Blog posts
Many of you in the UK GI industry will know Dave and will join me in offering congratulations on getting an OBE in the New Years Honours. Dave was once an avid reader of edparsons.com in the early days, I hope you are still enjoying it !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
So the end of 2006, the beginning of a new year, what will the next year of developments in the world of geographic information bring, are we seeing the birth of neogeography ? Rather than discuss this now I thought it would be more fun to go back to the future and look at some predictions I made back in 1999.
Mapping Awareness was the main UK GIS industry magazine throughout the 1990’s and it’s first issue of the year always carried an industry outlook feature, trying to get various predictions of the directions the industry was likely to follow, yes maybe navel gazing, but entertaining and something which continues today in GeoConnexion UK Magazine.
Thanks to the time machine that is Martins filling cabinet, the 1999 Mapping Awareness has fallen into my hands, and well I don’t think I did too badly in my predictions.
BTW Purple was very fashionable then (OK maybe not)
What are the most important trends for GIS and related products and services?
Technology convergence seems to be occurring throughout the GI and wider IT industry, as maturing technologies become integrated in “solution-based” systems. GPS is becoming the new must-have toy, but is a powerful tool when connected to desktop mapping and navigation packages. The boundary between CAD and GIS has finally disappeared; indeed many professionals use GIS technology without knowing it. Of course, perhaps the most important trend is the development of network-centric applications designed to operate across inter/intra/extranets.
OK so the CAD/GIS thing is still a problem… but network centric bit was right !!
What are the most important user/customer trends for GIS and related applications?
The “dumbing down of GIS” means that many of the current users of GIS have little or no geographical training, but are beginning to use GIS technology in the same way they might use Microsoft Excel. You don’t have to be an accountant to use Excel? The challenge for the GIS industry is for us to be able to say that you don’t need to be a geographer to use GIS. Users’ perception of the value of information is also changing. The Internet is an enormous source of low cost or free information. CD ROM d
atabases such as Microsoft Encarta provide high-quality, accurate information, yet geographic data is still expensive and difficult to use.
To me this seems very relevant today, finally the web tools provided by Google, Microsoft etc are making this prediction come true and well the value of geodata is a pretty hot topic!
What segments of the geotechnology market will grow fastest during the next three years in the UK?
The markets that will grow fastest include Web GIS; navigation systems; handheld/palm-based GIS integrated with GPS; embedded GIS. such as the contact locator in Outlook 98; and consumer GIS packages, Low-cost/Low-functionality desktop GIS (e.g. Microsoft Mappoint).
OK a couple of years too soon, and the wrong platform, the web killed the low cost desktop GIS package.
I will not embarrass my fellow contributors my reproducing their predictions, none of us escape without some egg on the face..
Have a great New Years celebration and don’t forget to listen to the New Years Day Today programme on Radio 4 under the editorial control of a bunch of geographers !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
So that’s the end of the Sir Humphrey chapter of my career, yesterday I left the OS, packing my belongings into a couple of plastic crates. It’s certainly been interesting!
To my many friends at the OS farewell, you all have my utmost respect, working with great commitment often within constraints beyond your control.
The OS will I hope change over the next few years to hopefully better serve the needs of its customers – the citizens of Great Britain, and provide them greater access to the best geospatial data in the world.
Change is not something to be feared, the history of the OS is full of episodic periods of intense change brought on by changing external circumstances, I’m sorry I was not able to orchestrate faster change during by five years there, but then again five years is but a moment in the history of an organisation which dates back to 1791.
Have a Great Christmas, and best Wishes for an exciting 2007.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Time Magazine, the popular choice of travellers at airport bookstores every year publishes it’s Person of the Year special. In the past Time has recognised such figures as Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, The Apollo 8 astronauts, John F. Kennedy, and last year Bono, Bill and Melinda Gates.
This year in an inspired piece of journalism, Time has chosen You (us) the users of the internet who together are exploiting the small contributions of millions of other people and are collectively taking control of the information age. The cover of the magazine has a mylar screen in which you are supposed to see a reflection of yourself – does not quite work but a great idea.
As one would expect there is of course mention youTube, Flickr, wikipedia and the impact of blogging on mainstream journalism – this is all great so see presented to the wide readership of Time magazine, but key to me was the opinion that users were now filling the gaps left my mainstream content providers, and the default position was that such information would be shared with little restriction.
Within the niche that it Geographic Information we are of course beginning to see this happen also, with “free the postcode”, Openstreetmap, platial and of course the impact of Google Earth. There is of course enormous scope for community generated geographical information, after all we are all experts about our neighbourhoods, in many ways we are only beginning to see the potential of this which will develop I’m sure as rapidly in 2007 as it did in 2006.
Written and submitted from the BCS London Office, using its members broadband internet connection.
Just returned from the latest Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Technical Committee meeting hosted by BAE systems in San Diego, where for me a important milestone was reached with the formation of a Mass Market working group, with a remit to work on “joining the dots” between the established GI standards community and the rapidly developing mass stream GI market as represented by the GYM offerings.
Hats off to Raj Singh for putting the creative effort in to developing this so far.
In this respect the attendance of the senior Google Geo staff in the form of John Hanke, Michael Jones and Brian McClendon was very important. Indeed Jones was interested in seeing how OGC could aid the standardisation of KML and clarify its relationship with GML – note these are early days but at least the right people are beginning to talk.
For OGC I think these are really important activities, OGC needs to embrace and recognise the needs of the mass market, as I pointed out in my presentation maybe there is now a new requirement for interoperability, above the levels of W*S services at the mapping API level.
In working with mass market players, OGC as an organisation, will need to recognise that some of it processes and behaviours will also have to change, like it or not the perception of the OGC as bureaucratic and slow moving is a common one, but also one which can change.
