Open-Source Geography

Paper Proposal Extension
Did anyone see the email from Professor Powell about Google’s new $10 Million Project called “The 10 to the 100 Project”? This is a program seeking ideas from people that improve the lives of as many people as possible. I am encouraging everyone to participate and can be used as your paper and presentation. Thedeadline for the Google proposal is October 20, 2008. Therefore, I am extending the deadline for the paper proposal to October 19, 2008. This will be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of geographic inquiry while participating in a project that could have tangible benefits outside of the classroom. I will discuss further in class, but in the meantime, please review the following website:

http://www.project10tothe100.com/index.html

To all those biogeographers googling and coming across this article, this is not a piece about a biogeographer. Although I appreciate the topic immensely, I have not delved into that body of literature. As such, I thought I would provide, in narrative form, my biography as a Geographer. It is long and boring, so read on only if interested in my history.

My primary weakness as an academic is my writing skills. I have no problem absorbing the information and have methodologies well thought out. But writing is a requirement. To get more practice, I am waiting until Fall 2009 to start a PhD program. At this point, attending George Mason University’s School of Public Policy is attractive and would allow me to keep my job with Arlington. However, I am actively lobbying for funding for a PhD in Geography.

My current research interests are varied and am excited to use this next year to narrow down a topic. Currently , I am interested in the Geography of Ubiquitous Computing and the policy apparati, energy, infrastructure requirements and general economics of the Industry. However, having studied medical geography, business geography, global cities, spatial segregation studies, the Pioneer Fringe, teaching community college and voting patterns, I anticipate a vivacious future in Geography and the Geographic Information Sciences.

That said, I would also like to share my academic experience as a Geographer. I started at James Madison University in 1992. It was not until 1994 when I was torn between studying ecology and archeology that both departments recommend Dr. Glen Gufaston’s Introduction to Aerial Photo Interpretation. So, I started my academic career wanting to be a photogrammetrist. Then, Dr. Stephen Wright got me interested in Digital Cartography. Both got me interested in the Geographic Information Sciences.

So, I have made a few mistakes in my life. Nothing has turned out bad financially, but I feel some tarnish on my reputation after leaving SUNY-Binghamton and the first year of graduate school they provided me. In this position, I served as a GIS Lab Assistant and data analyst on a GPS data collection project studying waterwells and location to contiminants as listed by the EPA. I also taught a Weather and Climate Lab.

I recieved my Master’s of Science in the Geographic and Cartographic Sciences program from George Mason University. While their, I participated in several interesting research positions under Dr. David Wong and worked as a GIS Lab Assistant under newly en-doctored Erwin Villiger.

Please consider the following highlights to the attached resume and academic transcripts:

• Master of Science in the Geographic and Cartographic Science from George Mason University

• Teaching Experience at the Community College Level

• Experience with non-academic technical training for Federal employees using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology

• Daily use of geographic concepts in my non-academic professional experience provides for real world examples

• Thorough working knowledge of demographic and socioeconomic data products

• Oliver MN, Matthews KA, Siadaty M, Hauck FR, Pickle LW. Geographic bias related to geocoding in epidemiologic studies. International Journal of Health Geographics. 2005;4:29.

• Acknowledged Cartographic Contribution in the Wand JN, Shotts KW, Sekhon JS, Mebane, WR Jr., Herron MC, Brady HE. The Butterfly Did It: The Aberrant Vote for Buchanan in Palm Beach County, Florida. The American Political Science Review, 2001;95:4.

EDUCATION

George Mason University, Geography and Earth Science Department, M.S., Geographic and Cartographic Science, December 1998

James Madison University, Center for Geographic Information Sciences, B.S. Geographic Information Science, May 1996

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Urban Research Planner, Planning Research and Analysis Team

Arlington County Government

01/2007 to present

• Content Management System Team Lead
  
• Database Development of Residential and Commercial Tracking system
• Ad hoc cartographic requests
• Develop original research for the Planning Information Reports Series
  

County Demographer

Prince William County Government - Woodbridge, VA: 12/2006 to 12/2007

• Perform spatial and statistical analysis of population trends in the County
• Develop forecasts of County housing and population growth
• Serve as spokesperson for Demographic activities

Assistant Professor - Adjunct Piedmont Virginia Community College - Charlottesville, VA: 08/2005 – 12/2006

• Delivered 18 credit hours of Cultural and World Geography lectures
• Developed lesson plans and evaluation criteria
• Engaged students in the subject matter and fostered a challenging and supportive learning environment

