Smallworld on the Social Web

I have become very interested in the use of social media to provide a place to share ideas about Smallworld. Obviously the social web is a place where companies and individuals can market their products and services. But I have begun to see the social web as an extension of the informal technical meetings I have had with colleagues over the years where new ideas have been generated and old ideas refined.

I would recommend that you watch the TED Talk by Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from. He gives some great examples of how networks of people get together in chaotic situations to share ideas and out of those situations arise great new ideas. One of the very interesting examples he gives at the end is how some researchers trying to hear the telemetry signals from Sputnik triggered a series of events that today allows us all to use our mobile phones as navigation devices.

In that same stream of thought, I am beginning to see the Social Web as a place that the Smallworld community can use to foster new ideas and innovation.

Some in the Smallworld community have moved onto Twitter. That is a great tool for updating others on the status of ideas and projects (remember to tag your tweets with #swgis).

Others are carrying on Smallworld-related conversations in Linkedin "GE Smallworld" group.

There is the well-used Yahoo group sw-gis that many of us use. It is a great forum for answering questions to problems.

But what if we don't know what the problem definition is? I have recently begun to see the utility of YouTube in fostering this idea sharing. Another TED Talk by Chris Anderson: How YouTube is driving innovation got me to start thinking about how I could use video to share ideas and add them to the chaotic mix that stimulates innovation. I have started a channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/boulderalf that shares my Smallworld-related ideas and experiences.

I'm curious to know if there are other Smallworld-related YouTube videos/channels out there. Please let me know in a comment on this post. I know of only one other one: http://www.youtube.com/user/cliffhangersolutions

When you post to YouTube, remember to tag it with "swgis". It turns out that the "Smallworld" tag is more likely to take you to Disney-related content that it is to a GIS :(

Not happy with Magik in Emacs? See the MDT Webinar.

I've written a few posts related to Astec's MDT Eclipse plugin over the years. I have gotten used to using Emacs but I realize that is not for everyone (especially people coming to Magik from other development environments). So I was happy to read that Astec would be hosting a MDT webinar at the beginning of December. The timing of it is aimed at participants in the western hemisphere.

(Maybe Astec can set up a YouTube channel with additional demo videos for those who cannot attend the webinar).

Here's the announcement...

We would like to invite all Magik developers to an online live demo presentation of MDT (Magik Development Tools): the new and modern IDE for Magik.

Session is planned to be held on December, the 2nd, 1 p.m. Washington D.C. time.

MDT live demo presents main MDT features from simple basics to most advanced stuff. Topics included in this demo are as follows:
- creating project, runtime, session;
- importing and exporting (preferences, sessions, products etc.);
- working with code;
- browsing through code;
- managing project dependencies;
- search;
- version control systems;
- debugging

duration: approx. 60 min.

Due to limited number of seats please confirm your interest on mdt@astec.net. If needed, we will hold another session 90 minutes after the first one. Joining details and link will be posted one week prior to the presentation.

Cheers,
MDT Team

Creating a 3D PDF from Smallworld

Lassi Tani (@Lassitani) has posted a very cool example of creating a 3D PDF visualization of Smallworld data using FME at http://geolassi.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/from-smallworld-to-3d-pdf/