FANTOM PLANET

It was a smaller crowd than in past years at Mr. Tiki, but it was outstanding. I’d like to thank Rob Painter at Google Enterprise for helping to sponsor the event again. Every time I’m around Rob and the other geobloggers my IQ points replenish for the year.

We had Rob and the guys from Google, Brian Flood of Arc2Earth fame, Bill from GeosMusings, the Very Spatial crew, and Nick and Steve from OpenStreetMap.org. There were also some other readers there as well. A very good time.

Highlight conversation of the night though was the conversation between Steve Coast and Rob. Steve, coming from an open source business approach and Rob coming from a Google approach discussed and debated Google’s role in the business and what their actions have on, frankly, a lot of us. Rob discussed, “…what we have learned at Google is that you cannot create a requirements document for true innovation, we instead work hard to create the conditions that you hope might foster innovation and creatively, both internally to our company to push forward our vision and even more powerfully, to extend opportunity for innovation for everyone on the web…” Steve argued that there’s no communication from Google about their direction which meant that the businesses built on Google have no heads up on business changes which could affect them. i.e. The situations facing the Platials and Mapufactures of the geotubes. Eventually, both thoroughly discussed their positions and views, which Bill said, “that conversation made my entire conference.”

It was an outstanding time, good conversation about the business, and a sense amongst everyone to be enablers. Or, as Rob says, we need to be king makers rather than kings.

If you’re at the UC, go check out OpenStreetMap’s booth which is north of the NGA area; Google, on the other end of the exhibition hall floor; and Arc2Earth’s booth up the aisle from Google.

Also, check out the 3D Conference Navigator built on the new AGS Flex API.