Who cares about the Togonator?

Only days after the Premier League's self styled greatest striker and most famous citizen of Togo chose to pursue trophies (and money) outside of London by moving to Manchester and weeks after a certain slick haired Portugese left the same city for Madrid it is gratifying to see the Tweetometer showing the balance of interest between the two.

Note the mutiple geo references in this post

Winners and losers

Peter Batty has an interesting post on his geothought blog about how neogeography is moving into the traditional GIS space and predicting major disruption in the next 5 years. No need to recap the ideas because you should go and read them.

Suffice it to say that I think Peter has it spot on but may be understating the speed with which the changes are taking place.

If there is major disruption which organisations are most likely to be the losers? Yes I know that many of you may think that the organisation I consult for may be one of them and I understand why you might think that, now move on from that and think which others may be impacted and why? I have been asked to participate in a foresight study on the UK geo industry and I am interested to gather your views either by commenting on this blog or mailing me directly through the link.

Peter Batty is one of the plenary speakers on the opening day of GeoCommunity '09. If you haven't heard him speak before he is well worth the visit to beautiful Shakespeare country as is Andrew Turner, the other plenary on that day plus over 70 other speakers workshops etc over the 2 days of geobabble that is GeoCommunity. We secured another block of hotel rooms a couple of weeks ago, there are still a few left at great rates you can book here.

The digital paper divide

Last night my brother asked me "what was that stuff mentioning you in the Guardian the other week?" I explained about the elusive internationally renowned expert and he agreed it couldn't possibly be me. Sibling humour.

Then the conversation got interesting when he questioned why the Guardian had been banging on about this stuff for over 2 years? I tried to explain the issues and potential importance. Did anyone read this stuff he asked? Apparently he reads the Thursday tech section of the paper but just skips the Free Our Data pieces. Perhaps there is a big difference between the people who read the Guardian online and those who read the printed version?

A couple of weeks ago a survey of UK brand recognition placed Ordnance Survey in the top 20 UK brands. Just a thought but I bet most of the people who recognise the OS brand and relate positively to it associate the company with paper maps, boy scouts and rambling not GPS and online services. Maybe the strong views in the digital world aren't reflected in the world of paper maps users and lovers.

If there is a digital vs paper divide, what does that mean for discussions about geodata access and use? There are other groups of map users out there that we need to reach whether in the cause of Freeing Our Data or GeoVating.

Less could be more for INSPIRE

Last year the INSPIRE reps were indicating that about 55% of the 4 year budget had been committed by DeFRA and other participants. There was optimism about gaining support from others for the remainder.

Now it appears that the crunch has hit budgets within government departments and the funding commitment is down to 33%. This has forced a rethink and may result in a slimmed down Location Council as apparently there is no seat at the top table without a contribution although now non-monetary contributions may be considered.

This may mean a lighter and less centrally dominated SDI for the UK. That could be a blessing in disguise.

OGC UK Forum 4 years on

About 4 years ago my old company GDC hosted the first meeting of the OGC UK Forum. The great and the good of the UK GI indudtry turned up for a couple of hours discussion and some drinks and networking.

4 years on I am sitting in on a Forum meeting at UCL. Not sure that a lot has changed. The mix of delegates is from academia, government departments (several INSPIRE people) and agencies and a few companies who view geospatial interoperability and standards as core to their business. The discussion was around the objectives of the forum and inevitably about funding and resources.

There seem to be two separate functions for the OGC in the UK (or indeed all of its regional forums) - to develop and test standards that facilitate interoperability and to promote the adoption of those standards.

The participants appear more comfortable with the technical side rather than with outreach. There is a lack of understanding as to who the forum should be targeting and why those people would want to engage with OGC. Ultimately OGC serves the interests of its members and inevitably those providing principal funding have the biggest influence. There are few if any people here today representing the people and organisations who could benefit from interoperabililty and standards.

OGC standards are important to government and academia to support the fusion and cross organisational use of data. Some of the applications seem rather arcane to a mere mortal like me. I wonder whether these standards are actually helping to lock up these vast archives of complex public sector data assets in a technically and standards driven walled garden that makes it more difficult rather than easier for the rest of the GeoCommunity to connect to the data?

If they don't solve this problem they may find themselves being bypassed by de facto standards and services evolving within the wider community.

Changed the Tweetometer

The Tweetometer has switched from Open Data and Intellectual Property (the former won most of the time) and is now comparing The Ashes and The Open (Cricket vs Golf) - yawn you may say if you are a pure football and geography man. But then there is geography at least in the nations competing in both competitions, weak you may say and I would agree.

What should be the next Tweetometer?

What's this GeoVation stuff about?

If you are coming along to our briefings next week (or thinking about coming along) you might want to have a look at this short note on GeoVation to get an idea of what we want to do.

Want to find out more? Mail me or come along to one of the events, there are still a few places left.

Register for free at

http://geovationcofeelondon.eventbrite.com

London: 08:00 - 09:30

http://geovationdrinkslondon.eventbrite.com

London: 18:00 - 20:0

Venue will be mailed by tomorrow

Understanding the Value of Geographic Information in a Turbulent World

I was invited to give a keynote this morning at the Cambridge Conference: Exchange which is a conference of delegates from National Mapping agencies from developing, transitional and developed world.

