A few things to explore in the world of geo today:

• Brian Timoney does it again over on his MapBrief blog in The Delusional Job Ad That Reveals What’s Wrong With GIS. In this post, Timoney points out the futility, and downright ridiculousness, of a recent job ad for a senior GIS person who would be required to be everything to all people. It’s a great critique along with some great visuals. A must read. Going along with that same line of thinking, is a passage from a book I was just reading called The Dream, in which author Gurbaksh Chahal states, “A lot of people look for perfection right out of the gate, and I think this is a big mistake. Nothing is perfect, so for me it’s really about the future and about whether I think the candidate and I are a good fit.” 
• There’s a new do-it-yourself globe download and tutorial by graphic designer Joachim Robert. Check it out:
  

• If you have a copy of Cartographer’s Toolkit and would like to write a review of it on its Amazon page, I’d be very grateful. Since it is a small-press publication it’s going to need all the reviews it can get. Thank you!

• The 2012 Esri Map Book is available and definitely worth a flip-through. Some of the cartography maps are a bit disappointing. Most don’t have the kind of WOW factor I’m looking for these days. Oh, they are all examples of good cartography, to be sure, just not that kind of totally amazing &&*%#O$ that you want to buy and put on your wall.

Dawn Wright, Chief Scientist at Esri, presented a one-hour talk today on The Age of Science and Big Data at Colorado State University. I was in attendance due to my current interest in the topic of Big Data and, of course, how it relates to spatial scientists like ourselves. She delivered a great talk with many takeaways, some of which I will try to enumerate here.

The first interesting thing I took note of was the fact that the journal nature actually ran a cover story on Big Data back in 2008, a full three years before most people started discussing it in the spatial community. The second interesting thing was this thought that crossed my mind as Wright said the word “interoperability”. My thought? That this word, interoperability, is really one of those self-limiting words in that the minute that things actually become interoperable we will no longer have a need to use that word.

Wright mentioned GeoDesign, which in my mind is really just urban planning with GIS, but she emphasized that it is about both how we see the world and how we manipulate the world to be the way we want to see it. Just think on that for a bit.

The main learning points of this talk centered on the 3 traditional characteristics of Big Data as well as 2 additional characteristics that they think about at Esri. First, Big Data is characterized by big volume: often in the petabytes. Second, we’re talking about data that has a high velocity, by which we mean near real-time or real-time data from automated sensors, and which we have to ask questions such as: what do we keep and what do we discard? The third is variety, which she argues is the thing that geospatial experts are most interested in since we like to combine different datasets to derive novel conclusions. The two Esri add-ons are: veracity and values.

Examples of Big Data sets that Wright mentioned are: air and ship traffic, Yahoo! Finance data (# of nodes=42,000!), critical zone observatories, and GEOSS. She also mentioned the US NSF Earth Cube, which seems to be an attempt to organize and hold this data. Of course, we’ve seen attempts like this before that never got off the ground, so we’ll see if this one is any different. Wright went on to emphasize that if you are at all interested in data intensive science then you had better read The Fourth Paradigm, which Wright asserts is the text to have on the subject.

The only thing I was disappointed in was the fact that Wright did not discuss the importance of Big Data visualization, which I posit–as long as we are all adding “v” words to the list of Big Data tenets, is going to be the make-it or break-it aspect to whether results of these analyses make any difference in the world. In other words, without a good way to show-off your Big Data results, the public won’t listen in the first place, let alone try to understand. So that’s what I propose: Visualization needs to be the 6th Big Data tenet.

A few items on my radar this week:

Brain Timoney created a video map of all the Springsteen touring spots in the U.S. going back to 1973. This map has just made it into Slate. My take away from this success is that if you make a map about popular culture it will get a million times more viewers than if you, say, come up with a novel method of delineating variable width buffers based on elevation along a river line (pdf).

The New York Times is running an article on the many ways in which maps are being turned into wearable objects, such as flip-flops, which, by the way, brings new meaning to the term cartoflop*: Maps Go in New Directions, and Don’t Require Folding.

If you would like to read more about my background, what got me into GIS and cartography, why I write cartography books, and what my biggest frustration with the current state of cartography is, check out a recent interview I did with the GIS Lounge people: Gretchen Peterson, Profiles From the Geospatial Community.

*Which, to be honest, I just made up.

Yesterday was judging day for the 2012 GISCI poster contest. In case you aren’t familiar with the annual contest, there are cash prizes for the top winners, with $500 going to the first place winner and $500 going to the People’s Choice winner. Winners also get their initial or renewal certification fee waived. A $250 second place award, $100 third place award, and honorable mentions are also given.

The judging criteria are: accuracy, design/layout, legibility, visual appeal, effective communication, effective use of geographic information, and originality.

This is my second time as a guest judge, which means giving a score for each of the above criteria to the top 12 finalists. You can view the top 12 finalists here. When the winners are announced, soon probably, I’ll write a post about them. Here are the comments I sent in with my scores:

“There was a lot of originality in this year’s maps! Though some of the original ideas didn’t really work for me, I was thrilled to see people attempting new and interesting things. There were plenty of take-away ideas for my own future designs.

Many of the remarks in the comments column are critical of certain aspects of the designs, but folks must always realize that when asked to critique, the critics will always find fault in things. It is always easier to critique than to create. Certainly, I admire everyone’s efforts and contributions.

While judging these, I tried to visualize each one on the walls of GISCI headquarters. ‘Which one would show us off the best?’ was my guiding thought.”

[Edited to add: The hangout with James Fee did not go as well as I’d hoped. My answers were pretty bad, and my microphone wasn’t working well. Hey, nerves are to be expected talking to one of the biggest names in the industry, right?!]

I’ll be chatting with James Fee about cartography and the new book on Wednesday at 11:00 AM MDT. Please join in. If you can’t make it, it’ll probably be available via James’ blog Spatially Adjusted soon after. This is a weekly series that James/WeoGeo is putting on.

It looks like WeoGeo is going to give away two free books!

Some chatter on the subject today:

My recent interview with Jesse Rouse on the VerySpatial Podcast, starting at about minute 8:
AVSP_Episode366

Alternatively, click over to VerySpatial to hear it.