Telling Stories at the New York State Geospatial Summit

Earlier this week I attended the eighth New York State Geospatial Summit. While the speakers were mostly "GIS" folks, the form is different from other events. All attendees participate in one track. This year the crowd filled our venue's meeting room to capacity at 200. The format is this: three speakers each speak for 45 minutes, then there's a panel where attendees ask questions. We do this twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. My job this year was to serve as moderator of the two Q&A panels.

Skaneateles Lake in sunshine; it was dark and gray during the event.
(Image by Catherine Nonenmacher, public domain)

The organizers carefully select the speakers and the quality is always above any "regular" conference. What made this year's speakers so good? Stories. Do you know the phrase "driveway moments?" Where I live it's associated with National Public Radio and describes how you pull into your driveway but can't get out of the car because you must hear the end of an NPR story on the radio. That's one definition of compelling storytelling. Some news stories (from Morning Edition, for example) have this quality but the exemplars are also found on programs like This American Life, The Moth and one of my favorites, 99% Invisible.

I attend a lot of conferences and hearing a compelling story is rare. I'm pleased to report I heard a few in Skaneateles  NY last Wednesday. The first speaker was Esri's John Calkins. I've known John for years and if you know him for his "top ten features in ArcGIS," you don't know his true gift. It's storytelling. He told a few stories on the theme Mining Space-Time for Patterns. Note that unlike some of the speakers who had "TBD" on their presentation page, John's topic was detailed on the website some weeks before the event.

John started off by offering the assembled attendees donuts from five different Dunkin Donut shops around the area. To my surprise many folks accepted the gift, and ate a donut, even though we just had breakfast! His underlying point was to bring up and explore location and time data about restaurant health violations in different neighborhoods. Everyone was vested in the data - since he shared which box came from which store along with its location on a violations map. That was actually a white lie, he let us know later. All the donuts came from the store in Auburn, NY.

John moved on to talk about pirates and when pirates do most of their pirating. He showed us a "data clock," something new to me, and explained how to use it, but kept the tech to minimum. He focused on the story. I don't think John mentioned Esri or ArcGIS once. No, he was there to teach us about using time in our geospatial analyses by telling stories. What I did take away about Esri and its software was subtle: I learned that ArcGIS (some bit of it - an extension maybe?) can do this these time analyses. In the end, I felt satisfied that I learned something and was not sold anything. Did the stories increase the warm feelings I have for Esri? Yes.

How long did it take John to gather the data for the analyses and craft the stories? How many times did he practice telling the stories? I can't say, but I can say he didn't write that presentation on the plane ride to the conference! One of the presenters offhandedly noted one video was made on the train. I appreciate his candor, but sadly, his whole presentation had that feel, too. There was no story.

Paul Ramsey of Boundless is another great storyteller. I've known Paul for years, too. He reminded me we met at an Esri User Conference when he headed Refractions Research. Paul's presentation topic is not on the website, but he shared with me it was his "Open Source for Managers" talk. I've seen that presentation before, but wondered how it would "hold up" on second hearing. Like any great story, it was just as engaging as it was the first time! I'm not sure if Paul updated it since I last heard it (or since it was originally written), but since it now included Boundless in at least one slide, I think he did. I want to contrast that update with another speaker who showed a slide that indicated Facebook had acquired Titan, a UAS manufacturer. That was a rumor; Google ultimately acquired Titan in April.

While Paul was conveying some pretty high level content to us, there was a story. How do I know that? He regularly took detours from the story! Each detour was highlighted with a different "detour" graphic, and each detour was its own little story. Paul was also very careful to let us know when the detour was over and we were returning to the main narrative.

Image by Woodennature under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Even if Paul had written this presentation some time ago, he had to familiarize himself with it so it could flow during last week's presentation. It did. Again, how long did he prepare? I did not ask him, but I'm sure the answer was "some." And, like John's presentation, there was almost no mention of Boundless. I think it was noted in one or two slides as an example of a company within the open source community along with others like Cloudera and Red Hat.  In the end, I again felt satisfied that I learned something and was not sold anything. Did the presentation increase the warm feelings I have for Boundless? Yes.

