Comments on: Check out our Google map of 70+ California projects!

By: Cheryl Honey

Cheryl Honey — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 06:49:39 +0000

Amazing. Maybe we can train Community Weavers how to map the engagement activities in their communities. Just a thought.

By: Sandy Heierbacher

Sandy Heierbacher — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 23:49:16 +0000

Some feedback from the NCDD Facebook group…

Aimee Samara Krouskop:
Great idea! yes; lets do the pacific northwest next. Let me know how I can be of assistance.

Gretchen Reinhardt:
I think this is exciting. I would love to hear more about the use of mapping technologies in public planning and conflict contexts. There are so many interesting things that can now be done with GIS and different data sets. I would love to hear from anyone that has used the new ArcGIS online (for organizations), and how they have used it. I for one would love to see a map done for Arizona. ) Let me know if I can help.

Also from Gretchen:
Another person to consult is Marc Armstrong, PhD http://www.uiowa.edu/~geog/faculty/armstrong/index.shtml

Colin Gallagher:
Great idea, though I think Pete Peterson of (( formerly Common Sense California, now at http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/davenport-institute/ )) has an excellent system of mapping seperated out by city, county, state, and project type, consult Pete!

By: Sandy Heierbacher

Sandy Heierbacher — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:43:53 +0000

In terms of technology, we used all free Google tools for this. We used a google survey (http://bit.ly/NCDD_CA) to gather the info into a table, and then Alissa used Google fusiontables in order to geolocate the data and then create a Google map with the data. I wanted to learn much more about the ins-and-outs of this process myself, but I was so swamped with other work that I mostly focused on getting people to fill out the survey. So though the technology is free, it’s not a simple process that anyone can do; there’s a bit of a learning curve.

By: Sandy Heierbacher

Sandy Heierbacher — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:37:10 +0000

Good point, Juli! I’m not sure google maps gives you many options in terms of spacing, but that’s something to check on. Definitely one of the challenges was that we wanted to collect meaningful info about projects, contact info, organizations, etc. — but the pop-up box on the map for each project got so long and is visually a bit too much. We had word limits and length guidance (like “one brief sentence”) on the survey, but people tended to ignore those instructions and paste a lot of text in the boxes. We did a lot of editing down, but probably not enough.

By: Sandy Heierbacher

Sandy Heierbacher — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:34:21 +0000

From Juli Fellows:

You might imagine that I would like it because it’s so visual – and I DO!! Really cool to see what’s happening in such a user-friendly way. What I think are particularly useful are the links after the brief descriptions. My only constructive suggestion is that the descriptions are so dense, they’re a little hard to read. A line break before and after the description would make it a little easier on the eyes. (At least my 61-year old eyes!)

It would have been awesome to have had something like this for our Regional meeting, for our showcased projects. I’d love to know what tools you used to create it.

By: Sandy Heierbacher

Sandy Heierbacher — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 13:31:37 +0000

From John Inman:

This is very cool. It would be great to have a national map of projects posted at the conference with a link to this work. Wouldn’t it be cool to find a project to support that way. I love the detail behind each pin. Nice work. John