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 As one member of GeoMAPP said: “All of the Archives are storing this superseded GIS data in dark archives and aren’t really providing access to the datasets and don’t have web mapping interfaces”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.

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!

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.

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.

These are all great advancements, and are blurring the lines between the online digital data and our interaction with the real world. However it’s vital that we realize the real potential application of these technologies and what our legacy is on the entire world. How can we engage with global citizens, understand their needs and desires, and collaborate on building channels of information and tools that serve our individual and collective goals.

Almost two years ago I moved from Michigan, with stints in California, to Washington, DC. I moved at an auspicious time in our nation as the highly contentious presidential election approached at the same time concerns on transparent monitoring of democratic elections and process loomed. Social media and streams such as twitter, smartphones, voice technology and visualization provided the components to demonstrate how we can enable citizens to share their experiences, their problems, and for us to openly see problems and victories as they occurred.

This same concept applies just a well around the world. Open platforms such as Ushahidi have helped bring citizen reporting in elections in India, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan – each to different outcomes – but still in a way that harbinges a more open and transparent government process.

Now through my experiences with CrisisCommons, working with multinational organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations, and the federal and local governments, it’s clear to see how the leading edge of the Where2.0 community can have an amazing and unparalleled impact in providing understanding and change in global and local issues: Environment change, food security, humanitarian development, education, and disaster response.

In looking at the various open government initiatives, the questions arise in looking past the press release to the realized value of sharing data with businesses and citizens. I was struck my the foresight of the Arkansas AGIO team in the realization of how sharing data as broad and wide as possibly helps mitigate their vulnerability to disaster by enabling responders open access to vital information that would assist in response.

This concept is apparent in how OpenStreetMap was successful in Haiti. With the lack of official, government supplied data the best solution was to crowd-source the information from varied sources and rebuild the national data infrastructure, external to the government itself. While it has been unpredictably successful, the value continues to be the open access of the data by any and all organizations, and the eventual adoption by the government itself in rebuilding its capacity. The hope is that the government continues to openly collaborate with the global community in managing and maintaining this data so that the situation doesn’t need to reoccur.

In summary, the community is making a difference. The tools we develop in WhereCamp, IRC, open-source communities, and from companies are changing the capabilities of crisis response and development. My message is to urge the larger community to continue to think how their solutions can have a more broad impact.

If your technology can help a consumer find a great $4 latte, that’s good for your business. If it can also help a child find clean water near their village, that’s good for the world.

This was perhaps most summarized by the experience at Gov2.0 Summit. The conference, held in DC but led by O’Reilly and TechWeb saw the convergence of technorati with government agencies, and beltway consultants. There was Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sitting next to Vint Cerf – old and new, talking about government leveraging social and internet tools – and then the White House’s Macon Phillips, Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra talking about revolutions within the agencies themselves.

I was fortunate to share my thoughts and our work with various agencies and their ability to leverage location and geospatial tools as a common collaboration point between citizens and government agencies and municipalities. Besides, it’s always fun to follow Jack Dangermond on stage.

Upcoming Events

Of course, summer isn’t over. Next Monday I am speaking about geospatial search at the EPA Search Summit here in DC. Then heading over to UK to AGI Geocommunity’09 to really discuss the current state, and possible futures of geospatial technologies.

In general, AGI Geocommunity looks like a great lineup of talks. The different perspectives of problems (UK postcodes & MasterMap anyone?) and solutions (OpenStreetMap did emerge from the UK) is very enlightening.

While in England – I just may hop up to Oxford Geek night on Saturday, September 26 and try and foment some more interest in CrisisCommons and CrisisCampUK. Let me know if you’re around – it would be great to meetup.

We’ll be holding a series of talks on software tools, data formats, techniques, and scholarship of geospatial data. The institute is accepting applications for attendees until September 1 – so you can apply through the UVA Scholar’s Lab.