OGC has played a very important role is developing the “professional” GI market, its expertise would also have massive value to the mainstream – important progress then !
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
According to almost everybody on the internet, at 10am PST on the 9th January next year, at the Moscone Center Steve Jobs will introduce the iPhone, perhaps one of the most anticipated products ever from Apple.
There is much speculation as to what the phone will look like and its functionality, and this tends to focus of the “ipodness” of the phone – to me what is interesting are two things is particular, the potential that the iPhone will be should SIM free and that it might contain as well as a camera a GPS.
Actually I think the fact that the iPhone is likely to be sold SIM free and not tied to a network contract is the most important part of the whole iPhone story, – If this does turn out to be the case it will a direct attack on the already crumbling “Walled Garden” model of the operators – a major deterrent in the development of LBS so far.
In the walled garden, you buy a phone at a subsided price from the network operator in return for a service contract, and less obviously a set of applications and services selected and controlled by the operator. So if you want to make use of a music download service, you must use the operators one, likewise want to use LBS then you the one the operator provides.
Of course it is possible to buy phones today SIM free, but the marketing behind Apple and the buzz the iphone will create will I believe shift the market more towards an “open” model, where greater innovation in LBS applications can take place. There is clear precedent for this, just think what the online market might look like if we where all still accessing the net through CompuServe or AOL’s or even Apples eWorld (Anybody else remember that ?) environments.
A couple of months ago there was much excitement when hackers noted the latest version of iPhoto suggested support for co-ordinate metadata to be attached to photos – now what if the source for the photo was the camera in a “smart” iPhone and the metadata came from an onboard GPS chip-set – again this could lead to a future potential market of tens of millions of LBS capable devices.
Well it has me excited !!
Written and submitted from the BA lounge at Heathrow airport, using the BT Openzone wifi broadband internet connection.
The following is an agreed statement that was posted earlier today on the Ordnance Survey Intranet,
“Ed Parsons is leaving his post as Chief Technology Officer of Ordnance Survey to pursue new challenges in the increasingly dynamic Geographic Information (GI) Industry.
Since his arrival in June 2001, Ed has developed Ordnance Survey’s IT strategy and has led OS Research labs. Ed has been instrumental in moving the organisation’s focus from mapping to the creation of geographic information.
Ed is keen at this stage of his career to help develop more innovative areas of the GI industry. His decision comes as Ordnance Survey is focusing on a period of a consolidation in its strategic IT development and direction.
Vanessa Lawrence, Ordnance Survey’s Director General and Chief Executive, says “We wish Ed every success for the next stage of his career and offer him sincere thanks for his contribution to the direction of our IT development and research activities.”
For those of you who want to say goodbye to Ed personally his last working day will be Friday 22 December 2006.”
I am not is a position to add any more to this statement, but of course I am sorry to be leaving a great group of very committed GI professionals, the future for me is not completely clear at this point – but whatever it turns out to be, you will read it here as it happens !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
The image below tells us quite a lot about own the GI industry is developing.
Click on the image for a full resolution screen-shot of openstreetmap (OSM) data and OS ITN data in Cadcorp‘s SIS desktop GIS, which can now import OSM XML.
What do we have here…
1. Cadcorp a progressive but mainstream GIS vendor supporting open source data!
2. OK, it is Isle of Wight data, where OSM has particularly good coverage, but as one can see community generated open source data is comparable geometrically with “professional” Ordnance Survey data.
3. OSM data lacks the rich attribution of Ordnance Survey (e.g. classification A road, B road, Minor, path etc), which will restrict its use in many applications, but which will still meet the needs of many.
The story the image does not illustrate are the difficult problems of keeping the data current, and completing national coverage, areas which will be future challenges for OSM.
As I have blogged before the “Traditional” GI industry is only slowly beginning to wake up to the potential of community generated geodata, so full marks to Martin Daly and Cadcorp for recognising the potential.
One day very soon, community generated geodata will sit side by side with commercial professionally produced data for many GIS applications – as of today that day is a little closer.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
I visited the IGN Research Department today in Paris, and it was interesting to see the different approaches to solving similar research questions.
For a similar sized organisation, IGN has a much larger Research Dept of 100 people, compared to the 30 at the OS. Much of this research is funded by the French Government as part of the Institutes National role as the centre for geographical expertise.
Where at the OS we try to make use where possible of commercial tools and equipment, IGN build more of their own tools, including their own digital air camera for example, and their own software tools.
I was very impressed by the quality of research work taking place, some very clever algorithms are been developed to extract features automatically from imagery and is a clear area of joint interest with the OS. As this work is publicly funded all work is published and made available to the wider community.
What was very noticeable at IGN was less emphasis to market focused research which is important to the OS, in particular understanding user needs to develop new products and services does not seem to be as important – my guess is that although where share many similar problems to solve, because of the different funding models of our two organisations, the focus is slightly different.
Written and submitted from the lounge at Paris CDG airport, using the Orange wifi broadband internet connection.
If you are in London between now and March next year I would recommend a visit to British Library exhibition “London: A life in Maps“.
This is a great treat for anyone who loves maps like the famous Newcourt map of 1658 (above) illustrating London pre the Great Fire. Other maps of great interest include Charles Booth’s map of “Wealth and Poverty” – a early neighbourhood or geodemographic classification layer produced 100 years before GIS.
Full marks to the British Library for making the most of modern mapping techniques, within the exhibition it is possible to see the London maps overlaid onto Google Earth, and on the British Library website there is a Google Maps mash-up indexing a range of the maps.
It is a shame modern OS mapping could not have been more prominent, no doubt some confusion over licensing.. it interesting actually how unimportant OS mapping has been in the development of London, as for much of its history the OS was underfunded and it maps not suitable for urban mapping.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.