The music industry is a good analogy to choose as this is where “mashup” came from – putting the vocals from one track over the backing (instrumental) of another. Sometimes this worked, other times it didn’t – a bit like GIS mashups.

More importantly though, I don’t recall music ever being used as the basis for serious decision making and this is where the analogy falls down. Music doesn’t have to be accurate, up-to-date, validated, etc. “1999″ by Prince can still be played today, but 1999 spatial data is no good if it’s out of date and you need current data.

Mashing up GIS data from different times or with different accuracy is likely to producing misleading information. Good data + bad data = bad data? Even GIS professionals don’t get it right all of the time so how do non-GIS professionals manage the subtleties of spatial data (or any data for that matter)?

The role of the GIS professional is not to lock everything away, but ensure that good data is presented appropriately to enable people to make good decisions. Did you update your foot and mouth protection zone Google map as the area changed? If yes, what was the time lag between the zone change and you publishing the update?

On Google Maps, what date was each map and aerial photography layer/tile last updated? Can I click on a location to find out? If not, the only way I can get an idea is if I can see something I know is wrong. Even if a map layer was updated on a particular date, that doesn’t mean the map publisher knew about all the changes on the ground and edited the map accordingly. Subtleties.

If Joe or Jane Bloggs has recorded the locations of recycling bins, I have no way of knowing how accurately he or she has done it (e.g. was their GPS configured badly?). They may not even tell me when they did it (publish date doesn’t equal data date). Official organisations are not necessarily going to be any better but they have a responsibility to be. Joe and Jane are just doing me a favour. If Joe and Jane record the locations of recycling bins, why not send that to their local authority, instead of publishing it themselves?

I think I’ve wittered on enough for now!

PS nice to see you’ve dropped the “tard” bit of “paleotard”. That’s one bridge built

You could expand the music industry analogy to include the arrival of new delivery channels that have radically altered the business models of the established parties (artists and record labels) and lead to the growth of independents and self publishing.

Maybe as Simon Doyle suggested (or hinted anyway) this GeoCommunity was our Woodstock moment.

Good to go out on a high, looking forward to be a delegate next year (even if I have to pay for the privilege)

Steven

Enjoyed the presentation at GeoCommunity Ed, thanks for lifting the mood and setting up the most feeble, stuttering ‘response’ I have ever seen the OS produce.

Shame the discussion couldn’t have been better managed as I think the topic warranted much further exploration -a bit of a cop out in my view. In particular Peter ter Haar’s bizarre attempt to define derived data in 30 seconds as a matter of ‘not copying features directly’ seemed somewhat at odds with your ‘incompatibe licensing terms’ for point features captured against M/Map.

I await the promised ‘clarification’ of derived data definitions with interest…