The objectives of transparency are summarised in the report as accountability, service improvement based on user choice and comparative data and the much sought but elusive economic growth from new products and services based on OpenData.
“Read between the lines of its [the NAO] report out today, Implementing Transparency, and you will see a government which has been chucking out tonnes of data, that no-one looks at and without a complete strategy. Oh and it’s cost an awful lot of money.”
Fair comment? I think so. It certainly seems that the rhetoric of transparency and accountability (possibly linked to the underlying ideology of reducing the size of government) has held sway over the bean counters in the Treasury. Of course not all of the benefits of transparency can be put into a profit and loss account but it does appear that common sense and value for money have not been important criteria in determining what data should be prioritised for release.
“As the scope of the transparency agenda has developed, the Cabinet Office has published examples of the benefits of public data initiatives to support the strategic case for transparency, for example on its Open for Business website, but has not yet systematically assessed the costs and benefits of the Government’s specific transparency initiatives.” (NAO)
Concern is raised about the quality, completeness and suitability of the data that has been published to inform better choice and accountability. I have ranted extensively about the publication of crime statistics (here, here and here) and questioned whether accountability will work to the benefit of all groups in society.
“With regards to community accountability, the police crime map provides much more detailed recorded crime information than was previously available. However, additional information is still needed, for example on police activity and resourcing locally, for residents to hold neighbourhood police services to account more fully.” (NAO)
There has been little attempt to measure or assess the benefits of transparency apart from some limited statistics on website visits. We learn that data.gov.uk has had 1.75m visits since its launch in January 2010, unfortunately over 80% of users “leave from either the home page or the data page on the website. This suggests that they are not accessing data during their visit ..” One of the highlights quoted is the 47m visits to police.uk between February and November 2011 which sounds pretty impressive until the Guardian pours some cold water over this OpenData triumph.
“We were interested in that 47m figure for the crime maps site and tested it using Nielsen data. There is no guidance on what exactly constitutes ‘visits’ – is it page views or unique users? Our figures show that while the site did get a lot of visitors when it was initially launched in February last year – and had a brief peak during the England riots last year (ironically, the data on the site is all historical, so visitors looking for riot offences would have been disappointed), in December it appeared to only have 47,000 viewers, looking at 364,000 pages”
In the interest of balance, it should be noted that access to the Depart for Education’s schools performance tool (note the DfE’s tool not an application built by the private sector) has increased by 84% in the period under review.
The report highlights three areas of risk – privacy, fraud and unintended consequences.
The privacy concerns have been extensively aired and it seems that just removing names and addresses or some simple aggregation will not prevent data being cross tabulated with other sources to deanonymise. The government has commissioned an independent review into privacy and transparency, it will be interesting to see what response this review gets from the Cabinet Office particularly with regard to the NHS data being offered to big pharmas.
Whilst the economic benefits of OpenData have been slow to materialise within the private sector apparently some enterprising villains have already identified new opportunities to defraud the public sector using OpenData
“… with increased transparency around contracts and payment details – fraud attempts to a value of £7 million directly related to transparency releases have been found in local government …” (NAO)
On the economic front government is flaunting a new, improved and bigger estimate of the economic contribution of public data is £16bn. The source for this estimate is (once again) based upon the opening up of geographic data in New Zealand
“A recent review of the literature on reusing public sector information put the value of public sector information in the European Union at around €140 billion a year. The author based the estimates on extrapolating from studies of the total economic impacts of geospatial information in Australia and New Zealand. Based on this review, the Government derived an estimate of £16 billion for the current total economic value of UK public sector information.” (NAO)
This sounds like “Pollock squared” to those of us of a sceptical bent and the NAO goes on to point out an alternative much lower estimate from the OFT
“The Office of Fair Trading produced an earlier study in 2006 on the commercial use of public sector information. They surveyed more than 400 public bodies to identify the income generated from public data release. They also commissioned research to estimate the economic value of UK public sector information. Based primarily on the survey results, the contractors estimated this value to be about £590 million in 2005.”
