Where is the Communication - People are Talking, But is Anybody Communicating?
Posted by Aaron VanWieren on 17 Aug 2007 at 02:46 am | Tagged as: Cartography And GIS
Earlier this week I asked the question “Where is the GIS Community”. After much discussion of this topic on various blogs and comment sections, I am not sure I can still answer the question in exactly the same way as before. I still feel a lack of something, which I dubbed community. I have come to realize that maybe the community is there, but what is really missing is communication, the necessary exchange of ideas that holds a community together or even brings them together as a group. I am not saying we all need to get in a big circle and hold hands while singing kumbaya around a giant bonfire. Instead we need to talk more to each other and less at each other, we need to exchange ideas not just sit and listen on the sidelines, there needs to be active participation as this is not lecture hour at university. Let me explain…
A Collection of Blogs Do Not Make a Community
As some readers have pointed out there are communities created around the GIS microcosm on very particular subjects, like open source, standards, etc. VectorOne seems to believe that all the conferences, published papers and internet publishing and distribution such as blogs and RSS agregators like Planet Geospatial are the ingredients that make a GIS community.
“We as a community have established a system of one way, or unidirectional, communication, there is little exchange of thoughts and ideas or a bidirectional flow of communication. Communication is not about one person reading a site, it is about interaction.”
I don’t know if I totally buy into that argument though. I can see the point and the idea, but to me they are either smaller components of a whole in the case of small project specific communities or in the case of the blogs and published papers and conferences, I feel these do not make a larger community, they are but a medium of transporting and distributing information. Are we communicating because I am writing this blog post and distributing it to an aggregator and you are reading it? I am communicating as this post is being read, but for true communication the reader has to respond (Not that this has not happened a little in other posts on other blogs with similar topics).
A Look at Communication
What I feel is missing to this equation goes a little beyond VectorOne’s suggestion that focus is the key ingredient. I believe what is truly needed in the current community and what is truly missing is communication. Let me clarify, we as a community have established a system of one way, or unidirectional, communication, there is little exchange of thoughts and ideas or a bidirectional flow of communication. Communication is not about one person reading a site, it is about interaction. As I see it: A person writes a blog post. An aggregator or straight RSS feed distributes the blog. People read the post. Few comment. Little is added dampening the discussion and removing the potential for exchange. As someone once said it is like bunch of talking heads when referring to the news on TV(Based on Recollection). Maybe there has been little to discuss but Google mashups, ESRI and news of the day or people do not really care or there is not enough time, I don’t know.
Without two way discussion I wonder if there can be any sense of a unified community. I have to agree with VectorOne, “GIS is alive, well, and kicking - all around you”, but I don’t see much in the way of an exchange of ideas. I see a microcosm of isolated islands loosely held together by the ocean of Geography. I feel strongly that the GIS professional community needs to develop exchanges of ideas and communicate more. I have seen hope this week with comments posted in my blog as well as the numerous other blog postings on this subject, I would go as far to say it is the most active I have seen things (with the exception of ESRI ArcServer licensing or anything dealing with ESRI and licensing) in the way of blog and comment and blog to blog interaction. I am sure the smaller groups are talking and having interaction as some have suggested in the comments, but what about the geographic community as a whole? What does it take to have community? Are we really communicating? What do you think?
Talk hard!
My previous comment, though unread, was on-topic through mysterious forces beyond your control. My response to this article is on my blog, per the mode of the blogosphere you now inhabit. But it’s ok! Time is short and you want synopsis:
We’re going to need the Killer App ™ in order to successfully bring foward the mainstream support (and secured funding) required to cohesively motivated the gentlefolk into participation. This App must be a rich, extensible platform that is of Interest to those that wish to invest time and energy into.
Google Maps is a toy. ESRI is closed source. This App must be a blend of the two, not wholly unlike putting Batman AND the Joker in a blender at setting “8″ for three minutes.
Interesting, you started this post by saying “After much discussion of this topic on various blogs and comment sections…”
I think you just called that a community conversation.
And at the end of the post, Andrew, he says:
I have seen hope this week with comments posted in my blog as well as the numerous other blog postings on this subject, I would go as far to say it is the most active I have seen things (with the exception of ESRI ArcServer licensing or anything dealing with ESRI and licensing) in the way of blog and comment and blog to blog interaction.
I think the main idea Aaron is trying to express here is there there should be an exchange of ideas, something that he feels has been lacking.
Andrew,
Yes, that would be a community conversation. I don’t think we as a group have been very communicative in both directions, and I see the last week or so as a rarity rather than the norm. Out of all the people who visit, very few comment, on here or other blogs. I know how many hits I get and the comments are minuscule in comparison.
Aaron VanWieren
[…] Dec Cafe posts some interesting thoughts on this […]
And still I hold my opinion that its because of difference in what we do with GIS. And I dont think about gathering data, digitizing it, coding the applications, messing the data, viewing.What I mean is the field in which spatial concept is being applied.
Are you doing urban, environmental, logistics, marketing. Thats what makes our gis an archipelago.
A platform to exchange ideas is still missing. Something that is imposible doing through comments.
with all the “new media”, a vast number of communal choices for us and the maturing of GIS to the mainstream, the community that we experienced in previous years has become diluted somewhat and users are migrating to various resources and communication channels. The community is still there although the dynamics are much different. Most of us are taking part in many (even dozens) of “communities” the result - a community requires residents and a good moderator.. planet GS plays a huge role in today’s new media.. is it building a community. Well, not directly but it does play a large role in bringing users together. cheers