Through the generosity of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Scholars’ Lab will host a three-track Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship at the University of Virginia Library in November 2009 and May 2010. This Institute will bring scholars, cultural heritage professionals, and software developers together to support and develop geospatial projects and methods in the digital humanities. The NEH’s Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program will support travel and lodging for 40 attendees as well as Institute faculty members. Dedicated funding is available for graduate students as well as faculty attendees.

You can read more on Bethanie’s blog
In addition, to cap off the institute, I will be giving the GIS Day Plenary talk on Wednesday, November 18 in Charlottesville, VA. The event will be open to the public.

It’s truly an honor to be teaching at my alma mater – albeit in quite a different discipline than the one I learned while attending.

Later this week I’m speaking at GeoWeb about the current progress of GeoWeb standards, how far we have to go, and how to get there. We have KML and GeoRSS leading the way in searchable, linkable formats, but still a plethora of Shapefiles strewn about. There are questions of findability, semantic ontologies, durability, and expressiveness. What are the adoption rate of these formats and their utility in the future real-time, mobile, linked, open web?

What else do you think is the good and bad of GeoWeb standards?

Later this week I’ll head back over to Europe for State of the Map (SOTM), the annual OpenStreetMap conference. Three days of talks, demonstrations, brainstorming, demos, and camaraderie. In fact, GeoCommons is a Sponsor again this year (all three years and counting) with a very exciting and interesting surprise on how we’re supporting the conference.

Of all the upcoming conferences (Open Gov Innovations, GeoWeb, FooCamp) I have to admit I think SOTM is the most exciting. All the conferences are about change – incredible advancements that have come about in the past few years – but State of the Map has gone from a nascent concept, even an activist movement against the complex, and onerous licensing requirments of geospatial data in the UK, to a global phenomenon that is being leveraged by individuals, companies, governments, and global NGO’s.

For verification, take a glance at the OSM statistics. Two years ago there were just 8,000 registered users, last year there were 40,000, and today there are more than 124,000 users! The “Year of Edits” video never fails to leave an audience speechless and amazed. The US WhiteHouse is using OpenStreetMap and projects like WikiProject Palestine Gaza show that OSM is the tool people now turn to in a time of crisis and for data.

On Sunday I’m giving a talk about how we’re using OpenStreetMap in GeoCommons and our private GeoIQ servers: “Enterprise and Government Visualisation Analytics using OpenStreetMap”. It’s just one example of many about the power open and crowd-sourced data has in supporting and growing businesses and serving customer and citizen needs. Other companies such as CloudMade, DevelopmentSeed, and itoWorld are also building out the ecosystem that is necessary for open, community projects to have a longevity.

There is an entire suite of tools that has been given form and purpose because of the huge amount of open data. Mapnik and other map rendering engines have data attributes to style; JOSM, Potlatch, and other vector editing tools are beginning to provide more compelling, and non-expert interfaces for modifying topological, geographic data; GPS export, data licensing, navigation and routing are more problems that have been explored and solved through the OpenStreetMap community.

So I’m excited about State of the Map because it means a result of thousands of individuals hard work and aspirations culminating in a meeting to celebrate what has been accomplished and also set goals to much higher, and diverse peaks. It’s proof that a crazy idea of people running around with GPS receivers can make a real impact.

So I just finished attending my first Reboot – and as many people tried to explain before hand, “it’s weird”. Not just European Conference weird with completely different crowd, most attendees speaking in a foreign language (their own, or in English which is foreign to them), varying minor variations on “what matters”, and of course dealing with wall plug adapters.

No, Reboot is weird in a different way. In attempting to learn if it was more traditional conference, or unconference, the answer was never clear and often just “yes” to the multiple choice question. Now I know why they said that, it actually makes sense. But let me hopefully be slightly more lucid.

What is Reboot?

Reboot asks for anyone to submit topics ahead of time, and these are then chosen both by a committee as well as public voting – so it’s a very open system, BarCamp-like, but these talks are then chosen with a speaker and assigned times. So then Reboot becomes more traditional conference with many “stage talks” in a face-forward audience setting. There are some side rooms that will have sessions scheduled that are discussions, but that definitely isn’t something to plan on. So the presentations are more traditional.

