Posted by
Tracey P. Lauriault-2 on
Jun 22, 2006; 4:10pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/Geotec-2006-Report-tp680.html
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