Learning Lab Director - Computers4Kids, Charlottesville, VA: 06/2006 – 12/2006

GIS Specialist University of Virginia - Health System, Charlottesville, VA: 10/2004 - 7/2006

• Provide research support for medical study entitled: Prostate Cancer in Blacks: The Role of Poverty and Diet
• Responsible for geographic & statistical analysis and cartographic output

Social Science Research Analyst US Dept of Commerce - Minority Business Development Agency, Washington, DC: 05/2000 - 10/2004

• Develop, train, and provide GIS support for MBDA staff and clients
• Provide statistical research for agency policy reports.
• Served as a liaison between information technology and federal staff

Survey Statistician US Bureau of Census, Suitland, MD: 02/1999 - 05/2000

• Compiled GIS database and prepared cartographic visualization of statistical data
• Assisted in development, design, and analysis of statistical surveys
• Performed a quality control functions for database errors

PUBLICATIONS

Oliver MN, Matthews KA, Siadaty M, Hauck FR, Pickle LW. Geographic bias related to geocoding in epidemiologic studies. International Journal of Health Geographics. 2005;4:29.

ACKNOWLEDGED CARTOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTIONS

Wand JN, Shotts KW, Sekhon JS, Mebane, WR Jr., Herron MC, Brady HE. The Butterfly Did It: The Aberrant Vote for Buchanan in Palm Beach County, Florida. The American Political Science Review, 2001;95:4.

The Minority Telecommunications Development Program, National Telecommunications and Information Agency, The US Department of Commerce. December 2000. Changes, Challenges, and Charting New Courses: Minority Commercial Broadcast Ownership in the United States.

PROJECT WORK AND OTHER ACTIVITIES

Virginia Tech Urban Planning Department - Alexandria Campus: Fall 2003. I worked in preparing a matrix of Cities connected by Ambassadorial resources (Embassies) in support of the Globalization and World Cities project. (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/)

The Institute for Public Policy: Fall 1998, Worked on an environmental justice grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as primary Geographic Information Scientist to statistically model the relationship between the location of hazardous waste sites and population segments using spatial econometric methods.

University of Maryland/George Mason University: Summer/Fall 1998, Research Assistant for a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funded project at the University of Maryland, on the Potential of GIS for housing policy research using microdata for Section 8 subsidized housing.

The College of Arts and Sciences at George Mason University: Summer 1998, Development and presentation of a geographic information systems demonstration for the 1998 World Conference on Technology at George Mason University.

The National Consortium for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA): Summer 1998, assisted with the development of curriculum for the NCGIA’s Core Curriculum Development for the Geographical Information Sciences Project.

Cross posted at Open Source Geography.

The Open-Source Geography Content has outgrown iand splintered its niche from 30 Second Words Podcast Productions. Previously published content, see below, will remain on the site, but all new Geography material will be published on Open Source Geography. We are not affiliated with OpenSource GIS or OpenSource Matters, but we do come at education from an open-source mindset.

The idea is to develop a Joomla based content management system for managing student work and publishing thier assigned articles. This come with the idea that a student’s work should have value beyond the classroom. Thus, they should provide quality content both in structure and holistically. Even though student identities are fully cloaked, they are encouraged to interact and critique each other’s content. Stories submitted will be published openly. In a way, this is a method for developing a student written, and teacher editted, crowdsourced Geography textbook written.

As a pre-announcement, lookout for a partnership with 30 Second Words Podcast Productions to prepare a series of short podcasts about geography called 30 Second Geography. In the meantime, in case you missed them, the following are all stories tagged with Open Source Geography from 30 Second Words:

Building an Effective Student-Professor Relationship

Letter of Motivation to University of Zurich - Geographic Information Visualization and Analysis Group

Building a Globalized Geographic Information Infrastructure.

Obama Has A Crowd of Map-Makers

Geography, I Welcome You Back to My Life!

Critique of “Keyword: Evil - Google’s Addiction to Cheap Energy”

Ideas for Internet Infrastructure Analysis for Economic Geographers and Industrial Location Specialists

What is the state of Science Fiction in any of the UN’s G77 Nations

Open-Source Geography: Revolutionizing Learning by Crowdsourcing a Textbook

Donate Used Geography Texts for Open-Source Geography Project

Open Source Geography: Keyword Collection Method

8 Reasons to Blog Your Resume In Preparing for Graduate School

Where is Margarittaville? Parrothead Songs in Google Earth

Towards a Localized Content Aggregator

The Role of Geographic Information Systems as Instructional Technology

I am seeking to gain institutional support from my employer for blogging in local government. As I am still building my case and trying to explain the concept of link-building and content aggregators for developing a robust informational ecosystem, I am realizing the need for some sort of content aggregator that is localized.

