Last week has been pretty intense. My department finalized a, for a regional planning agency, rather unusual project and ran a couple of community meetings during the week. What happened in those meetings wasn’t the typical PowerPoint presentation followed by a Q&A. People, mostly of younger age, played a 3D video game and participated that way to Boston’s Chinatown Masterplan process.
Emerson students created the excellent video below, that captures the very core of the project in about 3 minutes:
I only got during the final phase of the project involved, helped testing the game, setting up the website and organizing our community meetings, but it was an absolutely exciting experience to take part in. Especially the first community meeting, hosted for Chinatown residents, stood out with an highly energized atmosphere.
The game helped in the meeting as ice breaker, facilitated engaging discussions about the neighborhood and provided a fun environment for the audience to work with. We all were somehow surprised when we actually saw game mechanics kicking in. At the point where scores and winners are announced, people started cheering, got all excited, compared scores and discussed strategies why one couldn’t complete all tasks or what would have been a better way to play.
The good part: it all had serious, real world backgrounds – well, real world compressed into 30 minute tasks. However, the game deals with existing challenges of Chinatown residents. The game allows players to walk in somebody else’s shoes through Chinatown and complete tasks as another person, equipped with different skills and opportunities. It’s an educational game, used to gather feedback on and engage in an urban planning processes.
But it’s still fun to play, and fun is the one aspect I wouldn’t underestimate here. It helps to broaden the audience of the community meeting, attracts especially younger people and provides an experience you wouldn’t expect.
Although the game can be played online, it is designed for meetings, to be played by people located in the same room. The game serves as facilitator for participation and gets people talking to each other, very actively as we found out during the meeting. The game is not designed as standalone solution.
The online game version should extend the dialog started during the meeting and provide opportunities for others to chime in at any point (we’re working on it, almost there).
Last week at the Ignite Spatial: Boston event I gave a short talk – 5min, 20 automated slides, 15sec each – about OpenStreetMap and why I think it can be interesting for town administrations to look at the OpenStreetMap model. In a nutshell:
OpenStreetMap is successfully based on open crowdsourcing, a horizontal multi-directional work-flow model, to build and maintain the world’s largest free geospatial database.
Open crowdsourcing helps to collect local knowledge across your residents, improve local geospatial data, engage residents and provide a 24/7 feedback loop for them.
Wide variety of data and information distribution: OpenStreetMap allows output from raw data access for developers to print map renderings for tourists.
Built-in data interoperability: no matter how many or in what part of the world people are contributing to the project, it all fits together to one piece.
Bottom line: towns should take a serious look at OpenStreetMap and the underlying model. It’s proven to work in many places and provides some valid points town administrations can benefit from.
More than any marketing leaflet, the Google/ESRI Where 2008 presentation made me curious about the potential of the upcoming ArcGIS Server release.
I find the example shown of the fires in California, where students started locating and pinpointing new fire outbreaks in Google My Maps, very interesting. In the field of spatial planning, stakeholder participation is often a crucial part. Since most projects deal with spatial impacts, using maps and plans is just natural to transport information. Enabling feedback processes directly via easy-to-use map interfaces like Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth could support communication strategies very well I think.
The thing is, our clients, partners and most stakeholders aren’t GIS power users. They are not very familiar with desktop GIS and, for obvious reasons, use map server interfaces only when they are forced to (the “Captive” user base). Anything what helps increasing user experience on interactive maps is just a huge step forward.
Arc2Earth is handy for quick & easy interactive map publishing via Google Maps/Virtual Earth or KML, but the potential of having feedback collected, (geo)processed and instantly returned by a server leaves room for some really great project ideas and use cases.
I guess first I’ll have a look at the GeoServer project and see what I can accomplish with the Open Geo-Stack, before bothering our local ESRI sales people.
Not surprising, participation in social networks strongly correlates with social origin. The following charts about a recent Facebook poll (clever polling btw, Facebook knows the basic information as age, gender, etc. of users who respond to polls) shows that Facebook is mainly a young white thing. Well, originally it was developed as and a good part of it still is a college student network.
