Geotec 2006 Report

[Tracey P. Lauriault-2]

Hi gang;

Gabe gave a swish civicaccess presentation at the Geotec Conference in Ottawa this week.  He and I wrote it and were heavily inspired by Stephane & Michael's presentation as well as the great info that has appeared on the list (http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Medias/Diffusion).  According to Gabe (i was presenting elsewehere at the same time so...) the session went well, and he got some good offline encouragement about the work we are doing and that this work really needed to get done Canada.  Gabe did you have a few more notes & observations beyond what i said? 

You can read the details here - http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/AbStracts.  We will link to the proceedings once available.

The conference was an odd one, many industry reps and lots of top officials discussing all things maps & data without knowing much about what is really going on in the world of grass roots & open source mapping in the mapping hacks sense of the word nor in ways of working like we are doing here - wiki, lists etc.

There was some debate on the first day at the Panel on National Atlases Now and the Future.  The ADM discussed data policies but was skiddish about using the term cost recovery, and stated that government collects data to help government do its work, and that government has to ensure it is the authoritative source on the vision of Canada in its Atlas. 

oh! lala!  So I got up to the mic, used the words - cost recovery, and pointed out that the role of government was in fact to serve citizens, and that our job as citizens was to keep them knowing about the issues that we care about and affect us, and that we can only do so with good reliable, and accurate data at no cost, along with some useable open source tools. 

I also discussed that citizens are the authoritative knowledge base about their communities and what they know, how they see it, and how they express it should be seen in a national atlas that provides for citizens to upload their data.  Like Gabe's murmur projects, to be a place to tell their own stories.  I suggested perhaps an interactive participatory micro breweries theme of Canada (locations, pubs, comments, agriculture, distribution), or perhaps a Canada's music and art industry theme (famous people & where they come from, the emergence of certain genres, the Montreal scene, etc). I also mentioned the Richard Florida creativity index as a possible theme (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html) since we know that Canada is a hip place particularly if you let the hipsters talk -  "The key to economic growth lies not just in the ability to attract the creative class, but to translate that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes in the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses and regional growth. "

There were smiles & nods from some panelists, dropped jaws for others and applause from the audience & lots 'nice question" offline remarks.  This tells me that we are on the right track.

I won't even tell you about the crazy comments the ADM and others made about archiving! 

Either way, I was there for work, but being there gave me an opportunity to chat with all kinds of associations about what CivicAccess.ca - ACMLA (http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/assoc/acml/acmla.html), CARL (http://www.carl-abrc.ca/), CCA (http://www.cca-acc.org/), ICA (http://www.icaci.org/) and Cartography (http://ccablog.blogspot.com/) with some new people.

Now I would love to do a project of sorts and would love to get ideas from folks on what we can do!

Cheers
T