May 5th, Denver-area nonprofit staff and technical consultants met to discuss web-based mapping and view a few interesting projects.

General Notes

Some of the most difficult work is not the mapping, but getting the data together and convincing people to cooperate.

Sometimes you just need a good one-off way to map 1 or 10 or 100 addresses, not a full data integration setup.

Always keep the end user and their needs in mind. Know your audience. Keep the interface simple. Don't design autocad for the web; most people will be confused by maps and sites with a million features.

Use maps with caution. They can be misinterpreted or misleading. (e.g., heatmaps display trends aggregating data from large areas, and my not be precise for any particular point.)

Mapping data over time can be done with: Google Earth, Google Charts, custom javascript, custom flash.

The Washington, DC city government provides 270+ free, real-time feeds of data for public use. Denver city/county provide some data for free, but it's not real-time and it's cumbersome to request/download.

Apps for Democracy was a contest held to leverage that data for public use. The contest "that cost Washington, DC $50,000 and returned 47 iPhone, Facebook and web applications with an estimated value in excess of $2,600,000 to the city."

Resources

* Google Maps: http://maps.google.com
* Google Earth: http://earth.google.com
* Microsoft LiveSearch Maps: http://maps.live.com/
* Microsoft VirtualEarth: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/
* One-off map generators (plug in a few addresses and get HTML for your website): http://www.map-generator.net/, http://www.mapbuilder.net/
* Washington DC Government data feeds: http://data.octo.dc.gov
* Apps for Democracy (contest to build apps that use the DC data) http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/about/
* International mapping: OpenStreetMap: http://www.openstreetmap.org/
* Free mapping base layers: OpenLayers: http://openlayers.org/
* USGS Web Mapping Service and data: http://gisdata.usgs.gov/
* Batch geocoding: http://www.batchgeocode.com/
* Loads of mapping resources and tools: http://geocommons.com/
* Color selection and optimization: http://colorbrewer.org/

Mike Fatica -- Fatica Consulting

Mike showed two projects he had done for clients. One was for a real estate service, allowing the user to create their own polygon on a map, and return properties within those boundaries. The other was a location-based game built for PETA, where users could forward a "nugget" to friends around the world, and the site would track its progress and locations. (Neither site is currently live, so they are not linked here.)

Brian Timoney -- The Timoney Group

Brian showed three sites they have developed for clients. csapscores.org (http://csapscores.org) displays Coloado schools' standardized test scores, combining state data and Google maps. The Piton foundation (http://piton.org) has maps of Denver neighborhood and school data, with an interactive "map builder" feature (build with custom flash) allowing the user to explore and filter data.

Ted Fickes -- The Wilderness Society

Ted showed a new map that they recently added to the wilderness.org website. Handed some ambitious requirements and a short timeline, Ted was able to quickly get up to speed on a number of Drupal mapping tools and pull together a nice-looking interface.

Other Sites Mentioned:

http://walkjogrun.net/ (ride and run route mapping)

If you have questions or need more information on any of the above, contact us and we'll do our best to point you in the right direction.