The final storyteller I want to profile is Joel Caplan, a professor from Rutgers who studies crime patterns. He didn't provide details on his presentation, but when I asked him about the topic the night before he answered in two words: "dark alleys." Then he asked me what I thought he'd talk about. I answered with something on the order of "why crime happens in dark alleys" and "how we can prevent crime in dark alleys." That was pretty close. Caplan uses map algebra to identify factors that make certain areas more likely to encourage crime, then uses the results to predict other areas with similar characteristics where crime might emerge. Caplan's talk was pretty technical, but involved a number of "small stories" to make his point. I was thoroughly impressed when the first question posed from the audience related to his statistical methods. Caplan immediately moved to his "bonus slide" prepared for just such question because, as he noted, "it comes up a lot." The slide had all sorts of statistics I never heard of, like BIC. That didn't worry me; I understood the stories. And, I want to learn more about how such techniques might help identify and enhance spaces that encourage positive community behaviors  like eating well and exercising.

What is the big take away from these successful presentations? Stories. Tell stories. But, don't be fooled, telling stories is hard. If it were easy everyone would do it well! I'm not sure how John and Paul craft their stories, but I do know that organizations that have a reputation for great storytelling have "coaches" that help new (and experienced) storytellers hone their stories. The Moth holds workshops for regular folks, for high schoolers, for those in prison, among others, to craft stories. And, those who end up on the TED stage get some coaching. In short, if you want to tell stories like John, Paul and Joel, you may need to get some guidance and do some significant homework.

And two other observations:

• I think it's virtually impossible to craft a good story, or a decent presentation, on a train ride or a plane flight.
• Out of date slides suggests you did not prepare.

My First Edu UnConference

I attended EdCamp BLC this past Monday at the Park Plaza Boston. It was set up to precede the official Building Learning Communities event starting later in the week. I think about 89 registrants were noted, but about 60 people seemed to be around most of the day.

We got to know one another by playing "musical chairs." We circulated around the large round tables until the music stopped, then we sat (or stood) at the closest table and introduced ourselves. After a few rounds you got a feel for who was there, even if you didn't actually meet everyone. I seemed to be the only geographer and the only college educator in attendance.

An unconference is organized by the attendees pretty much when they appear at the venue. Those who had topics they wanted to explore wrote titles and their Twitter handles on large sticky notes and stuck them to the wall in the main session room to form an agenda. You can see the empty grid here. We had one big room and two smaller rooms to use for the day. After about 15 minutes the grid was full of about 16 sessions (some rooms included two sessions at a time). We basically had two blocks of sessions in the morning and two blocks after lunch. At 10 am we promptly headed off to our first session.

The title "You have 60 minutes to change the world, go!" intrigued me, so I went into that room. The idea was that in 60 minutes we'd come up with a measurable way to change the world. We broke into groups to brainstorm. During that time I learned that some attendees had not heard of Khan Academy and others hadn't heard of Cain's Arcade. It was a good reminder that plenty of people who are passionate about education have their hands full in their local pursuits. We all came around to the idea of addressing not a first world problem, but a second or third world one. Then one participant remembered that new sign-ups to microlending website Kiva got $25 "free" to donate to any project that they wanted. What if we could capture energy to use as much of that "free" money, along with donations, to do some good?

We honed in on projects that were nearly fully funded that addressed kids and education. After a few more moments we had a name, Flashloan, got the URL Flashloan.org, set up a webpage and put our first project over the top! (The projects are real, but are basically already funded; we are essentially funding the next set. Still, this gave us a measure of our success.) Neighboring rooms wondered why they heard cheers from our room. We started tweeting about the effort and by noon Flashloan was trending on Twitter in Boston. Pretty cool. 