Whereas in that case I’d rather say that white can be substituted with the term “(upper) middle class”. Without being aware of any detailed research, I suppose the overall picture about the Web 2.0 audience here in Europe wouldn’t differ a lot from this basic Facebook poll results.
So, the question popping into my mind was: are social networks increasing the Digital Divide instead of narrowing it? Are social networks an exclusive toy for (upper) middle class people?
One of the most compelling arguments for Web 2.0 are the low barriers of entry. So, where is everyone? Or maybe it’s because members of a family of six sharing a 50sqm apartment have other things to worry about than updating a blog.
However, I’m quite convinced that being familiar with social software (blogs, wikis, networks, etc.) will be a crucial requirement for future work environments. Just like as it’s now naturally to know how to perform a Google search or handle Email correctly. Thus I think it’s time for politicians to start a discussion about how to bring this knowledge to socially disadvantaged people. Students and other well-skilled people will learn this anyways over the next years…
30 seconds seem fine to answer political questions. It gives just enough time to focus on the question itself and point out the main concept or idea.
30 seconds minimize the risk of politicians attacking each other with rather stupid arguments.
Or maybe it’s just a matter of culture in political discussions. I mean here we’re used to (and probably a good part of the audience is sick of) TV discussions where the majority of politicians keeps on talking endlessly without saying anything substantial.
Some of the questions raised at the CNN YouTube debates in South Carolina where indeed quite interesting. Obviously not as sophisticated as if they were asked by experts, but that’s probably the idea behind the YouTube debates: address regular people, who are talking a regular language and make them participate.
Another thing which really impressed me was hearing the clear answer “yes” or “no” from a politician. Can you imagine?! The last time I’ve heard those words from an Austrian politician, even asked a straight “yes” or “no” question, is quite some time ago.
What I’m missing in that framework is the user’s share in the big C standing for the commerce.
Let’s take Yahoo! Travel and Flickr as example:
Most Flickr users pay Yahoo! for a Flickr pro account ($25/year), get a great platform in return and have fun participating and sharing photos. In the meantime, as result of millions excited users, Flickr has grown to one of the largest and best documented photo databases ever. Of course Yahoo! seeks for ways to leverage that database in other parts of its business. Like Yahoo! Travel for instance, where Flickr user photos can be viewed to illustrate travel destinations.
I think in the long term a solution about that issue – commercializing user generated content – must be found. Otherwise why should a paying Flickr pro user provide Yahoo! with free photos for other Yahoo! divisions than Flickr?
Anyone remember the discussions about user content when YouTube was acquired by Google? Some users got slightly upset seeing Google paying billions of dollars for basically user content…
If you call a GPS device your own, live in the area of Vienna and enjoy discovering your neighborhood from a new perspective then you should have a look at 4816:
the intersection of the minutes
4816 is about finding the minute points on the GPS grid in the urban area of Vienna. The point N48° 11,000´ E16° 19,000 is an example of these 185 intersections of latitudinal and longitudinal minutes within Vienna. … At each intercept point a photo is taken in each compass direction.
By traversing the GPS intercept points you take a journey through Vienna. The goal is known. But what will be the nature of its environment? Will it be approachable? What will be the special thing about it?
Kick-off is this thursday night (8/31/2006) at the FLUC in Vienna.
To get a picture of how far this project can get, I marked the minute intersections in and around Vienna in a Google Map.
Looking at certain markers on the satellite image I started thinking about methods to stabilize a little boat in the middle of the danube, precisely at N48°16′ E16°22′, for the time necessary to take a picture in each compass direction. Any ideas?
At locations like N48°15′ E16°22′ you should be quick and better have a copy of the railway schedule in your pocket if you don’t want to be run over by a train.
Well, before trying this two points I should check if all my insurance fees are paid.
Still fun and less dangerous will be explaining to people why I it is so important to enter their garden and make 4 pictures at this magic location.
Update
I have now a GPX-file and a KML-file for Google Earth available which show only the minute intersections within the boundaries of Vienna. Since my Google Map parses the same GPX-file, it got updated too.
Whereas in that case I’d rather say that white can be substituted with the term “(upper) middle class”. Without being aware of any detailed research, I suppose the overall picture about the Web 2.0 audience here in Europe wouldn’t differ a lot from this basic Facebook poll results.