When talking about content aggregators, I mean all those web-based, Web 2.0 applications listed in the “Share This” link above. Of course the most common are

• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Mahalo
• reddit
• technorati
• stumbleupon
• fark
• furl
• Google Bookmarks
• Yahoo MyWeb

Do any of these content aggregator services have localization capabilities? A Digg-like system for aggregating stories whose audience are the community in Arlington County, VA (for example) would be fantastic. Functionality enabling content aggregation and search for blog posts pertinent to Arlington would be very beneficial to Arlington and to local governments across the country in general.

Tagging with “Arlington” is a temporary solution, but it may not capture all geographical entities (keywords) within Arlington:

• Communities (colloquially named)
• Communities (officially recognized)
• Zipcodes
• Counties
• States

Identifying stories by IP address also has its limitations as the aggregator could easily pick up stories from surrounding jurisdictions in the Metropolitan Washington DC Area. And, as far as I can tell, geotagging web content, apart from photos, has not quite caught on yet. I see some potential there though.

Social Networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Friendster) perhaps do the best in this arena. However, FaceBook’s neighborhood application, as far as I can tell, will only allow you to reside in one neighborhood at a time. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to accomplish such a task once FaceBook opens its code and allows application hosting on individual websites. How about with other Open-Social tools?

In the meantime, I will have to rely on my RSS-reader to aggregate my content for me. This webpage provides links to all the RSS-enabled feeds in Arlington County that I could find.

As I am planning for graduate school, I want to show admissions committees a quick diagram of my educational and professional experience by title/role, time in position and skills used. For your own purposes, consider color-coding to demonstrate the positions you enjoyed to prioritize your discussion in your application essay.

These are my first two attempts at generating a Visual Resume. The first attempt was created using DIA, an open-source alternative to Microsoft’s Visio. I use DIA a lot and can recommend it as a flow-charting tool, but it did not perform for this purpose. Using DIA for this purpose requires manual placement and sizing which can get tedious.

The second attempt used the Timeline Maker. It’s advantage is that it is an automated approach, but I lost some of the information I want to communicate. Either way, I will keep you posted on my research for developing a Visual Resume. Please send any ideas you may have.

Above all, neither attempt has any sort of professional aesthetic. You need not be a graphic designer, but like your text resume, the graphic resume still needs to look good! Inside MBA Admissions has some other tips for a standard resume.

Attempt 1: Visual Resume Using DIA

Attempt 2: Visual Resume using Timeline Maker (click to enlarge)

The Following are commentary and posts about education.

• HOLY TACO’S 10 Worthless Majors and a few responses from 30 Second Words and Crazy Bicycle.

• All Things Considered NPR is Reporting that being smart is not enough for college admissions and that the student loan crunch may have lasting impact.

• USA Today has a story about some Community Colleges that are moving to a four day week to help offset the costs of gas and about the tensions waitlisted students are feeling for Fall 2008.

• College Admissions Counseling has a great article about the hidden problems with transferring from a 2-year college and Doni Greenberg notes that student loans are beginning to bypass 2-year colleges.

• Great educational blog find: Next Student’s Student Loan Blog which details the regulations and laws associated with student loans.

• Finally, a few words from Think Simple Now about beating Procrastination and some from ZenHabits for achieving any goal.

The folks over at Holy Taco have provided a list of the Top 10 Most Worthless College Majors. The list includes:

• Art History: See All Art Schools for a comprehensive list of US and International Academic Art Programs
• Philosophy: See The Philosophical Gourmet’s ranked list of Philosophy Programs
• American Studies: See The American Studies Association has a list of US and a list of International American Studies Programs
• Music Therapy: See The American Music Therapy Association’s Career Handbook and List of Programs
• Communications
• Dance
• English Literature: See this list of 120 English Literature programs in the United States
• Latin
• Film Studies
• Religion

Their point is well taken that these majors come with a low likelihood of finding post-collegiate employment in your area of interest. Bear in mind that most people do not up working in their major and that having a degree is ultimately more important than picking a major. So, I would recommend that you pick a major that interests you rather than a major that will guarantee you to make money later on. Not to mention, that if the material bores you in college, it will probably bore you as well in your professional life.

Summary: PICK A MAJOR THAT INTERESTS YOU