I sat down this evening to write up a post on implemeting the Provider Pattern as another plug-in strategy for your .NET applications, but before I dug into that, I did some blog reading and caught up on the GeoCommons discussion that's been running on James Fee and Steve Citron-Pousty's blogs. I'll delay the technical post and instead throw my two cents into the mix.

My Take...

As someone much more involved in the backend technologies of the GIS space, I think that James (and to some extend Steve) is missing the point. This is not about metadata, quality of data, cartography, geography, democratization, "elitists" or "high-priests". In large part it's not specifically about the tool itself. I believe we are discussing Geocommons for the simple fact that it's another element in the suite of disruptive technologies which are making waves through the geospatial industry.

Disruptive Technology

First it was Google with blindingly fast "slippy" maps based on tile caches. Slam. I would say that pretty much no one in the "established" GIS field saw that coming, or if they did they did a good job of keeping it a secret. In addition to redefining what web mapping was (particularly with respect to performance) they also changed how web mapping applications worked. Enter the javascript API and mashups. While few mashups were particularly useful, it resulted in tens of thousands of people developing and working with geospatial data. As the push-pin map frenzy has been cooling off, we are seeing more complex integrations utilizing open source backend tools to create very powerful platforms. We see greater particpation in open source projects (OpenLayers comes to mind). We see KML beginning to displace both long standing formats and nascent standards. This is a sea change for an industry where the defacto tool prior to 2000 looked like this...

These new "geospatial" developers are not thinking in the "old" ways. They are pushing technology because they don't know things are supposed to be difficult or impossible. And for those of you who may not have seen this yet - check out this video from the TED conference where Blaise Aguera y Arcas (Microsoft Research) discusses and demos SeaDragon & Photosynth. Want to bet this shakes things up in the GIS arena? If you've solved the problems these guys have, throwing projection-on-the-fly into the mix is not going to be that big a deal.

The industry is changing, and it's not just the technology - it's also the marketing of technology.
Would any of these discussions have occured if FortiusOne simply did a press release about GeoIQ? Or a simple demo page on their site? Heck no. We're talking about this because they created a community site to do what previously required some arkane skills, expensive software and a treasure trove of data. The site is cool, as lots of "sizzle" and yes you can do some "neat" stuff which may or may not have legitmacy/credibility. But that's beside the point. The point here is that FortiusOne has pushed things forward. Heat maps on the fly. A community site to promote the product & service. Very different. Very Web 2.0. And clearly getting lots of attention.

As far as I can see, GIS - particularly the public consumption side of things - is being re-defined by people from outside the GIS industry. Why is this? Have we all be so insular that no new ideas are being hatched? Are the industry leaders so content with their position that innovation takes a back seat to stability and safe decisions? Have the elitists and priests ignored the Where 2.0 crowd, possibly at their own peril? What do you think?