Stephen,
I mostly agree with your flame about the naive and silly language of the
announcement. I merely posted this on behalf of the conference organizer
Tim Forseman who is really a great guy who actually talks like that.
He's just enthusiastic.
Tim has selflessly dedicated a large portion of his life to the
application of GIS towards the betterment of the environment. In an
earlier life, Tim was head of the Digital Earth Progam at NASA when Al
Gore was V.P., and is the author of the authoritative history of GIS.
Despite the silly wording, this will be a fun and interesting event.
This Digital Earth symposium is simply a different flavor of geo hack
event, aimed at focusing a lot of geospatial tech at improving life on
the planet. The commercial sponsors, google and esri, were added just
very recently to offset the costs which Tim would have probably paid out
of his own pocket if he hadn't found some support.
I hope we'll see you in San Francisco this spring, first for Where07,
maybe a geowankers get together or two , and then the Digital Earth
symposium. It should be a fun two weeks.
Cheers-
Mike
stephen white wrote:
On 09/02/2007, at 9:25 AM, Mike Liebhold wrote:
If you think you can do this in a way that demonstrates how people
can more easily and effectively communicate, YOU COULD WIN BIG!
I'm only responding because of this claim of "WIN BIG". It really
doesn't look like any kind of win at all.
1. All expenses paid travel, accommodations, and conference
fees to the 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth hosted on
the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.
A plane ticket and a hotel room.
2. Special recognition of the winning entries by invited
presentations.
You talk for a while, then it's over.
3. Receipt of Award Plaque and nominal cash prize at the Awards
Dinner on 7 June 2007.
A piece of paper.
4. Special dinner seating with VIP industry and technology
leaders.
Sit next to boring people. Done it before, it's really dull.
5. Technology Prize Package, a collection of valuable gifts
including thousands of dollars worth of the leading geobrowser and
tessellation software packages.
Of no use, because it's all old stuff.
So what's the point? Easy. All the companies involved in this "WIN
BIG!!!" competition get a look at the up and coming technology that
might have kicked their arses, and they get time to negotiate and
position against those threats.
Someone with the money sits in their office cackling, rubbing their
hands, and making up impressive titles like "AWESOME INTELLECTUAL
GIANT", and some poor dopey schlub who thinks that positions, titles
and names matter, goes and gives away everything they've got for a
handshake and a dead tree.
Where's some kind of technology alliance? Where's some angel
investment to get things rolling? Where's any actively useful
assistance to get any new technology out of the labs to be useful to
the general public?
Anyone working on such breakthrough technology would be far better
off ignoring these "WIN BIG!!! OHMYGODZ0RZ!" enticements and just
getting on with it. I might be cynical, but these are valid points.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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