My talk was about the two big changes that NMA's were facing:

• The need to deliver better return on investment to their customers
• Switching from being producer centric to customer responsive and understanding that the value of geospatial data was determined by customers and their choices not by how much it cost to produce
  

I thought that it would be more relevant to the people from the developed countries who were facing the problems of funding, business models, relationships with the private sector and wrestling with free data and the pace of innovation in the geoweb.

But as I got to the bit about why I thought NMA's should stick to what they were good at, namely cadastral type data, and not try and compete with the commercial and open data models at street and POI level I realised that there was a possible tip here for the people from the less advanced economies who are struggling to fund their GI capabilities and who had been hoping that the now stressed business models of the larger NMA's would provide a solution. I showed them what was being done by the OpenStreetMap community in Egypt and suggested to them that crowd sourcing might be a model that they could use to supplement their cadastre.

I was surprised at what a good reception the ideas got from both representatives from the third world and some of the Europeans. Don't expect a sudden conversion but perhaps one or two people will at least go back to their offices and have a more serious look at alternatives.

Incidentally on the business model front, the people who worked in cadastre's that charged people in the property transaction chain were experiencing severe downturns in revenue with the currrent state of the property market throughout Europe. Some are having to consider increasing charges by 25% to cover costs. Not sure this is much better than the current model in the UK. Oh and they still don't give their data away to other interested parties for free!

The slides are here. No notes but some pretty images with a few bullet points which may give you an idea of what I was talking about.

Understanding The Value Of Geoographic Information in a Turbullent World

View more presentations from Steven Feldman.

State of the Map slide notes

If you couldn't find the notes that accompanied my slides it is because for some reason Slideshare cut them off. Don't ask...

So I have dropped them here

Becoming a GeoVator

GeoVation is a new innovation network sponsored by Ordnance Survey that will help individuals and startups to turn ideas for using geography into reality.

Come along to one of the GeoVation launch briefings, at each location we will be running a breakfast briefing with coffee and croissants and an early evening briefing with pizza and beer.

The registration pages for the briefings are now open, please select the location and time that you would prefer and register (no charge) using one of these links

http://geovationcoffeemanchester.eventbrite.com

Manchester: 08:00 - 09:30

http://geovationdrinksmanchester.eventbrite.com

Manchester: 18:00 - 20:00

http://geovationcofeelondon.eventbrite.com

London: 08:00 - 09:30

http://geovationdrinkslondon.eventbrite.com

London: 18:00 - 20:00

They will be fun interactive events that will give you a flavour of the program and you will meet some other GeoVators who you might want to team up with. Come along and learn more about the GeoVation program and help us to make someone’s idea come to life with geography

Maps for the blind

OpenStreetMappers are passionate about maps and are coming up with some great ideas for using maps in new ways. During State of the Map we saw several great new ideas including augmented reality from Layar and transport maps from Ito but the one that most impressed me was a tactile map for the blind.

Why didn't someone think of this ages ago? Could it be that open data really does encourage innovation?

State of the Map

I am in Amsterdam for State of the Map, the OpenStreetMap conference. This has been an amazing event, well organised, full of energy and riding the crest of a wave.

No one who attends this event from within the mainstream of the geobusiness could go away thinking that crowdsourcing cannot produce a detailed, accurate and richly attributed and themed map. The OSM community are getting their act together on coverage, quality and tag structures, the resemblance to the processes and standards of major map producers is very evident but is leveraged by the scale that a volunteer community of approaching 130,000 can bring (even if only 10-11% are currently active)

Whilst OSM may have started as a reaction to the licensing of our national mapping agency, I think it is not OS who have the most to fear, after all we will need accurate large scale cadastral data which is not what OSM is focused upon or able to capture and maintain.

What, however will happen to the producers of street level data products with their high costs of collection and maintenance? Willl they be able to differentiate themselves sufficiently?

The solutions space where data traditionally has been 75-90% of the value of a project is going to be turned upside down. It is not just the cost of data licenses that is being stripped from the cost of a project it is also all of the wasted and frustrating effort associated in negotiating use terms and licenses with data vendors who seem to be incapable of making anything simple and I am not just referring to OS because the other data providers and their resellers make life almost as difficult.

OSM already provides a viable street product if your requirements are for a high level of population coverage in the UK rather than geographic completeness. Within 12-18 months it will as good as complete in a number of European countries and the US. Now would be a good time for some of the established players in data production to wake up and smell the coffee.

I presented on the subject "Is Volunteered Geograhic Information sustainable?" I am sure you can guess my conclusion. The presentation is here:

Is Volunteered Gi Sustainable

View more presentations from Steven Feldman.

Redaction, what's it all about?

Redaction is one of those words that I always thought that I "sort of" understood but since it didn't come up in daily conversation that frequently perhaps I didn't.

Now you might have thought it meant the use of a thick black marker pen on MP's expenses or even studies on the economics of national mapping agencies (yes including the land mass of the US) but maybe not.

Wiki says

redaction is a form of editing in which multiple source texts are combined (redacted) and subjected to minor alteration to make them into a single work.

No mention of black pens or scissors there, the wiki goes on to talk about redactional fatigue

Redactional fatigue is an important related concept: when making changes to a large text, a redactor may occasionally overlook a piece of text that conflicts with the redactional goals. The nature of the conflict between the bulk of a redacted text and the contradictory windows can suggest what the goals of the redactor might have been

Got to have some sympathy for those redactors, haven't you?

Of course if you are like me you might prefer this definition of redaction at http://www.redaction.org.uk

Come on you Red Actors!