“Both studies have limitations. The Office of Fair Trading report notes that top-down approaches, such as that used in the EU-wide estimate, tend to overstate the economic value of public service information. This is because they do not factor in reasonable substitutes available if that information does not exist or is prohibitively expensive. Furthermore, the assumption of similar public sector information markets is crude given significant known differences between countries. However, the Office of Fair Trading report is likely to understate the economic value of public sector information.” (NAO)
So we don’t really have a good idea of the potential economic benefit. Fair enough, this is part of the “new economy” we are sailing in uncharted waters and should have some faith that economic benefit will follow on from the release of OpenData. But surely that would suggest a phased approach to the program of releasing OpenData allowing government to assess the benefits from accountability and new businesses along the way and to keep some control over costs? data.gov.uk currently costs £2m p.a. to run, there are also departmental costs to release data.
“The costs [per department] range from £53,000 to £500,000. These represent a lower bound for the cost of standard releases because they only capture staff costs and do not include, for example, costs of upgrading IT systems or payments to contractors.” (NAO)
No doubt my more technical friends will ridicule the higher end costs to publish data but inevitably there are staff costs involved in identifying, extracting and preparing data for publication. Anonymisation of personal data content could prove to be even more costly particularly if private sector consultants are needed.
The benefits sought from the transparency agenda, accountability and service improvement, are almost unarguable and are probably worth the £15m a year we may be spending on releasing data (2m for data.gov.uk plus 25 odd departments at 250k and perhaps the same again for Local Government and others). But let’s not be kidded by the unproven economic arguments of OpenData champions in the academic and startup communities into believing that any data requested should be released regardless of the cost or anticipated usage.
If this were a school report (we would probably be at the end of the first year of secondary school) I can imagine the tone of the head of year’s summary
“Francis has made a good start at the OpenData Academy. He is an enthusiastic pupil who has displayed a positive attitude to his subject but needs to pay more attention to measuring the usage and benefits of OpenData. In the coming year he should reinforce his enthusiasm for transparency and accountability with a sound economic framework that does not depend upon unsubstantiated forecasts of an economic miracle (advice that I also gave to his cousin George).”
Open or Closed or a bit of both? Thanks to wiccked http://www.flickr.com/photos/wiccked/
Open Source Geo and Open Geospatial Consortium Standards have been active for over a decade, OpenStreetMap since 2004 and OpenData is the new kid on the block. But something seems to have shifted, it seems that you can barely go for a day in the UK geoworld without stumbling on an event, an article, a vendor or consultant talking about Open something. Why has Open become the badge that everyone wants to flaunt?
Not everyone who claims to be Open actually is but with loads of different connotations to the Open badge there is plenty of room for interpretation and argument.
I am going to be exploring whether Open Source, Standards, Data and StreetMap achieved critical mass and their interdependence. at the AGI’s Northern Geoconference on the 3rd of May at the Manchester Museum which sounds like a fun venue.
Hopefully I will stir up some debate about being Open, if you have any thoughts before the 3rd share them with me here and in the spirit of openness I will give you a shout out at the event.
Yup, I'm grumpy. Thx to Chris JD http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_jd/
Last year I commented on the AA’s Streetwatch survey of potholes questioning the methodology used.
I contacted the AA to see whether they would let me have a look at their data and see whether there were any other conclusions that could be drawn from this exercise in Citizen Science. After several mails and chasing for replies I eventually got a reply:
“This survey was never intended to be a scientific investigation of local road and footpath problems, their possible causes or reasons for improvement or deterioration. It was, as you allude to, a ‘big society’ approach to reviewing local issues around our AA Streetwatchers neighbourhoods. As you make clear there are a number of ways of carrying out such work but our approach was based on our AA Streetwatchers largely doing this themselves and us reporting their findings. The results merely provide a ‘snapshot’. Unlike the AA Streetwatch 1 survey this time we reported the observations by regions – hence the regional rather than postcode maps. This is only our third survey and our aim is to increase participation which we hope will produce a useful ‘dip-check’ of local conditions. For your information the numbers reported are just counts (with obvious error reports removed).”
Note – no offer to provide the data for alternative interpretation
Fair play to the AA, they accept that this was not a “scientific investigation”. But in their original press releases the AA talks about a “deluge” and “plague of potholes” and the summary of the report gives an indication of precision which they cannot back up with sample selection or size or methodology. That would seem to me to be claiming some kind of serious or scientific value to their “snapshot”, I doubt they will put out a further press release to correct any misinterpretation that may have occurred.
So next time the AA gathers a tiny sample of subjective data on road condition, I hope they will be clear that it is not intended to be a scientific investigation and that the results are a snapshot which may not provide a balanced or meaningful assessment of road condition or the effectiveness of road maintenance processes relative to weather and budget. But then the exercise wouldn’t get much publicity or serve whatever agenda the AA may be seeking to promote.