But then where Reboot was really surprising is the amount of the conference that happens outside of the sessions. This isn’t just a “hallway track” discussions – they are full-fledged, conference long sessions working on projects. People are dedicated to building things, gathering together information, creating, ideating, collaborating, advising – all during the conference. I’m quite sure a sizable number of Reboot attendees never go to a ’session’ but merely use the venue as a mechanism to gather together many like-minded people who are driven to do something, and leverage the brain-power and thoughts that are coming out of the sessions to act on something bigger.

I love BarCamps – they’re discussion-centric, synergistic, and connect people in networks to carry forward and achieve great things in the future. What Reboot does, by comparison, is not wait. Have an idea? Get started on it now. Or at least be very good in capturing the idea, disseminating it widely and getting it moving as quickly as possible.

Now perhaps with a little better, or at least verbose, explanation of what Reboot was like from my perspective – it also makes the name itself more meaningful. The conference is Reboot, not “Reinstall”, or “Start-over”, or “Redo”, just “Reboot”. When you Reboot something you retain some measure of the longer-term state it was in; applications are installed, configurations are set, and so forth. But what Rebooting does is to go back to a fresh state, with the long-term memory and skills and infrastructure, and get up and running and back into business.

So the conference is about considering what’s around you, what you’ve built and have, and through the sessions, collaborations, projects, whatever, to take a fresh perspective and jumpstart on moving forward.

Action

The theme, or topic, of Reboot 11 was “Action”. Simple, single word: Action. Take action, make something happen. There is a parellel in Tim O’Reilly’s “Work on things that matter”.

The proposed reasoning behind having Reboot focus on “Action” was that we are in a global economic crisis, there are short-term issues such as disasters, corrupt governments, and long-term problems of environmental quality, health, and education. It was a push for us to work on these issues and figure out how we can help enact change.

However I found through talking with many people that had attended several Reboots that there was “nothing new”, or “revolutionary” in many of the topics and that the individual felt they already had a good grasp of what was going on in the space. It was this malais of “amazing things” that made me realize why it’s really time to take action – and Bruce Sterling to cast just enough “Gothic Hi-Tech” to make it solidify”"

We have the tools, we have the power

The tools we’re all using and building with have been in active use for several years now. We have our wikis, blogs, social networks, mobile devices, media devices, connectivity, realtime communications, hardware interfaces, API’s, and more. We have all created an amazing toolset that has been used to create many varied, and some quite crazy, applications, worlds, communities, or systems.

And if we have these mature tools, with many choices and the ability to quickly pull them together to accomplish nearly everything – we have to grow up and realize that these are not just toys or hacks nymore. These are the very tools that can, and are already, making the world of the future.

And we, the technologists, designers, thinkers, citizens of the next generation that are now in control. We have grown up with these tools, and in many ways we’re already using them to change governments, raise communities, run businesses, and live in our world.

Act now

For me, what I took away is to take responsibility and consideration for what I choose to do. Hacks and toys are fun – but as Bruce said, “if it’s not beautiful enough to show your friends, and doesn’t have a narrative attached to it, throw it away”.

Work on things that matter, and make them work by focusing on them like they matter. Your actions will make a difference, and if they don’t – you’re doing it wrong. Put it down, and move onto something else. Collaborate and work together to achieve great, actionable outcomes. You’re an amazing person with many talents, and we can all use amazing people like you. What action are you going to evoke?

It’s for just this reason – the mix of expert crisis responders, with technologists, sociologists, policy makers, and many others that there has been a desire for a venue to bring them together to share experiences, thoughts, and collaborate on innovating together. Mikel and Jesse have talked about Disaster Tech and their lessons learned – but there still needed to be a broader discussion of international, local, regional, fast, slow, prediction, analysis, response, and rebuilding around crisis. So it was very exciting that at Government 2.0 Camp, a meeting of interested people metup and we finally pulled together to make this conference a reality.

