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SlashGISRS.org and the State of Online Medias within the Community
posted by Satri
on Tuesday December 06, @04:02PM
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from the whatever-happened-to-Mr.-Garibaldi dept.
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from the whatever-happened-to-Mr.-Garibaldi dept.
Today we offer you content and want feedback! Here's a presentation I made about SlashGISRS.org and the state of online medias within the geospatial community [look under files]. Read more below for the context, outcome and possible future. A lot of slashgisrs.org readers are community enthusiasts which also have their own blogs or at least have an opinion about blogging in the geospatial community. What do you think? As a starting point, some SlashGISRS challenges I identify in the presentation [pdf, 5.2Mb] are: "(a) Main challenge: in order to be special and worthed, slashgisrs.org must gather a critical mass of users to foster discussion, (b) act as a discussion aggregator: right now, insightful comments are scattered between numerous websites and (c) stimulate a sense of community: become a place for social exchanges and even friends making"
The context:
I was invited by Dr. Kimiz Dalkir of McGill's University to present my limited understanding of online medias in the geospatial community. Dr. Dalkir is a Community of Pratice (CoP) and Knowledge Management (KM) specialist. And so was the audience, I then haven't emphatized on geospatial tech and applications but rather on how I see communication within the community.
Outcome:
The universe is an interesting place. The KM and CoP graduated students had interesting questions and comments. One graduated student commented that even if we're mainly a content aggregator, we are also providing original content through user comments. Real-time comment moderation in a conference/classroom was also discussed.
SlashGISRS's Future:
Hey, only a little more than 2 months old and about 7000 hits daily, about 650 different users daily, a total of 148 000 hits and close to 300 member accounts which almost all receive daily headlines by email. That's not a bad start. I keep repeating we're ad-free and non-commercial. I'm doing this because I believe and I'm an enthusiast. Scanning and reading all geospatial news to pinpoint the best ones and post them on slashgisrs.org every day is a lot of work to say the least. In clearer words: this is a call for user participation! :-)
I was invited by Dr. Kimiz Dalkir of McGill's University to present my limited understanding of online medias in the geospatial community. Dr. Dalkir is a Community of Pratice (CoP) and Knowledge Management (KM) specialist. And so was the audience, I then haven't emphatized on geospatial tech and applications but rather on how I see communication within the community.
Outcome:
The universe is an interesting place. The KM and CoP graduated students had interesting questions and comments. One graduated student commented that even if we're mainly a content aggregator, we are also providing original content through user comments. Real-time comment moderation in a conference/classroom was also discussed.
SlashGISRS's Future:
Hey, only a little more than 2 months old and about 7000 hits daily, about 650 different users daily, a total of 148 000 hits and close to 300 member accounts which almost all receive daily headlines by email. That's not a bad start. I keep repeating we're ad-free and non-commercial. I'm doing this because I believe and I'm an enthusiast. Scanning and reading all geospatial news to pinpoint the best ones and post them on slashgisrs.org every day is a lot of work to say the least. In clearer words: this is a call for user participation! :-)
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Industry: What Is the Geospatial Community? 1 comment
[+]
Some weeks ago, Very Spatial asked for questions to answer over their great podcast. They mentioned my personal question during their 69th episode. Here's the question, and my tentative to answer it below. Of course, your input is more than welcomed! ""What is the geospatial community?" I ask "what", because I feel it includes the many sides of the question: - What's a community?
- What is the geospatial community?
- Who is in the geospatial community?
- Who is not in the geospatial community?!
- Why are some geospatial professionals not in the geospatial community?
- Should every geospatial professional be part of the geospatial community?
- What does the geospatial community do to be the geospatial community?
- Is the geospatial community geospatial?
- Is the geospatial community special?
- Is the geospatial community a Good Thing (tm)?
- Does it matter that a geospatial community exists?
- What is the present of the geospatial community?
- What is the future of the geospatial community?" Tentative answers below.
