Thanks for this Ragnvald! Not too late, this will get passed on to the designers and Id very much like to follow up with you on some of these points.
Jeff On Apr 7, 2012, at 12:42, Ragnvald Larsen <[email protected]> wrote: > After reading Ronaldos posting and having looked at the wireframes I would > like to make a few comments. Knowing that Ronaldo requested feedbacks by the > 1st of April I hope that my comments still could be relevant for the further > work on Geonode, > > Having tried out Geonode I am generally very pleased with the system. It was > introduced to me by Reinier Battenberg at a point where I was planning to > introduce Geoserver to project partners using the OpenGeo Suite. Geonode > provided a further abstraction layer where the more technical sides could be > kept "in the back". So I have now happily started using Geonode in the same > projects. It is in an early phase but Geonode has been very usefull this far. > In a couple of weeks GeoCat will host a one week geoserver/geonode training > for us. > > Geonode provides a central part of establishing a spatial data > infrastructure. I am working on two projects where we are hoping that Geonode > will be part of a national Infrastructure. Thanks to everyone making this > possible. > > In Timor Leste I am helping DNMA (National Directorate for the Environment) > to look at areas where they can coordinate environmental information. We held > a workshop early in March where both current status for managing thematic > data and alternatives for moving forward were discussed. A posting on the > workshop with associated presentations and documents are available (see > www.mindland.com). > > In Uganda I am working together with the National Environmental Management > Authority to coordinate environmental information relevant for the current > Petroleum developments in the Albertine graben. This work is done as part of > the Environmental Information Network in Uganda. > In both instances the goal is to establish clearing houses for environmental > information. The information relevant is: > > 1) Geographical information > Standardized geographical objects (grid squares, administrative objects) > 2) Related information > Codelists (species/contact points/assets/etc) > Litterature references > Documents (text/spreadsheets/pdfs/images) > > The clearing house should be a system which could pull relevant inforation > from 1) and 2). A standardization process is necessary for both information > categories. The geographical information will go well into a system like > Geonode, while the related information should be in a separate database. > >> From looking at the wireframes geonode could move in a direction where it >> looks more like a Content Management System (CMS). From my point of view >> that is not the way to go. > > For the two mentioned projects we are aiming at integrating maps prepared in > Geonode into a CMS (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal or other). So far I have > experimented with Wordpress and I am very happy about how one can integrate > external information into it through embedded objects, rss and a rich > ecosystem of plugins. Geonode competing with a CMS could confuse the > excellent parts of Geonode. > >> From my perspective I would like geonode to be better in: > * helping users to do collaborative efforts to make maps which could be > embedded in a CMS. > *having more options for customizing embedded maps > * providing RSS-lists of available maps for listing in a CMS > * helping users in making maps which where attribute data from gaographical > objects presented could be used to point to third party sources of > information (document repositories etc). > *making plugins or code which makes it easier to integrate maps and metadata > from geonode ( geonetwork/geoserver) > > Regards, > Ragnvald >