CrisisCamp will be a 2-day unconference – June 13 + 14, 2009, held this year jointly in Washington, DC and London, UK – to bring together this wide array of people, organizations, and ideas to connect and build solutions together. In DC, the event will be hosted at the George Washington University School of Policy and the Internet – a wonderfully open and well-situated venue that also hosted TransparencyCamp. Equally as exciting is that there will be a Friday night Ignite session on Crisis experience and tools hosted at the World Bank Headquarters auditorium.

Help make it happen

Besides coming to the camp as an active participant, we’re also looking for sponsors. The costs are quite low, thanks to the generosity of GWU, but there are still fixed costs to cover security, A/V equipment, rentals, and potentially food for attendees in order to keep them fueled and together to collaborate. Please contact us via email (crisiscommons (at) gmail.com) or through the sponsorship page directly. We truly appreciate your support and will make sure everyone knows about it – they will appreciate it as well.

In addition – we’re looking for Ignite speakers. While the unconference itself will be open with no preset agenda, the Ignite talks are fixed, 5-minute lightning talks meant to highlight particular stories and lessons that you would like to share with the attendees. Again, email us – crisiscommons (at) gmail.com – to let us know that you would like talk.

I realize this may come as a late notice – things have been very hectic with Where2.0 and other conferences, but we truly hope you can come to this amazing unconference to share your thoughts, tools, experiences, and help build the next generation of crisis techniques.

Signup here for CrisisCamp

For me – the most compelling thing about Where2.0 this year is seeing the round-trip evolution of GeoHackers 3 years ago, to viable, growing businesses. It’s been widely recognized that the Where2.0 follow-on, WhereCamp, is where innovators and thinkers spend the weekend considering what the future of location technology is – but now it’s even becoming mainstream.

Steve Coast went from a crazy idea, to a global community, to a funded-global business and is talking about Ubiquitous GeoContext. Dennis Crowley has done it before and doing it again and discussing the social-locative ghosts of past and future. DC is being represented by Eric Gunderson, Tim “Chippy” Waters’ open-source map rectifier is being used in major libraries – and Chris Spurgeon, well, his talks are awesome and the perfect way to end the conference with Maps in Space. And there are even more that I believe will be announced soon.

Besides the evolution of Where2.0 – there is a cadre of immersive, submersive, subversive, pervasive, innovative, locative, mobile, design-principled, compelling.

And there may even be some cool locative games to join in on.

(disclosure: I am a member of the Where2.0 conference selection committee and as such obviously think everyone speaking is awesome and should be heard by as many people as possible.)

Preparation

I worked on synthesizing good and bad points from other panels I had experienced. They are often primarily mini-presentations rather than discussions. Our panel met up twice at SXSW before the actual session and each time was very relaxed with interesting discussion. So much so that I had to cut them off to save the “ah-ha” and “oh really?” moments for the actual panel itself.

In preparation, I had each of the panelists send me a bio, their thoughts on a couple of questions, and to gather links of example sites or tools that we could show off during the session. In addition, I prepared a series of talking points that I wanted to cover, various bullets on sub-points to cover, and an overall goal.

Outside of the panelists, other people submitted questions via Google Moderator and emails that helped provide different viewpoints.

Lessons Learned

All of these preparations served very well, though I learned a few important points for future panelists: Prepare a clear, definitative first question. In spite of my well layed out series of bullet points, a short overview and introduction to the topic, the moment I turned to the panel to ask the first question it slipped out of my head.

Another lesson was that while having a good set of links prepared to show, it distracts from the conversation itself and turns into a small demo-fest. It would have been better to leave the links for people to discover on their own and focus on the discussion.

Other thoughts on how to run a good panel were logistics imposed by the conference itself. During our preparatory meetings, we would sit around a table, face one another, and it would be a very natural flow. Body language and eye contact has a tremendous impact on connecting with a speaker and allowing for a multiple-person discourse.

By contrast, panelists sit at a flat table, facing the audience, and have difficulty seeing one another. They either have to turn their body awkwardly to face other panelists, or look to the audience and not notice the panel.

For a better panel, like interviews, it seems better if there were chairs in a semi-circle and could easily see one another and naturally discuss. Wearing head or lapel mics would also create a more natural feel and better discusion.