Poll on Ads to Save Slashgeo and GE License Poll Results 5 comments
[+]
Slashgeo.org is at a crossroad. The new poll asks your feelings about the introduction of ads on Slashgeo's main page. The ads would be Google AdSense text-only ads. Why ads while I clearly said before I wanted Slashgeo to be ad-free? The administrators of the non-profit organization behind Slashgeo have no problem being a few thousands dollars in red, but despite regular efforts of attracting new members in the Slashgeo "editors" team, I'm mostly alone feeding the site. After nearly two years alive, the site is going well, with now about 20,000 daily hits (about 6,000 known unique daily users, 3.8M hits since launch) with however relatively little user participation (e.g. comments, submissions), and most important, providing users with 3-6 aggregated geospatial news daily. I know I'll have to significantly reduce my involvement next fall, jeopardizing Slashgeo's story feeding. Money, it seems, is the most effective incentive: if we can generate enough money with ads, this may allow us to pay someone to feed the site? Money has never been the center of this project, we want to serve the geospatial community, but we have come to wonder if money would help save the project itself. I find it awkward the solution to Slashgeo's manpower problem being serving ads, but we're welcoming any alternative suggestions you have. Having additional regular contributors would doubtlessly make the whole Slashgeo experience much more pleasant and beneficial to all.
The previous poll about breaking the Google Earth license at work it has been one of the least popular. Out of 51 votes, 29% do not look aware of the license at all, 19% said the license made them purchase the Pro or Enterprise version, 5% switched to NASA World Wind because of it and 28% are simply ignoring the license and breaking it.
The previous poll about breaking the Google Earth license at work it has been one of the least popular. Out of 51 votes, 29% do not look aware of the license at all, 19% said the license made them purchase the Pro or Enterprise version, 5% switched to NASA World Wind because of it and 28% are simply ignoring the license and breaking it.
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SlashGISRS.org and the State of Online Medias within the Community
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My recommendations
(Score:2, Interesting)1)You need a better name. "SlashGISRS?" What is that? Slashdot makes sense to computer nerds because it means something. You need something that sounds cool and rolls off the tongue. Fewer syllables is better. (and easier to remember)
2)You CAN'T do this by yourself. It's not possible. You shouldn't even try. If I were you, I would look very seriously at merging with one or more online sites to consolidate users, incorporate your business, and get some help. (other site admins or even users) Doing this alone is a sure-fire way to get burned out and fail.
3)Why no ads? "I'm doing this because I believe and I'm an enthusiast. Stop believing and start growing. This isn't free to run, and you don't need to be ashamed of trying to be financially successful. Hell, I make a couple hundred bucks a month on my blog.
The geospatial community desperately needs to transform to a user-centric model to keep up with IT best practices. A key-feature that is sorely lacking is community-building. I would suggest that Google geoblogs are one side of the community, but there is a STRONG need for what you are doing for the tech side.
Re:My recommendations
(Score:3)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @04:07PM )
1) The name. Yeah, you're right. I though of changing the name on our first anniversary, but maybe I'm wrong and we should do this right now. Anyway, I don't believe it is an enormous limitation to reaching people.
2) Great, and I *don't want* to do anything myself alone anyway!
3) No ads because I'm not rich but don't need the money. I want the tool to be community-driven, such as open source is. Which is, from my point of view, excluding ads for the moment. We're still in the "starting up" the site phase - we're still wondering how the project will be received by the community on a longer term.
"If I were you, I would look very seriously at merging with one or more online sites to consolidate users, incorporate your business, and get some help."
There are a lot of interesting blogs related to geospatial technologies out there. They're welcomed to join us. I guess a lot of them cherish their blog (it's their baby, they have full control over it) and they'll probably reply, "you're welcomed to join US"!
Re:My recommendations
(Score:3, Interesting)( http://lordkingsquirrel.com/ )
What seems to me to be desperately needed is more people feeding articles to the editors. I've slacked off the last week or two while finishing up a paper, but will start in again next week scouring the web for articles to submit here.
If even half of the registered users would submit an article a week and/or a comment a week, we'd see the site take off (IMHO of course).
Re:My recommendations
(Score:3, Interesting)Ogle Earth blog slowing the pace
(Score:1)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @04:07PM )
http://www.ogleearth.com/2005/12/change_of_pace.h
In short, this great blog decided to invite people to read others sources (such as the also-great Planet Geospatial rss feed aggregator) instead of duplicating minor stories on their own blog.