On pothole patrol. Thanks to Amanda Slater http://www.flickr.com/photos/pikerslanefarm/
Potholes are one of those things that get everyone united in righteous indignation “Harumph, they should do something about this!” No one is going to suggest that potholes are desirable but are we too eager to bash the local authorities who are tasked with spending our taxes to keep the roads in good condition?
The Telegraph and several other papers reported last week on the “plague of potholes” identified by the AA’s recent Streetwatch Survey. The report summarises the results of a 1000 informal surveys undertaken by volunteers walking their local areas and recording potholes, repaired potholes and potholes marked for repair (I’m not sure how you would identify a repaired pothole) along a 30-60 minute walk. The report includes a load of simple thematic maps which take a bit of time to understand as the colouring of each map represents the ranking of that region for one of the survey questions. The survey found that the North East and Scotland are the “pothole plague” black spots of GB.
Edmund King provides several choice quotes in his introduction including
“Many councils have been swamped by the deluge of potholes, yet the evidence from the South West suggests the problem can be turned round. Although we are sympathetic with the plight that councils find themselves in austere times, the fact remains that we are seeing the legacy of a ‘Cinderella’ approach to road maintenance funding over many years”
Cllr Peter Box, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Economy and Transport Board responded
“Parts of the country which have milder winters have less destruction wreaked on their roads by ice. Ranking geographical areas without taking this major factor into account displays a fundamental lack of understanding about road maintenance.”
Unfortunately the AA have not provided any detail as to how they calculated their rankings. Did they adjust their results for the the number of survey participants in each area, the distances and road types they covered, the road miles in each region, highways budgets, the level of utility streetworks in the preceding years (a significant factor in potholes) or, perhaps most importantly, regional patterns of severe winter weather? We have a number of maps but none of the underlying data and methodology that would enable us to evaluate their conclusions.
I am not suggesting that harnessing concerned citizens to survey the state of our roads could not be a useful contribution to the discussion about road maintenance practices, policies and budgets. But this type of citizen science has the potential to be skewed and misunderstood unless there is an opportunity for other “concerned citizens” to review the data and question the conclusions drawn by the lobby group sponsoring the survey.
Sounds like we need some #OpenData from the Streetwatch Survey to mash up with some #OpenWeatherData if the Met Office could oblige and some road length data which we can get from #OSOpenData(C).
Pinteresting, thanks to Dave77459 http://www.flickr.com/photos/dave77459/
This could become a habit and is certainly unlikely to win me many friends but here goes anyway.
This morning the Guardian published a map of road accidents and deaths over the last ten years produced by the clever folk at ito World who have produced some of the most stunning visualisations of transport and OSM data that I have seen. So what do you think of this?
At first sight it is just a mass of dots which do not indicate any spatial pattern. If I zoom into my area I am presented with a complex array of symbols that indicate for fatalities the type of victim(cyclist, pedestrian etc) by colour, the age of the victim, the sex and adult/child status, the year of the crash plus further symbols for serious and minor injuries. Wow, that is a lot of information in one map!
I am struggling to understand any trends or patterns in the data even when zoomed in to my local area. I would like to be able to filter by year, perhaps view some trend information, perhaps filter the different categories, maybe understand whether the data is average, better than average or worse (when rated against what I am not sure but I imagine a transport) and even view some more info on the accident (assuming that is available in the opendata). Bottom line is a mass of points even when elegantly and cleverly symbolised is not giving me any insight.
The Guardian have been great advocates for OpenData and have achieved some breakthroughs in opening up geodata, they have also been at the forefront of the new discipline of data driven journalism , now they need to demonstrate how OpenData can provide new insights into important issues like road safety. We need more than pointilism or as I have said before “Just because you can stick it on a map …” although in this case there is certainly a lot of insight that could be derived from a more analytical product.
Getting your flood mapping wrong can have some serious consequences. Thx for the pic to Cheltenham Borough Council (yes a UK council with a flickr page)
Usually maps that inspire, delight, offend, aggravate, mislead or seem pointless get a short mention on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but thanks to Mark Percival and Rolllo Home Flood Map gets a front page spread.
I don’t know much about the techniques of flood modelling but I have a feeling that it is a bit more complex than sucking up a 90m resolution free data set and draping it over Google. However you have to admire the author’s vision and ambition
“Development of the Flood Map application is a try to help fight against the natural disaster like flood and there by a try to save as many lives as possible.”