During the panel, I monitored Twitter for “neocarto” and “neocartography”. Most relevant messages were about attendees having difficulty finding the venue (it was located in the Hilton instead of the Convention Center) as well as waking up late (10AM on Sunday).

Another request that several panelists made was to encourage the audience to ask questions at any time during the panel. The first question didn’t come until about 35 minutes, but once that bubble was broke – there were several others. It worked out fine, but retrospect, I would have planted a question with a friend to make sure and ask after about 20 minutes if no one else stepped up.

Outcomes

The 60 minutes went really quickly. We definitely didn’t get to each of the topics I was hoping to, though we did address the primary issues and questions raised other good points. I’ll follow up in another post about the specific points of the neocartography discussion.

I’m also at the American Association of Geographers next week on two panels – so it will be interesting to compare how those panels operate.

A couple of months ago I post-deadline submitted a panel suggestion called “Neocartography: Mapping Design and Usability Evolved” to SXSWi and asked for people to help by voting for it. I was notified very late that room was made and the panel got the green light. We had to tweak the panelists and topic somewhat from the original proposal, and thank you to those that helped promote the idea and make it happen.

The goal of the panel is to explain and explore the next generation of mapping tools combined with traditional cartographic techniques to encompass modern capabilities and user expectations. The official description is:

Designers are dropping maps into their applications with little concern for usability or design and users are underwhelmed by just another map mashup. We need to move beyond the simple pin-dropping and consider appropriate mapping interfaces. This panel will look at the current and emerging tools to provide compelling geographic interaction and visualization.

The Panel

The goal was to find panel members that represented different aspects of leading thought behind web map design and usability. A cutting edge artist and designer building industry leading interfaces, a usability expert and lead of the industry changing and most broadly used web mapping platform, and a researcher and formal cartographer bringing traditional techniques to the future. This was quite a daunting task, and am fortunate that just a such a representation was possible to bring to SXSWi:

• Mike Migurski, technology lead at Stamen Design
• Elizabeth Windram, User Experience Designer for Maps at Google
• David Heyman, Web Cartographer at AxisMaps and lecturer at University of Wisconsin

Each panelist is an expert in their own right and offers incredible insight, experience and advice. Brought together they can compare ideals, methods, techniques and tools. But with only 60 minutes, what topics to focus on? This is where you can help.

The Participation

While I have my own ideas of topics to discuss, I would like input from the world on what topics around mapping, cartographic design, and usability are on your minds. Please check out the Google Moderator topic I created. Create new questions or suggestions, vote pertinent ones up and boring ones down. I’ll be using this list to formulate the questions or topics the panel will be discussing.

The Anticipation

SXSWi is in just under two weeks – so there isn’t much time. Get your suggestions in now. In addition to the Google Moderator I’ll be using Twitter during the panel to accept additional suggestions or topics. And we’ll make sure to record the whole thing to share with everyone afterwards.

Last week I attended and presented at the North Carolina GIS Conference in Raleigh, NC. It was a different conference from the ones I typically attend. It is a much more regional and GIS-focused conference than Where2.0, State of the Map, or Location Intelligence. The attendees are primarily county, regional, or state GIS coordinators, users, managers and some federal GIS experts from Fish & Wildlife or USGS.

Last week I attended and presented at the North Carolina GIS Conference in Raleigh, NC. It was a different conference from the ones I typically attend. It is a much more regional and GIS-focused conference than Where2.0, State of the Map, or Location Intelligence. The attendees are primarily county, regional, or state GIS coordinators, users, managers and some federal GIS experts from Fish & Wildlife or USGS.

What’s interesting for me was the perspective of very local government users that are working on the street and block level. They are working under constrained budgets and with varying levels of mandates coming down from above. The DC GIS department is a great model to follow but doesn’t have the same levels of management above it that a county-GIS department would in western North Carolina. It’s this hierarchy that is both onerous as well as potentially empowering.

