OMB

The Association for Geographic Information (AGI) are a UK-centric trade association for the producers and consumers of geographic information and related hardware suppliers, software developers and consultants. They exist to promote the interests of their members, provide them with a forum for discussion, oversee professional development and organise events like this week’s annual conference, held in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.

I was invited to talk about OSM and some of the neo-geographic development that ZXV undertake. The AGI conference is a lot like Where2.0 for people who use proprietary desktop GIS and all the trappings of the pre-Web2.0 era, something that the conference tried to address this year by the inclusion of several talks relating to neo-geography, and a conference theme: ‘Building a geo-community’.

It was a tough crowd. These are the guys for whom tagging, folksonomies and the democratisation of, well, almost anything is a scary idea. In a lot of ways talking to groups like this is what its all about - these are the people who use geographic information all day, everyday. Convincing an open software advocate of the benefits of open geodata is one thing, but selling the idea that a bunch of normal people without years of training and professional certification, can make a map that’s actually quite good, to a room full of people who have built their careers upon concept that they are the specialists, is quite a challenge. Its a challenge that I relish and I think the message is really getting across - there was a lot of interest in OpenStreetMap, open-geodata and neo-geography.

Neo-geography - it will never work

The criticisms leveled and OSM and neogeography were nothing new. The usual concerns about ‘how can a trust the data’ and ‘will it ever be complete’, were voiced, along with some misinformed comments from several of speakers and panelists, including David Maguire, VP ESRI UK and one gentleman who’s name I missed, sitting on the far right of the pannel. (I’d like to crowd source the name of the guy sitting on the far right of the panel during the debate on Thursday, so please leave his name as a comment).

Both of these delegates spun the line that the kind of pins-in-maps analysis that neo-geographers undertake is one thing, but if you want ‘proper’ geographic analysis, you of course need a ‘proper’ GIS. Spatatial analysis cannot, apparently be undertaken with open source tools and is certainly outside of the realms of neo-geography. Have these guys not heard of GeoCommons?. ‘They must have heard of PostGIS or GRASS?’, I thought. Of course they have - these guys are board level executives of companies like Oracle and ESRI. Right now, it would be insane for the VP of ESRI to stand up at the AGI and tell the delegates that yes, its true, 90% of the users of ESRI, could actually use QGIS quite happily. Its tantamount to Vanessa Lawrence standing up and telling everyone to use OpenStreetMap maps. These guys are going to keep on peddling their company line, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t understand what’s going on.

Oracle will profess that open source databases are no threat, but they they’ll release a free version. The OS will innovate to keep up with developments driven by the open source and neo-geographic community. And I would be surprised if ESRI don’t release a free desktop GIS that has equivalent functionality to QGIS. The smart guys are already doing so.

This is far from all I’ve got to say about the conceptions of the established GIS community regarding neo-geograhpy.