Surveying, Mapping and GIS

What's on my mind?



From Wordle, populated with my Blog's atom feed, capturing the most recent blog entries. Wordle analyzes the content and assembles a collage of words, with emphasis placed on words not in common usage, according to how often these words are used... Geospatial... Mapping... Integration... Technology... A few little trends that I didn't expect, but all in all, good stuff.

After just spending a chunk of time tonight reading article after article on his site, I have to give my kudos to Bjørn Sandvik, and his blog, Thematic Mapping -

There's just a ton of eminently cool and accessible stuff for visualization there...

I have been getting thoroughly inundated in social networking... in the last week or two, I got Twitterized, LinkedIn and Facebooked.

Previously, I had played around with a few things, but other than my blog, nothing really seemed to have utility other than single-purpose content... and the social interaction was marginal, at best. As an example, Plaxo was useful to an extent, but I ended up dumping their Outlook software after it repeatedly created multiple folders and duplicate contacts on me. And then, they actually wanted to sell me the upgraded version that has the duplicate remover utility... BZZZT!! Not paying someone to solve a problem that they were responsible for creating.

At any rate, I can see how Facebook has really taken off - with their Facebook Platform, there is a lot of rich functionality that can be integrated, with AJAX-based Web 2.0 goodness. Thus far, I have found it leaps and bounds more advanced, capable and actually useful than any of the others, such as myspace - it goes beyond simple personal space to community and can genuinely form the glue toward holding an array of functionalities together in one dynamic space.

Still some limitations here and there, but ultimately, seeing things like tweet content being used to update status or being consumed from one framework to the next starting to emerge, they begin to get woven into a rich tapestry to keep friends, family, colleagues involved, interacting and so on, beyond the usual physical constraints of distance.

Got home from the ESRI UC safe and sound... Barely slept, squeezed in on a packed redeye from San Diego to JFK. VerySpatial's Frank was also aboard my flight, we compared notes on the lack of sleep and cramped leg quarters... Like me, he is still working on digesting his notes and materials, but it sounds like the VerySpatial crew will have some great audio and other stuff to mix down, compile and otherwise post over the next week. Looking forward to it. I'm still on about page 5 of 40 of my notes...

I had a 2 hour nap earlier this afternoon, and have been spending the day catching up with my wonderful family, and I know I will sleep like a rock tonight.

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

However, the deeper thought not expressed in O'Reilly's call is that this whole controversy unfolded in the technology blogosphere... Presumably populated by developers, enterprise architects, analysts, IT pros and other technology professionals. Perhaps I presume too much.

Professionals.

Even beyond behaving as humans, which means treating each other with basic dignity and respect - treating others the same as we ourselves would expect to be treated by others, the community also should behave like adults and professionals, as this type of vicious, misogynistic behavior gives the entire technology sector a black eye.

While I too may occasionally not agree with everything Kathy Sierra, Scoble, O'Reilly or others have to say, I for one nonetheless value them deeply as professionals, for their input and contribution to the professional community, for their experience and insight, and so on, and as such, would treat them with the respect they deserve. I am finishing reading one of the Head Rush books even as we speak. I am one who will defend freedom of speech to the last, even for those with whom I would disagree, and as such have little tolerance for anyone who would use threats of violence toward silencing others.

In our work, in our capabilities, in our words, we are to be humans, adults, and professionals first and foremost. In any professional environment, gender is irrelevant, and violence and cyberbullying is completely unacceptable. It is a sad commentary that the community even needs Codes of Conduct.

Though I wasn't able to attend ESRI DevSummit 07, I did get some good feedback - my own people report on the continued push toward web-based GIS and server-based GIS and SOA, with SOAP, REST, JavaScript and AJAX APIs being made available, along with tremendous demand from the .NET developer community.

I also scoured the blogosphere and scavenged together a set of posts and resources - dig through these, as there are copious notes, slides and podcasts to be had.

In no particular order:



Very Spatial 3/28: Dev Summit Overview "VSTV Episode 12": http://veryspatial.com/?p=1486

Very Spatial 3/28: Daily Podcasts: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1485

Very Spatial 3/26: Daily Podcast talking to DevSummit Attendees: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1478

Very Spatial 3/24: Standards and Interoperability Podcast: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1475

Very Spatial 3/23: ArcWeb Services Podcast: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1473

Very Spatial 3/22: ESRI Support Team Podcast: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1471

Very Spatial 3/22: Keynote Session Podcast: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1468

Very Spatial 3/21: Keynote Comments: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1466

Very Spatial 3/21: Gartner Keynote: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1463

Very Spatial 3/20: Plenary Session Podcast: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1462

Very Spatial 3/20: Plenary Part 2: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1458

Very Spatial 3/20: Plenary Session: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1457

Very Spatial 3/18: Preconference Podcast: http://veryspatial.com/?p=1453

The Topografiando blog links to an excellent collage of photos posted to Flickr of the recent lunar eclipse, showing the sequence the earth's shadow as it passed across the moon. Our European neighbors were definitely more fortunate than us here, and many thanks to them for sharing their photos.

I added a new thing to my blog sidebar - I downloaded a nifty gizmo from last.fm, called audioscrobbler. It lets me share what I'm listening to with others, by providing a web service that feeds current tracks being played in WinAmp, Windows Media Player or others.

Growing up, we always had eclectic tastes in music, and there was always some jazz in the house - Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, and others... I have since acquired a taste for bop and funk-flavored jazz, Hammond B3 organ, sax, guitar, and other goodies - I enjoy Medeski, Martin and Wood, Hank Mobley, Cannonball Adderley, Wes Montgomery, Papa Grows Funk, Stanton Moore, Galactic, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, John Scofield, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Joshua Redmon, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, and quite a few others...

I found that when I was studying, writing papers, and other kinds of intellectual pursuits, with many late nights listening to WRTI / Temple University Radio (especially B.P. with the G.M. and others...) and when trying to put myself in a groove to get things done, Jazz always fit the bill. Instrumental, my mind gets into the rhythm without being distracted by lyrics...

I have a collection of well over a thousand CDs, and also love being able to tune WRTI in when I am on the road, and another great thing is Pandora, which lets me create a customized radio station, designed after my own particular tastes... If you enjoy jazz, tune in...