Connecting the hyperlocal world to professional GIS
It was only last year that I decided to actively pursue hyperlocal media, while at the Esri User Conference and discussing the topic with a colleague there. Can you seriously be a great fan of geographic information in all its aspects, and ignore hyperlocal?*
So I got on the bandwagon with Foursquare and invited many others to do so as well. Clearly there is a network effect at play: why freely reveal where you are and what you are up to, when no-one at all is listening in? But just doing that can be of great value to a group of friends, who do care.
Foursquare is aha-technology (got that one from Larry Lessig): you just have to try it out yourself for a while, before you can say “aha, I got it”. In case you are benefits seeker (your effort is extremely low), these are the clear benefits I received so far:
– I got first just offered discounts at restaurants and later used them as well (15% and 10% of the bill).
– I get a chance to stay in touch with people, who also work professionally with geographic information. Actually, at our recent users conference I met some of them for the first time ever.
– Spatial conversations: why you are where and what you are doing there can be the start of interesting spatial conversations. It is an early start so far, but a few interesting ones have started up.
When I think a check-in is relevant for my friends & family, I will check through into Facebook. And when I think it might have some relevance to the world (…), I will use Twitter and might even include the LinkedIn and/or Yammer hashtag as well. The response on revealing my location differs per network, really interesting to monitor!
As with many new technologies, I set myself a goal to test it out for a while. I thought 1000 check-ins would be reasonable and so far I am beyond half way in this experiment (almost 700) and still going strong. At 1000, I will determine if the benefits outweigh the costs. This is my small contribution to push hyperlocal media beyond the hype curve, but I honestly think it does not require any help. So far, the fun outweighs any of the efforts involved!
I am still working on connecting the hyperlocal world to professional GIS, but connecting the GIS world to hyperlocal is off to a great start.
*no problem, off course you can. But as Foursquare is approaching 1 billion check-ins, it unlikely this phenomena will just disappear.