NYS Geospatial Summit

I’m still a bit tired from from attending the NYS Geospatial Summit yesterday. Truth is I didn’t get much sleep the night before and I had to wake up early and drive 42 miles to the Welch-Allyn Lodge in Skaneateles Falls. I must say that it was a beautiful setting for a beautiful subject… The speakers for the summit included a wide array of folks with Jim Lorenz (Virtual Earth Sales and Marketing) from Microsoft going first and Michael Jones (CTO of Google Earth) finishing up a bit after 5 PM. I took lots of notes that I’ve yet to transfer but here are some first impressions from the summit without getting into too much details First off, the top three speakers that I enjoyed in order were:

1. Derrick Crandall, American Recereation Coalition
2. Adena Schutzberg, Directions Magazine
3. Erin Aigner, The New York Times

Derrick started off with a quote at the beginning of his presentation that both made me laugh and think at the same time: “this is not 3D rendering, this is the real thing” (after showing some nice pictures of the outdoors). He spent a great deal of time informing us that the average child today spent 6.5 hours in front of a computer and told us about some of the challenges and successes that his organization faces in getting children and people in general to participate in the outdoors. He informed us of an eye-opening book “Last Child in the Woods.” I suggest checking out the outdoor recreation website for planning some fun outdoors this summer with friends and family. The recreation.gov website also have some interesting info and links (You can even reserve campsites at national parks). Derrick definately challenged me personally to take some more time away from the computer screen and enjoy the outdoors. We have some beautiful parks here in Upstate, NY.

Adena gave us a good overview of where we have come from in the geospatial agency and some ideas of where we are going. I won’t rehash here because she covered a whole outline. In short, I remembered five trends that she gave (w/out my notes):

1. Data is everywhere and usable
2. Maps are fast and exciting
3. 3D is everywhere for everyone so we can all go flying
4. The public has become more data and map aware, or smarter about data and maps (there were some contention on this point)
5. New geospatial companies are starting to pop-up overnight

She also mentioned Google Timeline and Map View which I haven’t explored before today. Adena also made some sobering remarks at the end of her presentation to the Geospatial Professionals in the audience. She basically, said that if current geospatial trends continue there will be fewer Geospatial pros and more geospatial users in our society. This would mean most of us in the room could be out of a job in the not too distant future but as a geospatial pro I’m a bit more optimistic about the future. I think we will find ways of reinventing ourselves or just grow in new ways.

Erin’s talk was pretty cool in my opinion. Not only does she make some nice looking maps but she makes them for the New York Times. I have to admit that I don’t currently have a subscription but now I’m looking forward to her maps in the latest copy (I plan on going out for a little walk and getting one on Monday). Honestly, I’ve never really thought that much about the maps in newspapers before. I never stopped to think who made them and the process of getting them there. I often though someone at the paper just bout the maps off a company or got it for free or just used it to support the particular story. Now I realize, due to Erin’s talk that there are professional cartographers who are employed by these Newspapers to acquire data, manipulate it cartographically to support the story and that they are under the same time crunch as the reporters in some case more of a time crunch. The worst thing is that sometimes they work all day on a map and it gets cut from the story… Youch! It was a very eye-opening presentation and I must say that Erin is especially skilled at what she does and I’ll be picking up the New York Times on Monday to see that map that she mentioned.

One more thing before I get my relaxation on… I noticed that Jim Lorenz’s slides packed as much info on each slide as was possible. They looked an awful lot like Bill Gates’ slides. After reading this article on the Presentation Zen Blog, I have to say that this was “tickling me” the whole time I was sitting there. His overall presentation was good though an I thought that he had one of the most informative presentation in terms of what is company is doing geospatially. He also introduced us to photosynth (need Vista or XP to try it, Mac Users can view videos here) and dropped a bit of surprise about ArcGIS 9.3. In contrast, Michael Jones from Google grabbed his MacBook Pro, plopped i on the stand and raced through his presentation. It was a good presentation but he was talking so fast i could not understand half of what he was saying. To my delight he used Keynote instead of Powerpoint for his presentation and his slides were pleasing to the eye not over-crowded with info. He showed some interesting mash-ups and people were making with Google maps (including the one in the picture above - a mash-up of the lat/long coordinates that Angelina Jolie has tattooed on her arm which corresponds to the birthplace of each of her children). he then moved on to Street View which I had just showed off to a co-worker in my office on Thursday. There were at most three of us in he audience who had seen it before his presentation. I head about it on a blog I read on account of some concerns about privacy issues. I liked Adena’s comment about privacy something like “we have none so get over it and move on. ” There were a few jokes about some guy who was using the highway as a public restroom (complements of Street view). One demo that strucked me was “Eyes on Darfur” if you haven’t seen it yet give it a look. It will open your eyes and perhaps your heart as well.

All in all it was an interesting and informative summit and I’m glad that I woke up early in he morning and drove all the way there. I also met some people in and outside my area that I haven’t met before and I’m glad to have had the chance to attend this year. The $75 was well worth it and I’ve used the wine glasses we received as gifts more than a few times since then. I would recommend this summit to anyone in the NYS area in the geospatial profession for next year. Your brain will be swimming with all that information afterwards but its worth it to exercise the ole noggin once in a while.