On the disclaimer side I think they have it well covered
Before using this Flood Map application, please note that the application may have some or many bugs or inaccuracies because of various technical or non technical reasons. Also note that there might be some miss-alignment, so please consider +-100 meters tolerance to be on safer side.
An application that wants to help fight natural disasters and save lives warns that it may have many bugs or inaccuracies, so why bother? Could this be a task best left to experts?
Government is a big place, so it isn’t surprising that different departments can have conflicting agendas or not always be completely in the loop about what others are up to.
A couple of weeks ago an announcement came out of DCLG that a new wave of council openness was being hailed by Eric Pickles. A Code of Recommended Practice for council transparency is being published and “ministers are minded to make it legally binding”
“The code of practice calls on local authorities such as councils and fire and rescue services to shine a light on every part of their business, from employees’ salaries over £58,200 and details of all their contracts and tenders to details of grants to voluntary organisations, performance information and the locations of public land and building assets. It also establishes three key principles behind council transparency; timeliness, openness and mindfulness of local demand.”
I’m sure you don’t need me to point out the potential fun and games here as councils and OS discuss how open councils can be with data about their land and property holdings. No problem if you are an OS licensee under the PSMA but not so easy for the rest of us particularly the army of armchair auditors that Eric is relying upon to help highlight wastage in local government.
“Releasing this information to the public could provide a wealth of local knowledge and spark more improvements in the way services are delivered. Faster publication and easier access for the public and companies could open new possibilities for real-time analysis and response and opportunities for small businesses to enter new markets.”
Looks like we could have the mighty Mr Pickles and DCLG alongside Francis Maude and the Cabinet Office facing off the BIS and the new PDC.
This could be even more fun that Armando Ianucci’s hilarious fim.
Another day of geo starts in Nottingham. Thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/
The second day of a conference always faces the challenge of the morning after syndrome, even more so after a monster bash of geonerds trying to relive their student drinking days and drain the bar dry. In my opinion it was a good thing that we were thrown out of the bar at 1.00 am, I shudder to think what mayhem might have ensued if we had been allowed to carry on! One of the great memories of this year’s conference will be Conor Smyth, Head of Geo Services at EDINA and Cameron Easton, Head of Spatial Information at the Scottish Executive holding each other up as they weaved their way back to their rooms. Enough, lest you think the whole of GeoCommunity is dedicated to having fun!
Surprisingly after a good dose of coffee most of the delegates seemed ready for the morning’s activities, still as I tweeted “Geohangovers are for geowimps”. Even so it was going to take something a bit special to kickstart the morning and we got it. I wish Danny Dorling had been teaching geography when I was at school. Danny is my kind of geographer, with an interest in applying geography in ways that matter and might make a difference and a rare talent for illuminating a jumble of data with his weird and wonderful Twisted Maps (aka cartograms).
Danny gave us a whistle stop tour of how different projections and cartographic techniques can provide insight and highlight trends in ways that shaded polygons just can’t. I think a challenge for most of us in understanding these twisted maps (Danny’s description not mine) is the extent to which geographic outlines have become iconic and are almost hard wired into the spatial part of our brains, changing our internal projection systems is not easy. If you are not sure, go have a look at OSM-GB, at the moment the very rough map is just up there as a place holder until the project starts munging and hopefully improving OSM data, you know this is GB but it just doesn’t look quite right (WGS84). Now look at this map by Ben Hennig, one of Danny’s PhD students, at Views of the World
You get the high level picture pretty quickly don’t you? It will take me a while to adapt and drill down into the detail in this view though as all of my geomemory is baffled by these unfamiliar outlines. I think it is a tribute to the GeoCommunity in this country that we have a Social and Spatial Inequalities Group at one of our universities – maybe that says more about me than anything else.
Vanessa Lawrence was the next speaker (Ordnance Survey were a Platinum Sponsor of the event, thanks guys). I don’t always agree with Vanessa and I I may have been mildly critical of OS on the odd occasion but Vanessa’s irrepressible enthusiasm and belief in the contribution that geography can make to Britain and the world, combined with her pride in the OS have to be admired. This was a very wide ranging talk that started with world wide developments in mapping (China is investing $1.5bn to turbocharge their GI industry) through to the way Ordnance Survey is adapting to an era of Open Data. Lots of good material and very upbeat. A little moment of personal pride came up when in the course of her presentation Vanessa referred to the combination of industry and practitioners across the private and public sectors as the GeoCommunity, 5 years after we launched this event and created the brand it has become common parlance as high up as the DG of OS – nice.
