It’s a big month for Groundspeak, the Seattle company in the middle of the geocaching boom.

On Saturday Aug. 18, a little more than a week from now, geocachers from around the world will descend on Groundspeak’s home in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood for the 2012 Geocaching Block Party, on International Geocaching Day.

Geocaching is a worldwide phenomenon in which people with GPS devices challenge themselves to hunt for containers known as caches, containing log books, trackable objects and other items. Groundspeak operates the Geocaching.com website, the definitive resource for locating caches, tracking progress, and connecting with other members of the geocaching community.

In this installment of our new Launch Pads video series, Groundspeak co-founder Bryan Roth gave us a tour of the Groundspeak headquarters, starting with the treasure chest cache in the lobby that serves as a destination for geocachers — “Mecca,” in the words of one person who signed the logbook. As you’ll see in the video above, the company has a unique and fun culture, in the spirit of the activity it promotes.

One interesting office idea that didn’t make it into the final cut of the video: Groundspeak installed iPads on the walls outside its conference rooms to display its reservation system. People reserve times from their computers, and the system then displays the reservations and current meetings on the iPad screens. Roth explained that it was cheaper and easier than custom solutions.

For more on Groundspeak and geocaching, also see this interview with CEO Jeremy Irish last year.

Have a cool ‘launch pad’ you’d like to show off? Let us know by emailing tips@geekwire.com.

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