State of the Map 2007
I had a great time at the State of the Map Conference in Manchester,UK. As usual, it’s great to finally put faces (and voices) to names/typing.
Henri Bergius and I gave a talk about GeoClue – the slides are here. In particular, we tried to make the case for the application of open geospatial data for location-based systems and a common framework that we are developing currently on the Maemo Platform, but applicable to any mobile or desktop system.
What is the State?
As Mikel pointed out, OSM sometimes seems like it’s on the edge of disaster, and other times, like this weekend, that it’s definitely going to succeed.
Overall, I got a reinvigorated surge of excitement about the project, and also some face-time to discuss details on bits and pieces to work on and add what help I can. Specifically, Schuyler and I talked about better spatial storage and access to the Ways with possible future benefit of moving to PostGIS and queries.
Henri and I pitched our concepts on MaemoSurveyor – an online/realtime OSM collection and editing utility. We also talked with other devs working on similar ideas.
The biggest ‘take-away’ was that OpenStreetMap is beginning to consider it’s future as it moves from primarily collecting to instead correcting data. Therefore, mobile devices can be particularly useful when you are viewing the current map and can make corrections – or at least annotations – as you walk around an area.
Also – I was surprised to hear very little about Asia and nothing about Africa, Australia/New Zealand, and South America. The project is definitely Euro-centric, with mention of the US (not even all of North America). That’s definitely a reflection of the current user/developer base and effort. But I think OSM is getting to a point that it would very much behoove them, and the world, if they start trying to reach out to the broader world and including them in the general discussion and consideration of OSM.
I’m looking forward to the quick spurt of activity that will happen from all the discussion at SotM as well as the long-term continued, exponential? growth of the project.
My name is
July 19th, 2007 at 1:30 pm (#)
Andrew,
There is a pretty significant rift between the US and Europe when it comes to GIS and cartography. Part of the reason is we’ve got ESRI and everyone uses it – despite the costs. The other reason is that the US is pretty darned big. Because of the size of the raw data, there are many things that just aren’t done in the US, like multi-resolution databases (my area of research). Further, our NMA, the USGS, has been hurting for funding because of the other “extra-curricular” activities of our President.
At the recent Association of American Geographer’s Conference (the premier academic conference for Geographers in the US and, to a degree, elsewhere) there saw many presentations by Europeans discussing new methods of data collection and applications of open source software. But these were largely ignored by the US constituents.
July 20th, 2007 at 5:21 am (#)
[...] I got to attend the GNOME conference, GUADEC, this summer as part of my UK travels and conferencing following State of the Map. I’m a long-time linux user and advocate, since second-year of college in 1998. However, after about 3 years of running it as my desktop, I moved to Mac OS X since it gave me the power and configurability I wanted, but without the constant administrative overhead and ‘recompiling my kernel’ to play some new video or check email. Since then I have used Linux servers, but not for my actual desktop. [...]
July 23rd, 2007 at 5:21 pm (#)
@Eric Wolf – I know what you mean about the broader support and interest of open-technologies and data in Europe. I think the european communities have had tougher problems with closed systems and also have been better at rallying around open*.
The GUADEC conference was a good example, where almost all the attendees were European – and look at INSPIRE.
However, the open* efforts benefit everyone, which is excellent. So even though the US AAG members don’t currently embrace open solutions, hopefully they’ll end up learning the benefits (or fall behind as they are locked into closed systems and expensive data).
July 24th, 2007 at 3:02 pm (#)
Yeah. The thing with the AAG is that they are Geographers first-and-foremost. Most of them view GIS as a tool and since they are academics, they get ESRI products basically for free. There’s no incentive to put the effort into creating something new.
Because of this, most of the GIScience development occurs outside of Geography departments. Other departments, like Geology and Economics, find ESRI’s products lacking and they don’t mind writing a little code. Unfortunately, this code doesn’t get rolled into open systems either.
There are a few GIScientists in Geography departments who are open systems supporters. Unfortunately, they are too few and far between.