5 years ago Jo Cook was almost a lone voice championing Open Source GIS, I remember her approaching me at the first GeoCommunity trying to persuade me that the AGI should be supporting Open Source (not Open Sores as John pepper described it in his Soapbox). I think I waffled about broad churches, even handed and stuff like that, shame on me. In 2011 there was an “Open” river (as opposed to a stream) running through the conference and the unconference, Open Source Geo is definitely established as part of the landscape and Mike Saunt’s debunking of the 3 myths of Open Source was a great response to those still trying to spread FUD. Jo Cook is the chair/lead/coordinator of the UK chapter of OSGeo, inadvertently she tweeted out that the chapter were bidding to bring the annual FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geo) conference to Britain in 2013, a new hashtag was born and then renamed. Just imagine how much fun it could be to back to back GeoCommunity and FOSS4G in 2013, a solid week of mapmadness and geolove in GB! The best place (at the moment) to find out more as it happens or to offer help would be to sign up here.
Part of the fun of GeoCommunity is the chance conversations that you stumble into. Over lunch with Mark Iliffe, Jo Cook, Conor Smyth we got into a conversation about enterprise in the third world, Mark had been working in Africa recently (see yesterday’s post for details of his talk) and Conor had worked in Latin America when he was younger. Conor told us about a project in the slums of the Philippines to make solar powered lights from 2 litre plastic drinks bottles, cool stuff, not very geo but just why you want to be at GeoCommunity.
A robust discussion about Open Data. Thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/punchup/
Then we were back in the main auditorium for the annual debate “Open Data – what could possibly go wrong?” (title suggested by yours truly). Some of the AGI debates in the past have fallen a bit flat, some have been gentle conversations and rarely has there been a strong contrast of positions. The panel consisted of people who are all old friends, Gesche Schmidt (LGG), Bill Oates (WAG), Trevor Adams (Met police), Bob Barr and me. I though that this was a rather tired old topic and when in preparation several of the panel planned to speak in favour, I offered to take the debating position of opposing Open Data (even though I don’t really) on the basis of economics, innovation and who might be the ones holding government to account. Just for the sake of argument of course. Well that didn’t last very long, when Gesche and Bill went off on one about personal data I went mildly ballistic, when Bob started waffling on about the benefits of OpenStreetMap (which I fully agree with) trying to identify the economic benefits of releasing Open Data I lost it completely, Bob was so far off track that I almost stood up to physically drag him back “on topic”. Interestingly, what the panel illustrated was the deeply ingrained tendency for people working in the public sector to focus on the difficulties in opening up data and the reasons to say no. I say “Just say Yes” and “JFDI”
At last we got to the final plenaries. Kimberley Kowal is the Curator of Digital Mapping at the British Library, if there is a cooler job than this then please tell me about it (if KK could be persuaded to go for it I could volunteer to be her standin at the British Library until they appoint a replacement). There was a wondrous look on the faces of the assembled map geeks as images of fascinating, exquisite maps from the BL collection flashed up on the screen. My favourite was the 18th C strip map of directions from London to Paris with textual directions, small drawings of points of interest and compasses, pretty much like Google route directions today without the map. I wish I had some images from the presentation to share, maybe later but in the mean time you will have to live with a couple of the comments from the tweetstream “I’m in mapheaven” and in the vernacular of the backchannel “#mapporn“.
Gary Gale is an entertaining presenter who produces work of art zen slide decks full of humour, weaving his way through some deceptive paths to deliver you to his final message. His closing plenary was a cracker about place, context and a next generation of smarter location based capabilities (note that I am not saying apps). I am not sure whether the multiple references to “checking in” were included just to wind me up or whether Gary is still hooked on becoming a Mayor, that aside this was a funny and thoughtful presentation and a perfect counterpoint to Kimberley.
OK, it’s time for a rant! Why oh why do people skip out of an event before the final plenaries? Those of you who did missed 2 of the best speakers of the conference to get home an hour earlier. IMHO dumb.
So that’s it from me and GeoCommunity for another year. I was able to enjoy the event as a delegate rather than an organiser this year and for me it was probably the best yet although I might try not to commit to two presentations, 2 panels and 2 soapboxes next year. We launched OSM-GB and will be back next year to talk about our successes and lessons learnt. I made new friends, drank too much for a man of my age, probably inadvertently offended someone via the twitter stream, had a lot of fun and most of all realised how lucky I was to be a part of the GeoCommunity.