I confess to being a skeptic when the whole "do something in 60 minutes" idea came up. What got me involved was the belief of my fellow participants that this was possible. Moreover, if it took a little longer than an hour, so what? I'm proud to have contributed to Flashloan. I'm still sorting out how the exercise might transfer into the classroom. My biggest takeaway, I think, was the benefit (learning) I got by dropping my cynicism at the door and diving in. Educators need to remove cynicism daily!

The next session I attended was on digital workflows, that is, how you manage your digital assets, e-mails, tweets, bookmarks, pictures, etc. The biggest challenges for educators seemed to be around images. School libraries would love to host school pictures in the cloud, but privacy issues make that impossible. No one had found a good tool to tag images with ease, either. We had a number of librarians at the conference, which was just great! Among the tools cited in the session were If This Then That and Evernote.

After lunch I attended a session on "Bring your own tool," the idea that schools not assign devices to students, but rather have them use what they already own - iPad, phone, etc. The big takeaway here was about trust.

1) Schools and educators need to trust students to use the devices responsibly.
2) Schools and educators need to trust that they can manage the technology even if they are not experts in all the different devices and software packages.

A culture that prohibits (or even limits) the devices you use the rest of the day from their use in school really makes no sense. It also makes no sense in the workplace. (See Stopblocking.org) I always felt that way about software - that students should not use special edu software, but the real thing. I never made the link over to to hardware. Now I get it.

The final session I attended was on digital storytelling. We talked about storytelling tools and the lack of tools for storyboarding. There are plenty of tools for making the videos and such, but few to help craft the story. After a while we were asked to break into groups and make a video based on our own six word stories about what we'd learned at the event.

My group chose this story: "Must get iPad, Go Shopping Now." The author fleshed out the story by explaining that she'd  sat feverishly trying to use an old slow Android tablet while watching all the iPads in use around her. We used Videolicous for our two minute story - a mix of stills and video. It was truly fun and the leader of our session even played it at the closing session!

I found myself keeping my laptop closed much of the day. I learn better, especially in these interactive, engaging and high volume electronic communications type sessions (lots of tweets, URLs, Google docs, etc.), by paying attention to the conversation. I operate very differently when I'm in a lecture/PowerPoint presentation. My laptop will likely be open and I'll be multi-tasking. I do that at the Esri User Conference. I didn't do that at EdCamp. This observation brings me back to the idea of bring your own tool. While others brought a mobile device, paper and pencil, or whatever, I brought my brain.

We wrapped up with Smackdown, two minute "ads" by attendees for (mostly free) tech or ideas that folks wanted to share. The resources suggested are detailed here courtesy of Innovative Educator. I had a great day and was most pleased to have dropped my cynicism in the first session. Otherwise, I'd have missed out on quite a lot.

Response: What can you do with geography?

Google posted the video below titled "What can you do with geography?" on March 28. The goal was to honor and inspire this year's competitors in the National Geography Bee and to promote geography. It's a thoughtful gesture, with snazzy Google Earth zooming, references to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and images of treks up Mount Everest.



I'm sorry to have to say this but the video is not memorable, nor does not answer the question posed. The question was: What can you do with geography? The answer to that is a story. The answer is a specific situation, with real people, that highlights how geography matters. The video suggests geography is good and important, but in a very broad sense. Those are nice ideas and feelings, but they are not memorable nor impactful, at least not to me.

Do great news networks talk in broad, sweeping generalizations? No. They introduce you to real peopel, with real stories, to help drive home the larger issue. The recent TV production, Frozen Planet (which I have not seen) seems to hone in on specific animals, their specific stories, to drive home grander messages. NPR health stories often include a named individual who is facing a medical or insurance issue to "put a face" on a larger topic. It's both easier to follow the information and more memorable.

As I've noted before, the classic geography story is John Snow and cholera. It's both easy to follow and memorable. So, again, I beg those supporting geography to tell stories, rather than speak in broad, forgettable swaths. I'm still looking to collect more stories like that of John Snow.

