If you'd like to learn more about neogeography, here are a series of virtual seminars, led by the big names in GIScience:
From Dave Unwin (minimally edited)
Introduction: Aims and Objectives
For the past three years, in collaboration with both the US University Consortium for Geographic Information Science and UK’s Royal
Geographical Society Quantitative Methods Research Group, the World Wide University Networks’ Global GISc Academy has been promoting the
idea of international ‘virtual’ seminars.
Plans are now complete for a series of six virtual seminar sessions during the fall/autumn of 2008 on the general theme of Neogeography.
This has come to consist of a set of techniques and tools that fall outside the realm of traditional GIS and geography. Essentially, it is about people using
and creating their own maps, on their own terms, by combining elements of an existing toolset. Neogeographers use mapping API like Google
Maps, talk about GPX versus KML, and ‘geotag’ their photos. The term arose with Web 2.0 and the increased public appeal of mapping and
geospatial technologies that occurred with the release of Google Maps, the decreased cost of GPS, and increased ubiquity of mobile devices.
However, in its original formulation it was wider than this, and included work in fields as diverse as art, programming, literature, and
leisure. Almost all of this has evolved outside of what we usually think of as geography, yet it presents a variety of technical, societal
and academic challenges to traditional academic views and practices. The series will attempt to explore these challenges.
Who can participate
The seminar series is open to faculty and students in universities that are part of the WUN, together with members of the Quantitative Methods
Research and GIScience Research Groups of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), Universities in the UCGIS, and other interested
parties. Although it carries no activities for which a formal assessment is appropriate, our hope is that graduate student classes,
in particular, will build on it by creating some formal, assessed activity that enables the series to be ‘hard wired’ into their research
training programmes. Possible activities might be completion of an individual essay based on some or all of the presented materials,
building a website, having a debate and so on.
Seminar Environment
Building on its successful use in our previous series, the seminars will use the Marratech™ platform, which is an extended desk top video and audio-conferencing environment. This platform enables a moderately sized client to be downloaded and
used with Windows™, Linux and Mac-OS™ systems. Provided broadband access is available, participants can use this system with a simple
headset/webcam from home, or via a pre-arranged video suite at the home university, which is what we would recommend for entire classes of
graduate students. If you intend to set up such a suite, please note that institutional firewalls can generate problems in using the client,
but these are not insurmountable. Dave Unwin has prepared a fairly full guide that details all the wisdom about using this system that we have accumulated over the past two years, available on request from him or the WUN website.
List of dates & topics
All seminars will commence at 1700 UK time (NOTE: this is a change from previous years), initially BST then GMT. Please check carefully that
you have the correct local time.
Date, Presenter, Title
October 8th Jeremy Crampton (Georgia State) Mapping without a net: neogeography in the 21st century
October 22nd Muki Haklay (UCL) 'What so new in neogeography?'
November 5th M.W. Dobson (TeleMapics LLCV) ‘Data quality and neogeography’
November 12th Martin Dodge (Manchester) ‘Do we need user-generated cartography?’
November 19th GIS DAY
November 26th American Thanksgiving
December 3rd Mike Goodchild (UCSB) ‘Citizens as sensors: volunteered geographic information’
December 17th Dan Sui (Texas A&M) TBC – issues from the series
To view the seminars in real-time and participate
On the day of the seminar, from 4.45pm (UK local time) or earlier, there are two ways by which the Marratech™ is client software can be accessed:
- The simplest is to point your web browser to the a href="http://marratech.wun.ac.uk:8000/launch.jsp?sid=10002">URL. Clicking on this
link will install some Java based software on your system. The install sequence is obvious and should give you no problems. We recommend you
do this and familiarize yourself with the interface well in advance of the seminar;
- Alternately, you can download a free desktop client (Marratech Pro™) from the supplier’s website. From in this system point to the slightly different URL.
Instructions on how to access them are also available at the website.
We strongly recommend that you ‘enter’ the virtual seminar room in good time for the advertised start and hope that you have at least ‘played’ with the client’s interface to understand how the interactions it offers can be used.
The archive
The 2005, 2006 and 2007 seminars have been archived on the WUN GGISA website. The precise form of any one session archive depends upon what we were able to acquire, ranging from PowerPoint™ or PDF files of the materials used through to complete recordings of the session that can be viewed off-line using the Marratech ™ client and a set of associated resources such as an edited version of the discussions, bibliography and so on. We hope that you might find them a useful source of materials for your students to browse.
