Nestoria Blog

Recently I had the chance to speak at the UK Geography industry’s annual conference - AGI 2007. The final event of the conference was a discussion about ‘neogeography’ versus traditional geography (christened ‘paeleogeography’ by former Nestora interviewee Ed Parsons at the event). There was much debate about what the term neogeography means and whether neogeography is at odds with or complementary to paleogeography. There was however no disputing that neogeography has caught the industry’s attention.

One example of neogeography in action is Gregory Marler’s recently begun Living with Dragons project. Gregory will spend the next few years living without commercial maps! We are delighted to announce Nestoria will be sponsoring Living with Dragons for the next few months to see how Gregory’s experiment turns out.

Gregory created his first website at the age of 12. After completing college he went to work on online production at the New Statesman. While there Gregory worked on the new website launch and it’s many new blogs. After a couple of years, he decided it was time to experience university life before he got to old. This month Gregory moved to Durham to start a degree in Computer Science. He forgot to pack some maps, and has yet to see his first dragon.

To kick off the partnership, we’ve invited Gregory to be this month’s Nestoria interviewee.

1. Explain the idea behind the ‘Living with Dragons’ project.

Well the whole story of how it began is on the blog, but it can be cut down to something quite short. I made the decision to move to Durham, after only having spent 2 days there. In spring I looked on the OpenStreetMap, a non-commercial mapping project and Durham was very white/blank, it almost said “here be dragons”. So as I was into this amateur mapping stuff, and liking adventure, I decided I would go out and map it without knowing where I was going. I moved here in October and set up the website to keep me knowing my purpose while readers of the blog can make sure I don’t cheat.

2. What sorts of response have you got?

Well it’s only been a week since I started but I’ve brought it up in a lot of conversations. A bit risky seeing as these are new friends I’m trying to make and everyone at home thinks I’m obsessed and a geek going to mapping conventions. Everyone here has been so interested that no conversation has gone the same way. I’ve discovered that archaeology students have a big interest in the map, the computer society would even like me to do a talk. On the business side it is looking like several organisations want to get onboard, such as the wonderful support from Nestoria.

3. What are your thoughts on the developments in the online geography sector (maps, etc) in the last 18 months?

Well I haven’t been following the whole sector closely but I’ve had an eye on OpenStreetMap related activity for some time. OSM seemed to flourish in the last year with more people suddenly being aware of the community mapping project and it becoming easier and easier to join in. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the conference but listening to the podcasts we don’t just have to be mapping now. Take a break and play with the maps, make some art, program scripts that play with the data.

How the user holds and controls the map has moved online sites to use slippy maps and even globes. Now we, the users, want to be overlaying stuff on maps: photos, lines and routes, hotels, even disaster areas in foreign countries.

4. What are the challenges you think a vertical search engine for property like Nestoria faces?

I think the challenge that applies to many online services is to maintain a good user interface that is simple. For a vertical search engine you want to be adding more search options. With the aim of allowing the user to tell you exactly what they want to find, or even which options they’re not bothered but would prefer. This is great but too many options and suddenly the balance will flip and they’d rather search vague terms in a general web search or phoning several local estate agents.

Thanks Gregory, we’ll work hard to keep it simple. Best of luck with the mapping. For those readers interested in following Gregory’s progress please subscribe to Living with Dragons.

past Nestoria interviews: Artem Pavlenko, Harvey Edgecombe, Marc Wick.