00:05My name is Jack Dangermond. I know many of you. Welcome to Redlands. Isn’t it great, great weather?

00:13Okay, it’s a little rainy, a little cold. It isn’t what you expected in California, but it’s pretty good.

00:18So, welcome. How many of you people were here last year? Oh.

00:23How many of you people were not here last year? Oh. About 50/50.

00:28This is very good. Answers Michael Goodchild’s question.

00:32We have a wonderful couple of days planned and I’m very, very proud to be able to kick it off and welcome you...

00:40...and thank you for being here and acknowledge you for your interest and being who you are.

00:46That’s the best way for me to say it. You represent actually many, many interests.

00:52The other day I was walking in the hills above Santa Barbara, on one of Michael’s favorite jaunts...

01:00...and I ran into a guy who was hiking, and I found out that he was a trail designer. He was a geodesigner.

01:07Bud, how are you? Welcome, by the way. Never met him before. Here he is.

01:14Welcome him here, yeah. Great.

01:19And Peter Ndunda, who’s here, he works on planting trees for Wangari Maathai, 40 million trees.

01:27He’s doing geodesign. Some of you are architects and landscape architects.

01:31You’re practitioners doing geodesign.

01:33Some of you are academics and you’re teaching the process of geodesign in various ways. Well, some of you are technologists.

01:44You’re building tools, platforms that enable geodesign as a practice.

01:51And you have lots and lots of different interests.

01:53Some of you’d like to do ontologies about what is geodesign and figure that out.

01:59And some of you want to advance the tools...

02:02...and some of you want to learn better how to develop curriculum for more systematic teaching...

02:08...and some of you want to do research in the field. And on and on and on and on.

02:13So at the beginning of our meetings, we usually take a couple minutes and have you share with one other person...

02:19...a new person that you don’t know, who you are and what you’re doing in this practice.

02:24So could you do that for me now, and then by the way, give them a chance to do the same to you. So, start it off.

02:31So you have to get up, get up. Meet somebody new.

02:45Okay, good. Wonderful. Thank you. That’s exactly what we want to do.

02:55That’s exactly what we want to do all for the next couple of days.

02:58This is a kind of birthing of a new field.

03:02A cross-cutting, multidisciplinary field, which brings together technologists and science people...

03:10...educators, practitioners, to build something new. A new approach.

03:16We need a new approach. God knows our world needs a new approach.

03:21An approach that synthesizes and brings together design with science, with technology...

03:30...that allows us to address virtually all the world’s problems.

03:34How we create the future. How we think about it. How we synthesize our thoughts.

03:42How we collaborate in new ways. How we address all of the problems that we’re facing.

03:51And so, at this meeting, one year since our first meeting...

03:56...we’ve made progress, and Michael’s going to talk about some of that in a few minutes.

04:01But before we go any further, I’d like you to think for a moment about what you want in the next couple of days.

04:09What is it that you personally would like to see as a result of these two days of being together?

04:15It’s a very special notion, of being together. I mean, we’re now moving more towards virtually being together...

04:21...but this is a real honest-to-God, real social network, connecting people and their thoughts...

04:26...and that’s very exciting to me. Makes my little heart beat.

04:30And then what do we want out of this set of relationships of being together? Have you thought about it?

04:39Why are you here? That’s worth making a list, so you have personal goals.

04:48And then what do you want from the rest of us?

04:51How do you want to interact in the future to deal with, well, to do things better? I like that idea.

05:02Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about new modalities and you know, in the birthing of the motion picture industry...

05:12...the way they did it was, they would film a stage play, a stage play like this.

05:18They would come out, they would film it, and then they would take the film in the can and they would disseminate it out.

05:23So everybody could see live actors play, except it wasn’t live, of course.

05:29That was the beginning of film, ‘cause they didn’t know any better.

05:34And then they started taking the projector outdoors and filming and the whole world changed.

05:40A new modality was invented for acting, playing, and disseminating knowledge.

05:48The same sort of thing is happening now with e-books. You know, you buy a new Nook or one of these things.

05:54You get the...you read it, you turn the page, the interface is for turning pages, but now people are starting to say...

06:02...I’d like to have a different kind of a book, a wiki book, a book that never ends. A new modality is about to emerge in text.

06:13And the same thing really happened in maps when CAD first was invented for making maps and used for maps...

06:21...it was, okay, I can reproduce the map. I can disseminate a map kind of like digital maps, not like digital movies.

06:27I mean like movies. Everybody can see my map.

06:29I can change scales, and then the thinking about GIS came along, where instead of graphic features, it was geographic features.

06:37And we could look at multiple applications out of a single database. A new modality was invented.

06:46And today, GIS is going through another massive shift with real-time information, distributed services...

06:56...being able to bring things together dynamically.

06:59And then the intersection between that and the whole life cycle of facilities and design and processes is birthing, here.

07:12Actually, here. With the introduction of new methods that use geographic information in a systematic way...

07:20...to create alternative futures, and evaluate them quickly, and understand the consequences of them, and then step ahead.

07:29And I think about the maps on the web today with routing alternatives.

07:34I can route based on minimum traffic, or only on the freeways, or I can look at alternatives, and I can pick one.

07:41I’m given the information that I can support my decision about which way to go...

07:46...which way will give me the most of this and the least of that. That’s just the beginning.

07:52For designers, many of you, the world is becoming digital and geographic information is becoming pervasive.

08:02We’re measuring...in the future, we will measure virtually everything that moves and changes.

08:09And we’ll be able to have it accessible through the Web.

08:13And we’ll be able to design and sketch alternative scenarios on top of that...

08:19...and then understand the consequences of those, and help us in doing design.

08:25A friend of mine a couple of days ago, shared with me that half of the time of the designer and the engineer...

08:32...is spent on assembling and getting the information together, collecting all the data.

08:38Sometimes it’s more, as some of you know, particularly in landscape planning.

08:43If all of that came together, and moreover, design became a transaction on a database of change in the sky, in the cloud...

08:54...I could do my work, leveraging the information that was available to me, create collaborative designs on the web...

09:03...which would consider all the factors and allow me to collaborate with others who had better ideas or other ideas...

09:12...who could come up with templates for design and share them.

09:17Wow, that’s an exciting thing. That’s a whole new modality. That’s the modality that we’re moving into.

09:24And so, for me, I want you to think about this in the next couple of days.

09:32Open up your...not that you’re not open up, and think along these lines.

09:40This morning, we have a very rich agenda. Lots of things are packed in...

09:44...so by the way, you took too long in getting in here this morning, so I’m...we’ve got to stay on time.

09:51And this morning, we’re first going...to get us going, look at a few examples...

09:59...of some of the technology that’s going on with some of my colleagues.

10:03They’re going to show a little bit of what I’m talking about.