Congratulations, you’ve succeeded at the first third of your life. How are you going to succeed in the next third? – David Rubenstein

If you read any of my posts over the last week you may have noticed a few interesting checkins and comments from well know places and people. I was incredibly fortunate to be an invited delegate to the Academy of Achievement summit in Washington, DC. It was a singularly unique opportunity to dine with US Supreme Court Justices, a personal tour of the capitol building from members of congress, and generally inspired by intelligence, capability and surprising humility of the world’s most accomplished people.

The Academy of Achievement is an organization celebrating its 50th anniversary connecting and recognizing individuals that have undoubtedly achieved renown. Nobel laureates, public heads of state, Pulitzer prize authors, and numerous other world changing leaders of our time. Once a year they gather to induct a new class of honorees who then share their experience and insights to the next generation of leaders and changers, or as they referred to us “troublemakers”. The class ranged from well-respected leaders such as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Congressman Edward Markey, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor to innovative creators such as Sal Khan, Nobel Laureates Roger Tisen and Adam Riess.

There were extremely impressive colleagues in the delegates as well. You can read about Khaled’s work providing communications to the rebels in the overthrow of Gaddafi. Bassem Bouguerra left his engineering job at Yahoo to rebuild Tunisia; Humairai Wakili built an NGO to incubate women-owned companies in Nablis, Palestine; and Josh Nesbit‘s use of mobile phones to dramatically alter access and capabilities for medical support around the world are just a few examples of the delegates who are so impressive they challenge you to evaluate what is worth working on.

Held this year in DC, the entire summit was shaped by the current US politics and pending elections. Regardless of the of the ideology of the speaker, nearly everyone shared their frustration and concern about the deep divide by the US leadership. Yet despite this current concern there is admiration of what “America” is – more than a country or set of single laws, but of an idea that is permeating more of the world each day and particularly by the people that are currently shaping their own countries.

The Academy of Achievement publishes the talks online through iTunesU and on their website. Over the four days of intense discussions I’ve had many new inspirations and reflections that I will be writing about more.

Any event that ends dancing with Aretha Franklin, Colin Powell and others is undoubtedly an amazing experience.

Cross-posted from the GeoIQ Blog

Last Week I participated in a panel with spatial archival experts at the at the Society of American Archivists. Led by Butch Lazorchak of the Library of Congress, and also joined by Steve Morris from GeoMAPP, and John Faundeen from USGS, the panel was a full spectrum discussion of “Geospatial Data Preservation” ranging from the Library of Congress’ $10 million acquisition and access to the infamous Waldseemüller 1507 map Universalis Cosmographia of ‘America’ USGS’s environmental conditions for storing historic satellite imagery to GeoMAPP’s work in gathering time-stamped state geospatial data. Butch in particular provided an inspiring overview on what’s special about Spatial – density of data, representation vs data, and the difficulty in capturing interactivity of more modern digital maps.

The Archivists were a new community to me – people that are passionate about the capturing and storing of data – often until the end of time! But they also vary in their core missions – often diverging on the utility of the captured data and information. Very few seem to be really thinking about archives as a useful resource today and only focusing on the long-time storage and eventual access of the data by some unknown entity. As one member of GeoMAPP said: “All of the Archives are storing this superseded GIS data in dark archives and aren’t really providing access to the datasets and don’t have web mapping interfaces”

Clearly, we think a bit differently about archiving – choosing to focus foremost on access to data which will result in improved archiving of data, distribution, and analysis on utility and benefit. My presentation Maps as Narratives: Making Spatial Archives Accessible

focused on the concept that maps have been, and are increasingly a vital resource for people in their daily lives and work. By providing users tools to access and use historic and realtime data, we can then capture this data and provide it to other users and data repositories.

Particular to internet feeds, and social media we can’t easily predict what data will be useful. Neogeographers create visualizations of twitter streams, photos, foursquare checkin’s, friend locations. How do we know which of these are the modern correspondances of tomorrow’s US President or Global business leader? Through easy mechanisms for sharing data and maintaining links we can begin tracking this information in it’s varied forms, providing better insight and archiving of data for later reuse, whether it is tomorrow or in 100 years.

