Jeff Lovett A collection of research in process.

1Dec/07

ON SITE Athens Ohio

ON SITE Athens Ohio is an experimental proposal for a hyper-local geo wiki.

I believe that information exists within a community that, if made easily accessable, could positivly alter the way that individuals in a community interact with eachother, their community leaders and local businesses while creating a living, archivable, digital representation of a community. This archivability will cause the geo wiki to grow supplying the community with a rich detailed history that is easy to access and cross-reference.

In broad terms, ON SITE would be a wiki for individuals in small communities around the world to interact with information, both historical and current, in a more intuitive way there by enriching their understanding and participation in the community.
This is a non functional example
This is a non functional Experimental Proposal

ON SITE

A Hyper-Local Geo Wiki

What it is:
A hyper-local geo wiki is a program that will allow people in a community to access and input informational, artistic and cultural data in a new intuitive geospatial way. It will also allow people to network,communicate and coordinate in a more efficient manner. Because it is a wiki, it will be managed by the users. This will produce a flexible and accurate way for people to access and distribute information to one another within and across traditionally separate areas within the community.

Interface Thoughts:
- Levels of Specificity, Exact or general
- Changes depending on the data being accessed and cross referenced
- Wiki Tagging to enable intuitive cross-referencing
- Dynamic lists that learn from your choices
- As a user interacts with the data, those decisions are recorded and the choices are refined.

Creation of Interface (Site)
3 steps
- Create a multimedia interactive geospatial interface
- Use that interface to collect, catalogue and make available user input.
- Allow the public to alter or add to the data base
- Input must be refined by the input process
- Step by step meta-data entry

Layout:
Categories
- Will give the user a means of generally narrowing down the list of data sets to the types of information that they are looking for.
- The Categories will be sortable, searchable and customizable.
- The data sets will not be fixed within a category. They can “float” in and out of categories if they begin to apply to the other requests involved in the Dynamic Data Access Process.
- Categories may consist of broad topics such as:
- Commercial
- Social
- Personal (which may contain saved information)
- Events
- Community Bulletin Board
- Entertainment
- Friends
- Sports
- Etc.
Column A
- Contains a dynamic list that supplies the user with a list of data sets that apply to the combination of the category and the search results.
- The data list will be refined according to selections made by the user.
- More than one data set can and should be selected to see the correlation of the two data sets on the map in column B and the detail list in column C.
Column B
- Contains all of the visual and aural content. It also has the ability to house media players  of many different types.
- The user will be able to interact with the map in a Google earth-esque way.
- The user will also be able to interact with each media or data display to access a list of similar or related data sets. The idea is that the user can intuitively interact with the map to adjust and refine the data until their desired knowledge is achieved.
Column C
Contains an “intelligent” list that is capable of combining the data from the multiple data sets selected in Column A.
This is the linear, more traditional, way for the user to interact with the data on the map.
It should rebuild or adjust with every new input from the user to allow more intuitive access to the data set to the user.
The List items will be lockable so they do not disappear when new requests or alterations are made.
They will also be sortable both visually and using meta data within the new compiled data sets.

Timeline of Data
Historically relevant
It becomes a cultural, commercial, industrial, etc. archive
See when and where that band played here last.
What happened her 10, 50, 100 years ago
Currently relevant
Data that allows cultural, commercial, industrial, etc. access
When and where is that band playing?
What’s happening now?

Data Possibilities:
Pre-existing Spatial Data
Gis info
Property lines
Green space
Data pre-mapped
Pre-existing non spatial Data
Social
Census information (how specific is that, State, County, City?)
Surveys
Commercial
Govt. location and info
Utilities and coverage
Location of local commercial entities
Environmental
Geologic
Biological
Parks and Wildlife
Impact of industry
Water bodies
Recreational information
Rules for different places
Locally Created Data
Artistic Views
Cultural reviews (Soul of Athens)
Interviews
Radio shows
News
User input
Reviews
Community bulletin-board
Schedule of events
Music venues
Photography
Speeding tickets
Parties
Social networking
3D Models
Accurately updates to preexisting data.

Brain Storming:
Create a secure geo-profile
Frisbee Golf and Airports
Geo Google
Social Network Mapper
Community bulletin board
Tour guide with directions
Driving directions that avoid user reported speed traps or roads with too many accidents
Locate your business based on roads that are more appealing to drive on
Make Public records public
It could become a cultural time-lapse “photo”
The interface should learn like “Pandora” or “spore”
Some questions that you may answer with this application:
What is going on tonight?
Where is it?
Is this place safe?
Where should I live?
What is near by?
Where are the things I like?
Where should I take my date?
What did others think?
What is it like?
How do I get X?
Where do I get X?
How do I get to X?
What can I do to help?
Where can I go to help?
Who else likes, hates, has problems, interests, desires, things like me?
What is missing commercially?
Where should I build my business?

Questions
How much authorship does Wikipedia maintain?
Does this need more?
How will the site be maintained?
Does it need cleaning over time or can all the data be permanently archived?
How much is Wiki how much is locked down?
Build a base then let others build upon it.

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