Openness
As explained by Lisa Spiro, value of Openness describes a project’s “commitment to the open exchange of ideas, the development of open content and software, and transparency.” In other words, it refers to how well a project fosters connectivity and transparency between its makers and participants. Allowing anyone to participate in or utilize a project is extremely important, since it allows others to not only benefit from the intended takeaways of the project, but also because participants can help the project develop and grow by adding their own input towards it.

The EagleCaching project does an exemplary job at exemplifying the value of openness, since its very nature allows any person in the world to participate in it. The intended audience of the project may be just the students at American University, but anyone in the world can go to the campus and participate in the EagleCaching project. EagleCaching is open and available to anyone who wishes to participate in it, regardless of who they are and where they’re from. While the intended purpose of the project is to educate people about the history of the buildings on campus, it also allows participants to gain a familiarity of the campus while going from cache to cache.

The EagleCaching project is based on the worldwide Geocaching activity, where individuals use provided locations and hints to locate small capsules hidden in thousands of different locations all over the planet. Any individual with internet access can find the locations and clues on the Geocaching website, and this openness to everyone is one of the most notable key features that EagleCaching inherited from Geocaching. It not only allows anyone to participate, but it also allows others to propose new potential Geocache locations.