A big thank you to Jeremy Morley and his conference team and the remarkable, unflappable AGI core staff who achieve so much with such a small team.
Thanks to Gary, the tweet stream is here so those of you who were not there can get an irreverent flavour of the conversation around the event. These wordles from Chris over at Web-GIS are also worth a look.
So another GeoCommunity has been and gone, the format has evolved, the new venue at Nottingham is a big improvement and I have to admit to a slight sense of paternal pride that successive conference teams bring fresh energy and ideas. This was my second year as a plain participant, well a presenter participant rather than an organiser or conference chair – no responsibilities, no worries, just the opportunity to sit back and enjoy which I certainly did.
Thanks to http://www.flickr.com/photos/travelingman/
Despite the cuts in the public sector and the pressures on the commercial participants, attendance held up very well and the mood of the delegates seemed to be pretty positive. About 450 delegates were here to talk geo, meet old friends and make new ones (hiya @markiliffe) learn stuff and enjoy parties, soapboxes, quizzes and of course the twitter backchannel.
Day one opened with a changed pair of plenary speakers as both of the advertised candidates had to drop out at short notice and what a great pair of standins we got, no second besters here! Cheryl Miller (on behalf of Sir Ian Magee, Chair of the GI Group) gave a confident and spirited presentation on the role of the GI panel in representing government as the customer of the PSMA in its relationship with Ordnance Survey. There was an almost audible gasp when the phrase “hold Ordnance Survey to account” appeared on a slide and the backchannel went into feverish overload with mental images of two geodames slugging it out.
Next up was Jamie Justham of Dotted Eyes who was talking about the creation of the new parliamentary constituency by the Boundary Commission. I was surprised that the team had chosen this for a plenary, I thought it was going to be a dry and rather geeky topic. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Jamie Justham’s almost schoolboy like enthusiasm for his subject combined with his almost encyclopaedic knowledge made this presentation absolutely rivetting. If Jamie ever gives up geo he could replace Peter Snow and the Swingometer. Dotted Eyes have released a dataset of the proposed boundaries as OpenData for anyone who wants to investigate and contribute to the consultation, well done guys.
The final keynote from Amanda Turner of ESRI UK (one of the Platinum Sponsors) was an interesting review of the challenges facing our community from a newcomer’s perspective. When she questioned the complex and varied language that we use to describe what we do (GIS, Geography, Location, Spatial, GI) I think many agreed with her.
A quick mention of the food at the East Midlands Conference Centre which was exceptionally good and a massive improvement on the old venue. Culinary delights at a geoconference – unheard of.
Collect all 6 stickers and win a prize
For a day and a half I had been stickering everything that moved in a guerilla marketing campaign for the launch of the OSM-GB project that I have been working on with CGS at Nottingham and 1Spatial. This was to ensure that I had a full room for my session on “How authoritative can the crowd be?” which mused on what constitutes authority in geodata and what might be done to increase trust and confidence in OSM to encourage public sector to use OSM, become contributors helping to increase coverage and attribution and identify use cases for an alternative (not a replacement) to other base maps. You can read my paper on the OSM-GB blog and the slide deck is here.
The response was very encouraging and you will be hearing more from me about this as we get our researcher in place and start.
I also did a soapbox that gave a quick preview of the project, slides are here if you want them. Day one finished with a superb presentation by Mark Iliffe, a PhD student at UoN who looks to have a great future. Mark talked about mapping in the slums of Africa, it was a massive reality check for many of the audience, he was immensely quotable and my favourite was describing toilet trenches as “Open Defecation Areas with tag=’land use’ value=’shit’”. Not surprisingly he got one of the biggest rounds of applause at the end of it and subsequently won the delegates vote and award for the best paper at the conference.
The Soapbox has become an established feature at the end of day 1 of GeoCommunity. It is a combination of georant and geostandup comedy in 5 minute blurts to an autotimed slide deck. Not easy at the best of times but when the beer is flowing (courtesy of Star Apic) and the audience are barracking and throwing virtual rotten tomatoes via twitter this is a tough place to be. Not satisfied with standing up for OSM-GB I managed to be persuaded by Ken Field (who is now based at ESRI in California) to do a second transatlantic soapbox where he prepared the soapbox and I did the chat bit (unseen!). Stupid? Yes, but persuading Gary Gale to join me in a chaotic double act was the only smart thing I can claim about this fiasco. You can judge for yourself with a warning about the occasional profanity for those of a sensitive disposition.
