GIS Coordination as Social Networking?

David Sacks, founder of the genealogy website Geni and a former leader at PayPal, has written a guest-post at TechCrunch in which he argues that the future of the web portal will shift from the current "search" model (Google) to the "social-web" model (FaceBook).

I think that this shift holds lessons and perhaps opportunities for GIS Coordination and creating the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).

In his post (The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter), Sacks notes that the earliest web portal model was "browsing," as embodied by Yahoo. He traces Yahoo's decline in market-share against Google to the changing number of web sites. Early on, a limited pool of sites could be accessed through Yahoo's browse-able catalog.

But as the number of websites became infinite, search replaced browsing as the dominant paradigm for finding new sites, and Yahoo’s failure to keep up in this area allowed Google to take the lead.

Sacks suggests that the paradigm is shifting again. Now, networks of like-minded web citizens are starting to guide each other to content through a variety of tagging and aggregation systems.

The “social graph,” or your network of relationships, will push information to you. You’ll learn from your friends.

It is his thesis that FaceBook is developing the portal platform that best embodies this new model.

That may or may not be the case, but this idea does make me think of some of the ways we try to create and maintain strong state-level GIS Communities to enable the NSDI.

Increasingly, we are bending the tools of the social web to our needs, publishing RSS feeds, starting blogs related to GIS, and using tagging sites such as del.icio.us to note and aggregate useful content.

I think we can do more. The key to the social web is wide participation. The strength of NSGIC is the breadth and depth of its membership. Our challenge now is to increase the links among that membership on this new and growing social web.

When We Get Hi-Res Local Imagery Out to as Many People as Possible

Indiana is one of the states that has gotten their high resolution orthophotography added to Google's Earth and Maps systems. The photos are hi-res enough that the image-hunters at the Google Earth Community have spotted an Amish horse and buggy on a rural Indiana road.

As communities will, they looked deeper, researched the presence of the Amish in Indiana, and have collected and published a series of placemarks showing photographic evidence of where a few members of the Amish Community happened to be on an unspecified day in late winter/early spring of 2005.

While I was interested to see Amish folks visible on Google Earth (they are a part of Delaware culture as well), what was coolest about this for me was to see "IndianaMap Framework Data" credited on Google Earth.

Well-played, Indiana Geographic Information Council! (Via Google Earth Blog)

"Yes, Senator, GIS is a map, but it is also so much more."

NSGIC has released a series of GIS marketing materials produced under a contract with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). They follow the development of strategic and business plan templates. Both are part of the Fifty States Initiative, designed to bring all public and private stakeholders together in statewide GIS coordination bodies that help to form effective partnerships and lasting relationships.

The Marketing Materials were designed by GIS professionals under the expert guidance of a public relations and marketing firm. They are intended to help statewide coordination councils market their plans and other initiatives to executives and elected officials.

The marketing materials include a treasure-map-themed "Z-card" that plays on the stereotype image of GIS as map-making software but opens up to reveal the broad spectrum of modern governmental activities that are informed by geospatial data.

There are also a series of issue-focused cards that mark clear statements about the importance of GIS and spatial data coordination for energy planning, economic development, education, and emergency response.

NSGIC has provided a limited number of printed versions of the new marketing materials to each state's GIS Coordinator. The graphics are available on-line on the NSGIC web site.

FGDC Releases 2006 Annual Report

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) has released its 2006 Annual Report. The report is available on the FGDC web site in both PDF and HTML versions.

The report includes highlights and successes from th past year, as well as goals for 2007. There is also a status report on the NSDI Framework Data Themes.

Indiana GIS Legislation Signed into Law

Congratulations are due to NSGIC's own Jill Saligoe-Simmel who has successfully shepherded GIS legislation through the Indiana legislature.

As Jill reports on her Professional Geographer blog, Senate Bill 0461 was signed by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels on May 9.

The law defines GIS framework data, institutes a governor appointed Geographic Information Officer, and establishes a framework for a statewide GIS Data Integration Plan and GIS framework data standards.

There is also a GIS fund established, though adding dollars to the fund will have to come later.

On Nuturing Communities

One of the things we've learned about the coordination of GIS tools and data at the state level is that it often involves building and maintaining communities of data producers and users. The challenge is to do that within the context of government and to maintain both openness and structure in the proper balance.

We might take a lesson or two from the experience of Matt Haughey, creator of the on-line community MetaFilter, a sprawling, international collection of web-surfers who share and comment on content from around the world.

Mr. Haughey has written an essay (Some Community Tips for 2007) that presents some of his thoughts on facilitating a diverse community.

If you're building a community you have to love what you're doing and be the best member of it. It takes great care and patience to create a space others will share and you have to nurture it and reward your best contributors. It's a decidedly human endeavor with few, if any, technical shortcuts.

The essay is written from the perspective of running a web-based community site, but some of the lessons also apply in the role of council facilitator and in a more general sense to the community leadership roles we fill.

Data and Security Explored in California

Federal Computer Week looks at data and security in a story (Putting security on the map) about a dispute over county data in California.

Santa Clara County has recently decided to put a temporary stop to their sale of county GIS data. They have asked homeland security officials to review the data for security concerns. Some critics suggest that the move is an attempt to avoid a lawsuit to win free data access for citizens.

The story recaps the on-going data-access vs. data-security discussion that the industry has had over the last few years. It includes links to the FGDC's Access Guidelines PDF.