The Value of Local Knowledge

Geography can help us to understand the context of events and occurrences large or small, especially from a local perspective. Projects such as OpenStreetMap and Ushahidi source valuable and credible information from locals about their own communities.

This was an Ignite talk from Ignite Tampa Bay 2011.

Transcript

1. the value of local knowledge PRESENTED BY: coleman mccormick @colemanm
2. Everything is local.
3. Geography adds context. financial risk military ops trade history politics religion communications language land tenure
4. What happens without context?
5. An example.
6. How do we gather this information?
7. leverage local talent.
8. openstreetmap :: london, uk.
9. founded in 2004... in 2011: 500,000 users millions of points added each day from gps, applications, data imports, digitizing oslo, norway.
10. make it easy to participate.
11. citizen reporting. brazil nigeria japan
12. geonames. named places & objects local language colloquial names
13. so where’s the value? why is local important?
14. veracity & completeness. osm google maps port-au-prince, haiti.
15. importance & relevance. communities can contribute information about places or events that are important to them.
16. how people use the landscape.
17. language. ؆ᱪࣈ ภาษาไทย मानक %ह'दी english русский язык !"#$%&ا 한국어
18. history. "What fossils are to biology, and sediments to geology, toponyms are to cultural history of a country because they reflect the various ethnic, economic, political and other changes in the past ." - petar ilievski
19. so now we know... what are the challenges? inform communities simplify technologies make it fun to contribute
20. thank you! help contribute! join the geoherd... http://openstreetmap.org http://ushahidi.com http://geonames.org http://locationleverage.com coleman@spatialnetworks.com @colemanm