Individual GIS departments are seeing an increase in repeated data requests, often for the same data from the same receiving organizations. One way to address this is to easily offer the data through web site or services – however this often goes against the grain of politics and feelings of ownership in an organization that choose to require manual approval of data requests.

In fact, this was notable during presentations and discussions that GIS departments referred to their users as “data producers” and “data requestors”. The concept of a simple “data consumer” was not understood or welcomed, despite the fact that the data is public and free of license.

One solution is the development several state level initiatives that are seeking to provide central repositories of data, tools, or collaboration. Through these state portals, regional offices are encouraged (or mandated) to upload their information on a regular basis. Then, subsequent data requests go through this clearinghouse. One example is NC Street Map. However, you’ll quickly realize (after following that link) that these portals are not nearly as encouraging as the name would imply, despite sounding like the increasingly beloved OpenStreetMap.

In order to get an account, you still must still fill out a ‘request’, and then request data. This may make it easier for government agents to more easily identify data sources, but not necessarily, or easily, get it or use it.

Open Initiatives

Attending the conference were 4 authors of what is known as “NSDI Proposal #2“, or as they jokingly call it opeNSDI. The objective being to open up these, and other, data clearinghouses. Focus on sharing data and interoperability instead of merely vendor specific solutions or tools.

There are varying viewpoints on how federal money, say via a Stimulus package, should be requested and parceled out across the state. County GIS employees are limited, or non-existant, in many departments. Therefore, there are no resources to provide building out a local infrastructure to share and manipulate data. The first request is to pledge to fund a new employee in each county.

The response to this is that this new employee would quickly be repurposed and pulled off of something as inconsequential as data sharing. In addition, hoping for long-term funding rarely works out, and if this job was created would probably be removed in the first round of cutbacks. Instead the idea is to receive a one-time funding to each county to implement a data sharing system that serves local needs as well as can be aggregated up to the state and federal levels.

Either way, it’s not an easy solution, but fortunately there are some really innovate and ingenious pioneers that are forging the path and providing best practices. Counties such as Mecklenburg have built an entirely open-stack portal (read about it on Tobin’s Fuzzy Tolerance blog). This effort was definitely the outcome of very hard work and foresight, but fortunately it’s being recognized as such (including winning the award at the conference for best GIS website in the state) and hopefully encourages others to follow along.

River roots

One of the most exciting applications of modern tools and local efforts was from Wansoo Im, famous for his public toilets mashup with and GIS4Kids.

He’s been working with RiverKeepers, a non-profit organization that monitors for river pollution, in collaborative mapping. IMRivers . Beyond simple placemarking sites, each of these individual instances is then aggregated to the national River Network. Unfortunately, none of the sites syndicate their data via a feed or API. So the information is effectively locked into these portals.

Other interesting talks included Michael Waltuch, an ESRI veteran, on Books as an Paradigm for User Interface Design and Rob Trickel from the Division of Forest Resources on Digital Aerial Sketchmapping. There are still plenty of issues facing the application and utility of geospatial tools. Especially for small organizations and how to face increasing consumption of public data, decreasing budgets, and incredibly advancing technology. Overall, the conference was a well put together and provided valuable insights into local and regional GIS issues and future paths.

This spring my conferences take me through nearly the entire gamut of possibilities in next generation mapping. This week I will be at the North Carolina GIS Conference in Raleigh talking about “Lessons Learned from Neogeography Applied to GIS.” We are finally beginning some very poweful conversations between traditional Geographers, GIS experts, technologist and developers in determing how best to utilize our respective strengths to produce better applications, services, and data. My presentation will address some of the common criticisms of Neogeography that are being addressed and in the process offer insights into the effects these solutions will have on the future of GIS.

Geo for non-geo’s

Two weeks later I’m speaking at DrupalCon with Jeff Miccolis, locally here in DC, on Drupal and the Geospatial Web. We will be discussing the specifics of geospatial data and services and Drupal modules and practices that are able to leverage these capabilities in CMS’s and portals.

