been a random passer by, and he went about his business and we left it alone. Short drives into the suburb of Peradeniya yielded our initial set of Level 8 portals, whereupon we drove into Kandy City and, parking at the City Center, we proceeded on foot. After 50 portals we stopped for lunch, meeting up with Agent @Cyan017 who was on a trip to the temple. After lunch we proceeded to the temple (which had been a battleground in the morning, judging by the reports on Comm, Cyan017 and Resistance agent Yakaa had spent the preceding hours swapping ownership of those portals) and quickly proceeded to make the whole area a bright Enlightened Green. 100 portals completed, we added a few more for good measure and went to a spot overlooking the Kandy Lake called Arthur's Seat for some photographs and refreshing King Coconut.

Those still going at the end of the op at Arthur's Seat

The view of the city from Arthur's Seat.

Operation BucketList2015 was truly remarkable. The countries goal was not met, as most of Africa and the Middle East didn't participate, the game is not played there a lot, probably due to problematic mobile coverage. However, the operation drew participation from 43 countries but over 2675 agents in approximately 140 cities responded, creating some 24,000 Level 8 portal. However, the point of the name of the operation, BucketList, stemmed from agents pointing out at least one portal that agents should visit before they die, and fittingly, Kandy being home to the Temple of the Tooth, the tooth relic of the Enlightened One himself, the Gautama Buddha, this portal was submitted as the Bucket List portal for Sri Lanka.

 

https://plus.google.com/104348060996585659751/posts/CQcvqkqkwgN

The Sri Lankan Situation Report can be found here -

over 100 standing Level 8 portals in Kandy.

The Global operation coordinators released this video showing the world wide effort, called the Exotic Matter Travel Guide The coolest places in the world, shown to you by the coolest people.

It also includes a map link showing all the cities that participated - http://goo.gl/2oz29x

It was a fun thing to be a part of, and getting to know our Kandy brethren, who showed us around and knew the good eating spots, was a definite plus. City Exploration get-togethers are fun, and I look forward to the next one.