Thanks to Ken for the slide deck and a great idea and a big thanks to Gary for standing up with me on this. The undoubted champion of this year’s soapbox following in the footsteps of previous winners Ian Painter and Thierry Gregorius was Mike Saunt of Astun Technology debunking some of the myths of Open Source Geo with a great surprise about 90 seconds into the video.
I particularly like the concept of the “software tax” I bet that Ian painter and others will be back soon to respond to Mike’s thoughts. I think he is spot on.
The least said about the evening’s festivities is probably the better, more food, a free bar, scalextric, a surfboard thing to fall off, loads of new people to meet and quite a bit of whisky.
24 hours later I am starting to feel the strain, so this will be Part 1 and some thoughts on the second day’s speakers and the overall event will follow in a couple of days (some proper work to be done tomorrow)
For the 2nd year AGI’s GeoCommunity kicked off with an informal preconference unconference day, W3G. I had a lot of fun at this event last year but this one topped it.
Jonathan Raper starts W3G. Why do they call him the Mad Professor?
The morning started with a small panic as @MadProf (aka Jonathan Raper) had not appeared by 9.45, Gary Gale and Rollo Home are starting to reorganise the schedule when Jonathan strolls in wearing full evening dress and muttering about people thinking he was on his way home on the tube at 4.45 this morning. The guy has style (or a busy social life and an appointment at a black tie dinner in the evening).
Jonathan started off the day with an outstanding overview of the current state of the Open Data movement in the UK laced with humour (almost obligatory at an unconference) and laden with outrageous quotes including “we are a nation of data huggers”, “I’ve burnt my academic career”, ”I’m not a complete raving lunatic” and “Boris Johnson has his own lexicon he described TfL is a Hittite sect” and more. Hopefully you can get the flavour from the tweetdoc.
After people had recovered from the early morning shock jock of OpenData we moved into the unconference sessions. To be honest I think a few people had cheated and prepared quite intensively for these “unplanned” sessions.
The room I was in featured Rich Rombouts of Snowflake talking about areoGML or something like that. It was witty, technical stuff about the use of XML schemas within flight control with lots of side jokes about French ATC being on strike lightening a serious talk. At the end there was an interesting conversation about why we and the aviation industry still consider paper charts to be an essential safety backstop (it could be because computers fail and rebooting an aircraft might not be a good idea, aerogeeks will pile in here “you don’t know what your talking about” – of course I don’t , that’s why I trust paper). Last year Rich had one of the best slides of the day with porn and cheese (don’t ask, I can’t remember) and he may have bettered that with this year’s gem simulating a heads up display incorporating aeroGML:
Woops, I think we need to change runways
Brian Norman followed up with a brilliant talk about building cross platform mobile web applications. This was really simple advice, well presented. It’s amazing how much you can learn in 20 or 30 minutes.
Finally Ed Boiling came on talking about talking about Dinosaurs, Concorde and web interfaces. You have to love a presenter who works for ESRI and opens by saying that “I bat for the dinosaurs”. This was a really well thought through talk about the perils of trying to replicate familiar desktop interfaces in web applications, you had to be there to understand how Concorde and the space shuttle got in there.
For me the event had kicked off the night before hand with a long overdue catch up dinner with Gary Gale, who has created this event and placed his unique humorous and insightful stamp upon it. I somehow allowed myself to be talked into to dropping the short talk I had prepped and sprinting through my History of Web Mapping in 40 minutes after lunch. When part way through my drastically abbreviated talk I suggested that the MapInfo and ESRI had missed a massive opportunity before Google launched their Maps API and subsequently added that some people’s business models had gone down the toilet, Andy Coote (formerly a director of ESRI UK) leapt up to argue with me that I was talking rubbish. I like a bit of controversy and at least he was listening, anyway I still think those were fair comments.
All in all a great day that finished up with a fireside chat (without the fire) between Gary, Ed Boiling, Matt Toon and me about whether geo was a business or a feature and the convergence of enterprise and consumer mapping.
One moan from me, this was a free day, full of great content (ignoring my bit) with excellent food and geobeers. Why oh why geopeeps weren’t there more of you there? Maybe next year?
