My thoughts after Where 2008...

In my view, the "Where 2.0" movement/phenomena is about the democratization of mapping - remix this, mash in that, geocode it and get it on a map. My Map. With My Stuff and My Friends. Social graphs and all that. For many things, "close" really is good enough, and since it's "your" data, validation is less of an issue ( did you "really" like that pub? ) . Usability and performance are huge driving factors because many of these sites rely on users "wanting" to participate. This is driving the rapid evolution in terms of user experience, and poorly designed or slow sites fade quickly.

Meanwhile back in "GIScience"-land, the hard-core old guard have railed against pushpins as too simple, in-accurate or just lame. Not sure why there is so much insecurity, but maybe it's just a little envy that a bunch of javascript hackers made maps "cool". Many GIS applications have a "captive" audience (i.e. staff who have to use the site to do their job), usability has been low on the list, and performance an after though. The emphasis was placed on trying to cram desktop type work-flows and interaction models into a browser. Needless to say this has its drawbacks.

Not to use the John Hanke and Jack Dangermond session as too much of a metaphor, but these two camps seem to be coming together, or at least recognizing they both bring something valuable to the table. Sure there is still lots of misunderstanding, but things are getting better. Many of the "mash up" people I've talked to are realizing that the next step is to add spatial analysis. Not buttons & dials type analysis for the sake of it, but leveraged in context of answering a question. Sure the social graph is cool, but there are all sorts of new and interesting ways to leverage that when used in conjunction with spatial analytics. It opens lots of new scenarios. There is a realization that the scientifically backed, validated data has serious value in addition to "my data" or crowd-sourced data.

Going the other way, the GIS crowd (sadly under-represented at Where) is coming around to the idea that even their "captive" user base appreciates (or demand) a good user experience - design & performance matter. A lot more than they thought. And maybe it does make sense to dial back some of the "science" options in order to optimize performance. Some times "close" is good enough, and the performance trade off to get to "really really really close" is not always worth it.

This is a good thing and the whole industry / community will be better for it. GIScience sites/services that embrace the usability and performance of the neogeography sites will flourish if for no other reason than their users "like" using them. And if you're a social site looking to stand out, adding a shot of analysis into the sauce may be the trick.

It's been fun and I'm leaving with a head full of interesting ideas.

If you are presenting...

A parting word for anyone presenting at Where (or anything else) - Please please please read Presentation Zen (the book & site) before you show up.  I (and others I talked with) had really expected that these presentations would be on the level of TED - sadly this was the exception, not the norm. There were some big name companies up on stage with horrid slide decks - some were literally painful to view. Sure you have a cool 3 minute video that's super slick, and you likely spend 500K on, but following that with a jumble of bullets on neon-green background with heinous clip art some what spoils the effect. If you have 15 minutes in front of a crowd of thought-leaders, maybe you should spend more than 15 minutes on your slides.