The following week, March 13-17, I’m particularly excited about as I’m moderating a panel at SxSW Interactive titled “Neocartography: Web Usability and Design Evolved”. Designers, usability and interaction experts are utilizing more geospatial data and visualization in web applications and it’s important to consider the options, impacts, and potential future paths that they can help discover. More on this later.

Back into the lion’s den

A week after SxSW I am heading to Las Vegas for the American Association of Geographer’s Meeting. Last year Jesse Rouse shared that myself and my work was a particular topic of interest in the participatory GeoWeb session at the AAG meeting in Boston. So I’m very interested to partake in a couple of panels on neogeography and open-source geospatial software. In addition, I’ll be presenting at paper on OpenStreetMap and collaborative, participatory mapping.

And now for something completely different

A bit of a breather through April, where I’ll be speaking at JSConf here in DC on something not geospatial. JavaScript for vehicle simulation and immersive worlds, based on my work at Realtime Technologies working on SimCreator. There is a bevy of brilliant JavaScript innovators and leaders that are finally getting a chance to gather around what has become the most ubiquitous, but under-discussed, programming language.

In between those conferences there is also the triumverate of TransparencyCamp, Government2.0 Camp, and eDemocracy – obviously a very hot topic in the geospatial and broader technology worlds. It’s intriguing that there are 3 separate camps, all run by different groups with varying agendas and a chance to be the leaders in gathering people. Even *camps can have politicking.

I’m excited about all these chances to brainstorm with very brilliant people from a variety of domains. From GIS, to designers and open-source developers, Geographers, and goverati. Between the varied concepts, principles, and needs we can distill commonalities and collaborations. So please, check out my Dopplr profile and let me know if we can meet up at any of these conferences!

As part of the talk I’ll be showcasing the evolution of user-contributed content via mobile devices from VoteReport to the upcoming InaugurationReport and NavigatingWashington sites, and how developers and designers can integrate these ideas, and tools into their web applications.

Of course – as I mentioned the other day there are 2 other geo-meetups that evening, depending on your flavor of mapping you’re looking for:

• Washington Map Society – Buccaneer’s Atlas
• Geosemantic Web Meetup

And on Monday evening, the 19th, we’re having a Disaster Tech/Geo meetup courtesy of @williamv. Probably at Tryst, in Admas Morgan – but stay tuned for more details. Just to add a little craziness to your inauguration week.

Jim Stogdill and I had a conversation a week ago about the new iPhone 2.2 firmware that includes walking directions as well as similar projects in the space. In my Where2.0 Report I talked about the convergence of mobile devices and the effect on multi-modal routing: your phone changing from auto to walking to metro directions based on your context. However, I didn’t go in-depth on example projects and services.

Jim posted my notes of our discussion on O’Reilly Radar. So check them out there. It’s just an overview, but let me know if I missed an interesting project or story about open-data (or lack of).

It’s been mentioned elsewhere – but wanted to remind you to work on your Where2.0 proposals over the US Thanksgiving Holiday. They are due on Monday.

Each year Where2.0 has demonstrated the migration of location technology from the bleeding edge and locative media art to mainstream businesses and practices. Yet we have just begun to realize the potential. Where2.0 is the conference to hear the newest announcements, learn from experts in the industry, and meet and collaborate on new projects and ventures.

I know people out there are doing amazing work on bringing advanced climate change analysis coupled with user-contributed data to pinpoint carbon emissions or the changing migratory paths of endangered species, repurposing outdated mobile phones for biological sensors, application of geospatial tools to community building, humanitarian and disaster response and citizen media, immersive, augmented reality through wearable and interactive devices – and of course the holy grail, how to realize a viable business plan amongst all this great potential.

Submitting a proposal is easy to do and speaking at Where2.0 is incredibly rewarding. You’ll find it difficult to find such an absorbed and forward thinking crowd to share your work with.

So if you want to ask anything about new and upcoming GeoWeb technologies, communities using geospatial technology, or businesses that are growing in the various spaces of geodata, locative mobile, or even just cool hacks then definitely register!

My apologies to people in timezones that makes this occur on your Friday evening. Since it’s participate at home, you can enjoy it over a nice beverage or meal.