Response: Geography is About Memorizing Capitals

Elmhurst College's "Quick Studies" blog offers a very nicely written article on the crisis in geography. It's titled "Off the Map." The author, Andrew Santella, includes data from the NAEP study, bemoans limited geographic literacy, and points to budget cuts as evidence of the situation. He even elicits the classic and still current understanding of what geography is from Elmhurst associate professor Rich Schultz from the department of geography and geosciences: "Ask people what they think geography is about and they’ll talk about memorizing state capitals."

Such articles are important, especially if they offer some hope for enhancing the situation. The positive news in this post is Schultz and a colleague's effort to tie geospatial technology to science in a new course for non-majors. I'm excited to learn more about that.

In the mean time, we need to start telling new stories about geography. We need stories that can help distance geography (pun intended) from the state capitals comment above and what was once called the "capes and bays" visions of the discipline. So, what stories do we tell?

We can all tell the John Snow cholera story. But we need more like it. We need simple to tell, simple to understand stories that define what our discipline is, how it works and why it matters in memorable, bite-sized pieces. I'm sorry if this sounds a bit like marketing, but in all honesty, geography needs marketing.

I am a geographer with two degrees in the subject. I only know that one story. What are the other stories should we be telling? What stories do you tell to explain what geography is? Should they be part of our communal storytelling? Please share them in the comments.

- HT to @josephkerski 

What We Can Learn from the AAG Geography Matters Video Contest

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) ran a contest in preparation of its 2012 meeting next week in New York City.

The Association of American Geographers organized its "Geography Matters" video competition in preparation for the 2012 Annual Meeting in New York, New York, February 24-28, 2012. We were looking for videos that highlighted the difference that geography has made in: your life, your career, your community, the world, etc. Entrants were told that videos submitted would be used to enlighten others on the importance that geography has in our world today.

So far as I can tell there was a three minute limit. All eleven videos submitted are available on YouTube. I saw a tweet today that indicated the AAG announced the winners. First place got a free registration to the meeting, a year membership in AAG and $250.

I was interested in the videos as tools for educators, knowing full well that was not explicitly stated in the contest rules. Still, the idea that the videos "would be used to enlighten others on the importance that geography has in our world today" certainly speaks to teachers and learners. The top three submissions focused on different themes and had different production values. They all brought a smile to my face.

Kieran O'Mahony took top honors with "Geography Matters: Today More than Ever." The slickly produced video with professional sounding narration and original music contrasted beautiful landscapes with the manmade world. The thesis was that in our busy man-made lives, indoor environments, and electronic communications, we need to return to the outdoors, to the landscape, to calm our nerves and feed our souls.

Chris S. Renschler's "UB NOW: Geography Help Haiti Recovery" took second place and detailed how the University at Buffalo participated with partners across the globe on damage assessment after the Haiti earthquake. The documentary style video included comments from faculty and students on both the technology and the personal experience of helping others.

Tyler Depke's third place video, "Why do we eat what we eat?" was the most informal of the three. Depke stood at a river's edge and discussed how the geologic/geomorphic history of a landscape impacts how it looks and how it can be used today. In particular, he mentioned how soil type, moisture and other properties, developed over time might enable a vineyard in one area but not another. It was an interesting mini lecture but I'm not sure it really answered the question in the title of the video.

This contest provides some insight into how geographers explain what they do and why it matters. How could these videos be better in the sense of "enlightening others on the importance that geography has?" 

My sense is we geographers need to work on our storytelling. Stories engage people. What geographer is not happy to tell the story of John Snow and cholera? What a great story! Did you notice how the concerns about Apple's factory workers conditions in China came to a head in recent weeks? I think it had a great deal to do with great storytelling on This American Life. Have you watched any TED Talks? They are almost universally engaging - even the very sciencey ones - because they tell stories. To take a more geographic example, did you watch the four part Geospatial Revolution series from WPSU? I'd argue its discussion of geospatial technology was compelling, even to those in the field, because of both the stories selected and how they were told. (I worked on the project as an advisor but give 100% of the storytelling credit to the WPSU staff.)

Now, having said all that, I know telling stories is hard. But, but we need to keep at it, if we want to convince the world that what we do is important.