I’m enroute to the mile-high city of Denver that boasts a plethora of geo-talent for WhereCamp5280. Today there is a ‘hackfest‘ at CU Denver Campus, then on Friday a full day of discussion, brainstorming and defining the future of geo.

It’s almost half-way between Where2.0 and WhereCamp5280 is stacked to be an interesting discussion of the current state of affairs in what has been called “the year of location”. And given the cadre of people that will be coming to WhereCamp5280, such as Waze, MapQuest, WeoGeo, Safe, Google, USGS, ESRI, numerous other geo-geniuses, and of course, a cadre of FortiusOne engineers – we definitely should have some fascinating discussions. I hope if you’re nearby you can make it too!

Unfortunately I missed State of the Map in Girona, Spain this year. I seem to be making every other one – which means I’ll be attending the first State of the Map US being held in Atlanta this coming weekend.

The United States had a much later start in OpenStreetMap than Europe and other parts of the world – but we also have a long history of open-government data that created less of a demand or need for grassroots mapping. However, the benefit of this culture is that the US government, from the local and state levels, all the way to the Federal level, are interested in utilizing OpenStreetMap and connecting with the community.

I’ll be speaking on Sunday about the necessity, and benefits, of moving beyond merely open data to instead focus on collaborative data gathering and mapping. Through our work on GeoCommons, OpenStreetMap, and deployments of data sharing to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Haiti and how citizens with organizations need to engage together in dicussing the need for data, methods for collectively gathering, and ways to open share and capture feedback in order to improve the overall quality as well as impact of open data.

OpenStreetMap has understood this from the beginning in promoting through “mapping parties“. These parties had the explicit goal of mapping a region and training new mappers, but implicitly they created a community of like-minded local citizens that self-identified their desire to spend time and energy in working together to gather and open data. It is basic initiatives like this that are vital at the local and regional levels.

If you’re near Atlanta, or can come by to the conference, hope to see you there. And regardless, think about how you can connect within your community of interest to start a dialogue and collaboration around open data.

Next week I’ll be at Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA) conference joining a panel of illustrious peers that should result in quite a rousing discussion on open data, standards, viable business markets, and good ol’ neogeography. Peter Batty is moderating and includes James Fee, Ron Lake, Steve Coast, and myself.

I’m also giving a talk in the afternoon on Tuesday at GITA about crowd-sourced and volunteer crisis response. I will be discussing the history behind GeoCommons as a means for fast, collaborative map production and analysis, and the amazing work by the global communities such as OpenStreetMap, CrisisMappers, CrisisCommons, Ushahidi, and others as it applies to the advancement of geospatial technology and where it’s leading.

Camp Time!

In talking with the GITA organizers about the communities that responded to Haiti, and in general the ground-swell around technologists in crisis response, they were interested in supporting a CrisisCamp as part of the Conference. So I’m excited to say that there will be a CrisisCamp in Phoenix, Arizona on the Sunday, April 25th before the conference at the convention center. You can register at the EventBrite page

Obviously with so many geospatial people around, it’s going to be very map focused. It’s a great opportunity to look at some of the possible integration of the crowd-sourced data and community tools into more traditional, and analytic, platforms. In CrisisCampDC, volunteers such as Scott Broo did a slope analysis of LIDAR data in analyzing IDP camp placement and potential flood areas. How would GIS experts coordinate with the larger CrisisCommons community to identify and support these types of efforts. What are the other potential uses of LIDAR, remote imaging, surveying, mobile reported data, field analysis and paper map printing. And beyond just maps, we’ll be picking up on the number of CrisisCommons projects that continue to grow and evolve. And if you have ideas, suggest some or discuss on the CrisisCamp Phoenix Wiki page.

If you’re a technologist, volunteer, geospatial expert, NGO, government, or just interested, sign up and stop by and join the community! I hope to see you at CrisisCamp GITA Phoenix, or at the conference itself.