Actually, I’m going to side with Thad on this one: philosophical debate is legit, IMO. Is not the use of drones, a debate we had earlier, philosophical as well as pragmatic for GIS users? What role does government play in regulating their use and in privacy concerns? GIS and mapping, particularly in regards to privacy concerns and targeting government action, are not just tools for the policy analyst, but for the many sides of US political and civil debate.

 

As for “guerilla marketing” (not sure how Simian references were dropped in, as I have never seen any great ape attempt to market goods and services), I didn’t see any attempt to implicitly market anything that Web Map Solutions does in the post itself. That said, if we want to limit this to technical discussion only, there are LinkedIn Groups and others that may be more appropriate for philosophy of GIS. I suspect that’s up to the broad users of this group and the moderator.

 

Best wishes

Rich

 

 

And what does newly elected President Horr feel about that? Inquiring minds would like to know…

 

Thad

 

 

 

 

How about we agree that the purpose of this listserv though is:

 

a)      troubleshooting technical problems we are having with our Esri software (the “ARC” in NEARC)

b)      the announcement of regional GIS workshops/programs/user group meetings/etc.

c)       relevant job announcements in the region

 

Philosophical discussions, blog announcements, etc… well let’s do that elsewhere.

 

===============================
Michael Smith MS GISP
State GIS Manager, Maine Office of GIS
State of Maine, Office of Information Technology
michael.smith _at_ maine.gov 207-215-5530

Board Member, Maine GeoLibrary
Education Chair, Maine GIS Users Group
State Rep, National States Geographic Information Council


State House Station 145
51 Commerce Drive
Augusta, ME 04333-0145
69^o 47' 58.9"W  44^o 21' 54.8"N

 

Janel and colleagues,

With all due respect, I personally do not see this as “gorilla marketing”, but rather a healthy discussion/debate with a poignant observation. (and purchasing gorillas for private ownership is illegal in most places anyway) If I may, let’s look at the wise words of “Uncle Jack” (I mean no disrespect Mr. Dangermond, if you are reading this…). He said in an address at the 2013 Esri International User Conference, “At the same time, GIS is transforming, and this is very exciting to us. It's totally transforming into a web GIS, and its leveraging all this stuff. It's leveraging faster machines. It's leveraging the web and the cloud, and big data, and all those big trends. We're taking advantage of that. And it's also integrating all of the new measurement stuff - advancing GIS with remote sensing, GPS, and 3D...and all those things that we are evolving along. Also integration with pervasive information, all that's on the web. And what's emerging is a new little pattern. It's a pattern of apps that make cool maps, that do analytics, that provide pervasive access to your work...that support content management better and go online with content, and more collaboration, and why? Well, what does this mean? GIS is getting easier, it's getting more accessible, dramatically, and it's becoming social…I simply want to start off this meeting by saying, wow, we suddenly have a different kind of GIS, and a very exciting one.” I think he hits the nail on the head and I agree with Mr. Smith- GIS is transforming. You can try to fight the wave, but be aware you may be swept away by it. It may prove useful to learn to swim in the current!

Kind regards,

Thad

 

 

 

OK I don’t see why we need to characterize this as splitting, polarizing, etc.  Is it not just a continued evolution of GIS on its natural path?  25 years ago we were all sitting at digitizing tables and everyone came to us for maps.  Today we provide digital data and support services and applications that ‘can’ certain GIS analyses.  There are people all over the GIS spectrum, some old AML diehards who still use ArcEdit (even me every now and then!), sophisticated web programmers who just include certain geospatial services in their otherwise non-GIS apps, any number of biologist, hydrologist, geologist, other_ologist who uses GIS as a tool in their regular job.

 

I don’t see splits and polarization – that’s only there if you envision it there.  Change, maturation, expansion – absolutely.  But I think we’re all a pretty big happy family, we geo-geeks (regardless of what flavor you are).

 

Now if we can just everyone in D.C. to work together…

 

===============================
Michael Smith MS GISP
State GIS Manager, Maine Office of GIS
State of Maine, Office of Information Technology
michael.smith _at_ maine.gov 207-215-5530

Board Member, Maine GeoLibrary
Education Chair, Maine GIS Users Group
State Rep, National States Geographic Information Council


State House Station 145
51 Commerce Drive
Augusta, ME 04333-0145
69^o 47' 58.9"W  44^o 21' 54.8"N

From: Northeast Arc Users Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matt Sheehan
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2014 9:25 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Splitting, Expanding, Maturing, Polarizing .... GIS is Changing

 

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