Me at AAG in Tampa

Had a great time at the big geography conference, this year in Tampa, FL.

We revisited the notion of warring GIS tribes that I brought up at the 2012 AAG. This time Michael Gould and I had the idea that representatives of the tribes could duke it out (in a good way, of course). Hence our 2014 panel, Battle of the Tribes: geoweb, GIS, GI Science, cyberGIS, neogeography

Representing were

• Michael Gould - Tribe GIS
• Monica Stephens - Tribe Geoweb and VGI
• Matt Duckham - Tribe GIScience
• Andrew Turner - Tribe neogeography
• Shaowen Wang - Tribe cyberGIS

I was the moderator. Overall, the discussion was quite mild mannered. Considering it was a battle, no blood was shed. I found amusing the number of public health attendees (not sure, why, perhaps they would administer to our medical needs should there be injuries). I think they came along because they had no idea why there were so many divisions. They asked whether we could "all just get along" under a banner, the categories for which they volunteered. Of course, this only created more tribes and a lot more conversation. And more fun.

I also presented at the all-day alt.conference on Big Data, a conference within a conference, organized by Jim Thatcher and Andy Shears. I made the case for small data and what happens when case studies get swallowed up by the discourse of big data.