About the Author:  Sean Gorman founded FortiusOne in 2005 to bring location based analytics to the mass market. Sean brings over 10 years of experience at the forefront of the geospatial revolution as a researcher, practitioner, and entrepreneur at FortiusOne. Through both academic and entreprenurial efforts he has been working to make geographic data more accessible to the public since 1997 culminating in the creation of GeoCommons – a crowd-sourced repository of statistical data and social feeds that can be easily mapped, remixed and reused by non-technical users. Sean has been featured in media such as, Wired, Der Spiegel, ABC, Washington Post, Business 2.0, MSNBC, CBS and CNN. He also holds a PhD. From George Mason University in Public Policy where he was the Provost’s High Potential Scholar and was the recipient of the Fischer Prize. He has published dozens of articles on geographic data sharing and analysis, and authored the book Networks, Complexity and Security: The Role of Public Policy in Critical Infrastructure Protection. Read more from this author

There were two great articles that popped up in the last week or so that I’ve been trying to carve out some time to blog about. The first was an insightful overview of the GeoWeb from The Economist called “The World on Your Desktop“. One of the major points in The Economist article is the convergence of the GeoWeb and GIS, “when the analytical insights and data quality of GIS are combined with the geoweb’s visualisation (ease of use) and networking prowess, startling efficiencies emerge.” I must admit I am biased since the article mentions us as one of the companies blurring the line between GIS and the GeoWeb, although sometimes to GIS professional’s chagrin. The second article was a blog post by Nick Black of OpenStreetMaps. Nick does a great job of better defining neogeography. The conclusion being neogeography is about pragmatic solutions to geographic problems that cut through the tendency of traditional GIS to build “complexity to ensure exclusivity”. My take away from the two articles and several recent conversations; the market is moving towards convergence faster than expected and the democratization of GIS will be here sooner than we think.

In many ways the spreadsheet analogy works well. I use about 20% of the functionality in my spreadsheet program and that 20% of functionality is accessible to me with little or no training. That 20% of functionality is what about 80% of spreadsheet users utilize on a regular basis. This in turns allows a very large population of users to create data in a spreadsheet format and share it with other people. I do not need a four year degree in statistics to use the spreadsheet, although if I did there would be a larger percentage of functionality I could tap into and create more results to share.

In the world of traditional GIS there is no 20% that is open to 80% of users. Either you are a GIS wonk or you are not a GIS wonk, and the number of GIS wonks is quite low because of the training and barriers of entry to becoming one. The end result is a complex technology that ensures an exclusive user base. Why can’t or why is there not a GIS technology that is ubiquitous as spreadsheets. Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth have surely demonstrated the public’s appetite for an “easy to use” technology. Can the leap be made which create “easy to use” web based technologies that bring the relevant 20% of GIS analytic/exploration functionality to the 80% of the market hungry for it?

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