Surveying, Mapping and GIS

Earlier in the month, I attended the EPA's Environmental Information Symposium - While I didn't post any updates here during the conference, I will now take the opportunity to carry over some of the more fun posts that I made to the Ning site that was set up for the Symposium:
Wordle: Web 2.0 Themes for the EPA Environmental Information Symposium

A Web 2.0 Success Story: Apps for Democracy

I touched on this during my presentation:

• “Smarter, Better, Faster, Cheaper: Pick 4” – Vivek Kundra, District of Columbia CTO



• The District of Columbia published an Open Data Catalog: GeoRSS, XML, KML and other data types



• They then posted a contest and allowed the public to build applications, built on their Open Data Catalog



• RESULT: In 30 days: 47 new applications for the web, facebook and mobile clients, over $2,000,000 in development at a cost of $50,000 = over 4000% ROI



• http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/

The Web is the Platform

As a potential future paradigm, web-enabled connectivity binds together disparate resources, across EPA program offices, regions, labs, both horizontally and vertically, by transparently supporting access to data, analysis and resources:

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.