I sat a few seats along from you at the AGI â??08 “Big Debate” and I agree with your thoughts about the benefits and challenges that web mapping technologies bring to the GIS industry. As a software developer and GI professional I don’t see any cause for concern. The contributions from Google and Microsoft open up GI and GIS capabilities to the masses, which can only be a benefit to the industry. At the same time, despite claims to the opposite by some speakers at the conference, GI professionals have not been replaced by these technologies. Integrating GI science with enhanced visualisation capabilities and familiar UI experiences will allow us to produce the most powerful and useful applications ever. This is an exciting opportunity to bring benefits of geography to everyone’s lives, and will open up new commercial opportunities for those in the industry who embrace the technology.

Tim.

You missed a word - ‘what is the ROLE of a GI professional?’.

This is why I attempted to move the discussion toward everyone being a ‘professional’ with the idea being - now what?

You can view the whole event as a half full and rapidly filling glass or ….

See my thoughts if you want at http://giscussions.blogspot.com/

Cheers

Steven

“…the members of the AGI decided to award the prize for the best paper of the conference to Mark Bishop of MapInfo, and his paper The Hype of Web 2.0?.”

The members didn’t. The audience (delegates to conference) did. They are different constituencies. For a lot of people the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ geo-technologies is meaningless. They are just interested in geography and place.

For the record, James Brayshaw was judged (by the Conference Committee of members) best paper. You can hear him deliver it at the AGI Annual Awards Dinner in November. Muki Haklay was Runner-up.

Although, I too found some of the comments in the final session introspective, there were plenty of positive observations regarding the opportunities for the uptake of geographic data and associated techniques.

I thought Andy Hudson-Smith’s and also Bob Barr OBE’s presentation were great. They reflected different ends of the discipline of geography e.g. Xbox 360 as a delivery mechanism for virtual environments, coupled with observations on ‘paleo’ licensing ranging to sophisticated processing of OS MasterMap to derive meaningful property/ urban classifications.

I agree with your comments regarding the closing of the show. I also found them fairly depressing - but I think the AGI is changing. I also know there are many people in the audience (myself included) who feel like saying change the record - but that only adds fuels to the fire. I think we need disruptive people as much as we do disruptive technology - perhaps next year I’ll heckle.

Out of interest did you attended my presentation? If you didn’t, the nature of my title may make you think I was stuck in the 90’s. Not so. In fact I am officially only 26 months too old to qualify as generation Y (an equally hyped term that’s being over used)

Web2.0 isn’t hyped it just means many different things to many different people. To a web developer it means Ajax, entrepreneur a new business model, a marketing department a new brand, to a graphic designer a new logo, a Systems Integrator – SOA etc.etc. Also some people have genuinely never heard the term. When I hear it used on a regular basis (by the people in the know) I question the context. I want others to question the context. I want our industry to use this technology, not because it is cool, but because it can solve problems, solve them well and push the boundaries. When I hear Vanessa Lawrence talk about the new Web2.0 Service from OS I question which definition oif web2.0 is she referring to. Is it just anew logo and great graphic design or are the OS now using crowd source technology? Is an ajax scalable online tile server and public api all you need to call yourself web2.0? or perhaps a rebrand? I think the AGI as a community can utilise the full range of what Web2.0 offers - particularly in the enterprise.

In case you missed my presentation, you can view it online here:
http://www.slideshare.net/mpbish/web-20-and-hype-presentation

All the best
Mark

Rich

What did trouble me was: I was sitting next to Adena, and she made the comment, reflected in her blogpost, why the presenter felt the need for a lengthy introduction to the history, concepts and common examples of Web 2.0 (new BBC website, Flickr, online applications such as Zoho, Google Apps… . It did make me cringe to play buzzword bingo).

But still it seems obvious from the fact of how many people attended this presentation, and how many people seemed to jot down extensive notes and the audience award that many (if not most?) attendees are still paleotards. The discussion sadly only reinforced instead of disproving that point.