Tuesday, November 17. 2009

NE URISA: Trends in Making Integrated Information More Accessible

Yesterday, to start off Geography Awareness Week, the New England chapter of URISA held a one-day, focussed conference on integrating data (website). I did the keynote and I think the key takeaways included:

- Authoritative data is in the eye of the beholder: it's people's perception of the quality of the data, not its actual quality, that seems to matter.
- The traditional GIS user pyramind (Doer, User, Viewer) is going on a diet; it's "middle" (the user/typical desktop user segment) is getting smaller as more users migrate up or down. The reason? Changes in IT rather than changes in geospatial technology.
- That change in shape of the pyramid means a realigment for software providers, users and educators.
- The "GIS driver's license" (knowing how to run the software) is not necessarily enough in these times to get a job. "More" in terms of IT, database or discipline knowledge separates one from the "dime a dozen" who can run the software

The session on CityStat and 311 (non-emergency city information lines) included speakers from Hartford, CT, Boston and Springfield, MA. All three cities have successful implementations, thought city workers don't seem to like the accountability CityStats force upon them. Of note to me:

- The decision to makes CityStat and/or 311 data available to the public varies from city to city. The City of Boston offers such data, but has found little use of it by constituent and public interest groups. They hope it will be used more as the city begins to offer the data via services.
- One big plus of 311 is that the call centers can handle a huge percentage of calls that otherwise would go to the departments - especially tax and document questions (how much do I owe? When is it due? How do I get a birth certificate).
- Simply collecting all the data leads to action. In Boston a correlation was found between street light outages and car break ins. Hence, if a light is out, residents shouldn't park under it! Another lesson residents may learn: report the outage to the city via 311!

A session on permitting and document management was a bit over my head, but I did note:

- It's not uncommon for GIS staff to be excluded in exploring and choosing a permitting system, which causes integration challenges later.
- In one town automating permitting did not actually speed up the time for permits to be approved - mostly because the processing in the department that handled them stayed the same.

The final session of the day, A Taxonomy of Web Mapping Applications, gave a great state of the art in Web mapping and Web GIS. Of note:

- The Massachusetts Historical Commission's apps, based on Google Maps for data collection and Maptitude for the Web for browsing the database illustrated how easy to use tools and the ability to tap into data served by others could get workable solutions up and running quickly and relatively easily. The key limitation? No control over data from those outside services.
- The discussion of the beta of MIT's Whereis? highlighted how to integrate ArcGIS Server with Google Maps. Of note: the Google data was not "good enough" so MIT simply "blocks it out" for the areas of MIT. The beta site gets up to 2000 hits per hour. (Hammered!). It takes just 30 minutes to recreate the MIT tile cache, so those behind it can do clever things - like color the maps for holidays, as they did for Halloween.

About 100 people attended the low cost event in Sturbridge, MA. I continue to advocate for small focussed events. This one was certainly a success.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Conferences at 07:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, November 2. 2009

NEURISA Tackles "Making Integrated Information More Accessible"

New England URISA is hosting a one-day event November 16, 2009 titled "Trends in Making Integrated Information More Accessible" at the
Sturbridge Host Hotel, Sturbridge, MA. The agenda includes three session exploring Citystat, Document and Permit Management and Web Mapping. The event is very affordable (registration) and includes presenters from large and small municipalities and discussions of proprietary and open source solutions. I'll be doing the keynote.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Conferences at 06:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Friday, October 23. 2009

Podcast: Press Conference of Vice Admiral Robert Murrett at the #GEOINT Symposium 2009

This podcast is a recording of a press conference by Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) at the GEOINT Symposium 2009 on October 21, 2009 in San Antonio. Murrett discusses the new NGA charter, the situation with aiding and supporting both domestic and military missions and other issues related to the agency's work.

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Posted by Joe Francica in Remote Sensing, Location Intelligence, Special Topics Podcast, GEOINT 09 at 14:16 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

First South African Pub/Private GIS Conference?

I have to take ITWeb at its word when it claims that its first Spatially-enabled Information Services Conference is "the first of its kind to bring together both the private and public sector to discuss the challenges of and opportunities for incorporating geospatial data into systems and services." It's Feb 2010 in Bryanston.

- ITWeb

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Conferences at 07:11 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, October 22. 2009

#GEOINT Coverage Roundup II (Non-Directions Media)

Note: This post does not include coverage by Directions Media in All Points Blog or Directions Magazine.

U.S. spy chief calls for more coordination says MySanAntonio.com: "Speaking in San Antonio at a national intelligence symposium, retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence since January, said a more effective national security strategy includes all 16 members of the intelligence community on the same page."

DoD Buzz notes that "Open Source Intel Use Soars." That refers to open source intel, not software. "And the use of open source information is soaring, according to a panel here in San Antonio at the annual Geoint conference. Brian Magana, geospatial analysis branch chief at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that his consumption of open source data for one area of analysis he was following rocketed upwards 600 percent."

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in GEOINT 09 at 07:48 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

FOSS4G Coverage II

Mateusz Loskot offers a video of Paul Ramsey's keynote offers a video of Paul Ramsey's keynote.

Mark From the Inside Looking In raves: the video "has been all the talk on Twitter. If you haven't seen it yet, you should do so."

Iki Maska rounds up some presentations on his blog: "A somewhat ordinary presentation by Ingres." "Raul Vera from Google on a subtle but profound shift in spatial paradigm, predicting that in mid 2011 the majority of location searches will be from mobile devices and this requires a different point of thought ("I'm lost!" is actually a very rare use case)."

The Map Guy(de) talks about the new FDO Toolbox.

Kate Lundy, Senator represented the Australian Capital Territory, offers the full text of her presentation at the conference.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, Conferences at 07:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |