Last week I was up at GeoGathering 2008 in Estes ParK, CO. I didn’t have much to blog about from the event, but if anyone is interested, the presentations from the conference are now available online at the GeoGathering website. There’s also a small photo slideshow available from the conference as well.
While at Where 2.0, Dave Bouwman and I did a podcast with Jesse and Sue over at Very Spatial. We spoke about a recent project we completed for the Wildlife Conservation Society for their Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS) project. The mapping application was a Virtual Earth implementation which showed locations and information of bird flu cases around the world, as well as related flyways for those species. We also talked a little bit about how we used agile practices to deliver the application very quickly and with complete customer satisfaction. If you want to check out the podcast, head over to Very Spatial. If you’d like to take a look at the application, check it out the WCS GAINS website. And, if you’re interested in more of the technical details, check out Dave’s recent post about building the application.
New on our DTS Code Dojo: Created as a demonstration integrating Google Maps and the ExtJS Javascript framework, the Wind Energy Explorer is a site for viewing our nation’s wind energy capacity. The initial functionality is focused on loading state polygons into the map via GeoJSON. When the user clicks on a state, the rendering the capacity over last 9 years is shown as a Google Chart. The viewer also makes use of the powerful data grid in ExtJS, which automatically supports custom sorting. We will be adding more functionality to this viewer over the coming months.
I’m on my way home to Ft. Collins, CO and thought I’d take a few minutes to jot down my overall impressions of the Where 2.0 Conference this week in San Francisco. In general, I found the conference to be very interesting. Interesting mostly because it offered a different perspective for me about the new world of geography on the web. You see, apparently, I am what is now called a “Paleogeographer”…you know, someone who actually has a background in geography and GIS. I’m OLD (well, not really, but in the world of Where 2.0…I’m old). Then there are the “Neogeographers”, folks who have recently discovered the value and linkage between social networks, photos, and other “data” and geography, or more specifically, location.
I’m not crazy about the two terms “Paleos” and “Neos”, and I’m not crazy about the apparent dividing line between the two “camps”. The terms were thrown around a lot this week, and I don’t find them to be constructive in the slightest. I really think both sides have a great deal to offer and would be well off to start collaborating with each other to bring the “Geoweb” to it’s full potential. While it was interesting to watch this little battle of the camps play out at the conference, I think the smarter kids in the room get it that we all need to collaborate to bring out the best of both worlds and go well beyond where “Where” is now. To some degree, I think this is starting to happen. We saw Jack Dangermond CEO of ESRI (a “Paleo”) share the stage and talk about new collaborative efforts with John Hanke of Google Earth (a “Neo”). It was a big step and one that I think both the “Paleos” and the “Neos” should try to emulate.
