The gang at CloverPoint in Victoria BC, Canada is doing some really cool stuff with facebook via their resource known as MapSocial. The latest addition to the service is a fun infographic building tool that lets users create a Social Graph of their friends based on location parameters harvested from…
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GeoWorld, December 2012, pp. 22-25
| New Technology and Time-Honored Traditions: Mapping a Bright Future for the Huu-ay-aht First Nations |  |
By Brandon Thompson Brandon Thompson is business development and marketing coordinator, CloverPoint; e-mail: brandon@cloverpoint.com. In spring 2012, a camera team from CloverPoint, under the direction of filmmaker Brian Park, spent two days at the House of Huu-ay-aht in Anacla, British Columbia, Canada, with members of the Huu-ay-aht First Nations. The village bears the name of the sole survivor of a massive earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the entire Huu-ay-aht settlement in 1700. The crew was filming a short documentary about how the Huu-ay-aht, having reclaimed portions of their traditional lands, were implementing a cutting-edge land-registry system unlike anything developed before. This highly visual system would leverage the nation’s years of work invested into mapping the region’s biologically and culturally sensitive areas to unlock the wealth of their lands. Through responsible management and stewardship, the Huu-ay-aht government endeavors to revitalize its economy and rebuild a community that had long been displaced by natural disaster and colonial politics. |
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Atrum Coal is one of CloverPoint’s newest clients, and one of the many up-and-coming businesses that now calls Victoria home. CloverPoint worked with Atrum Coal to provide information on Coal Title properties in Northern BC by automating linkages from the BC Mineral Titles Tenure Search and providing online access to ownership information via webmaps as well as hardcopy maps for use in the field.
At the recent Festival of Trees decorating gala, CloverPoint ran into Atrum Coal’s Glenn Collick & family. Between eggnogs and gingerbread cookies, Glenn described their masterful tree display created with the assistance of the Victoria Lego Users Group (VicLUG). It turns out Glenn wasn’t embellishing. The team clinched the 2nd place spot in the competition with their intricate display of Lego candy canes as well as a mining scene created entirely from Lego.
While CloverPoint may not have won any awards for best-decorated tree, we still encourage everyone to take a tour through The Empress, donate $2 and vote for your favourite tree to raise funds for BC Children’s hospital.
You can also vote online for your favourite (our) tree here.
The CloverPoint team gets festive at the 2012 Victoria Festival of Trees to support the BC Children’s Hospital.
Every year, Victoria Festival of Trees transforms The Fairmont Empress into a lush forest of beautifully decorated trees to raise funds for BC Children’s Hospital. Sponsors, local businesses, organizations and individuals of this event come together and decorate trees – in a sometimes wacky, often irreverent and always beautiful fashion. These enchanting trees are then displayed throughout The Fairmont Empress over the holiday season.
The 2011 Victoria Festival of Trees was a record breaking event with over $126,000 raised in support of the urgent needs at BC Children’s Hospital. More than 15,000 votes were cast for the 77 beautifully decorated trees during the seven weeks at The Fairmont.
The 21st Victoria Festival of Trees, began November 20, 2012 with the kick-off decorating gala. The CloverPoint team was out in full Christmas force, decorating our very own tree and laughing all the way. Although we didn’t win first prize at the decorating Gala we can still win the ‘People’s choice award’ so check out our Festival of Trees SuperHero page to cast a vote and make a donation to BC Childrens Hospital.
Or, for a holiday outing, head down to the Empress and visit our tree in person through to January 4, 2013.
via http://bcchf.ca/events/events-calendar/festival-of-trees/victoria/
GeoWorld, September 2012, pp. 26-29
The September 2012 issue of GeoWorld Magazine (pp.26-29) showcases CloverPoint’s Insight technology in New Reality: Semantic Web GIS Will Take Us across the Threshold.
“The Internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead, what it’s allowed is silos of interest.”
— Seth Godin,
On the Tribes We Lead
The growing pains of the last century continue to be a focal point for writers trying to make sense of how society’s quantum leap from Industrialization to the Age of Information changes how people consume and share information—how they live their lives.
When examining emerging technology, to focus on the gadgets is to miss the point entirely, confusing products with the skill and knowledge behind their design. In fact, products come to represent technological benchmarks only because of the way they’re labeled and packaged for consumers. In truth, there’s little technological difference between a 512MB flash drive and the 32GB model, no matter what marketers tell us.
Products rarely emerge; they’re assembled, packaged and consumed. They become obsolete, and they’re replaced by a new model each year. The technology behind these products, however, is more ephemeral: less of a what than a how. It’s not created according to a schedule. Instead, it evolves and emerges as innovation dictates and epiphany strikes.
The addition of cheaper, higher-resolution screens to mobile devices was an attractive and popular design element, but the real “game changer” was the incorporation of spatial data to “geotag” photos. By using data such devices already access, the quality of information already captured by average users increased by an order of magnitude.
The University of British Columbia’s Insight 3-D model demonstrates how rich, dynamic and spatially accurate models of the real world may be constructed using streamlined coding languages such as GeoJSON.
And although a larger-capacity portable hard drive can be useful, it was the growing movement to cloud-based storage that freed users from their desks and offices, and made more accessible a type of innovation that arises not from closed-door development, but from open, collaborative development communities.
Babel On
www.insightinfo.com/aboriginalland2013
CloverPoint’s own Jeff Warwick, Karl Swannie and Brandon Thompson will be teaming up with Larry Johnson, Director of Lands and Natural Resources, Huu-ay-aht First Nations, to enthral and captivate a room of savvy land managers, legislators and First Nations stakeholders at the 2013 Aboriginal Land Management Forum in Vancouver from Jan. 31 – Feb. 1.
The key points of our presentation, entitled ”Unlocking the Wealth of your Lands,” include:
If you haven’t checked out the hottest new way to create and share beautiful maps and infographics, then what are you waiting for?
It’s free. It’s fun. And you can create your very own Friendmap (like the one above) before your boss gets back from the washroom.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. If you have never experienced the magic of TED take 18 minutes and watch a TED talk on your favourite subject.
It is no surprise that Victoria is becoming an international technology hub with Zinga, Microsoft and Kixeye offices opening up. What I didn’t realize was the immense wealth of artists and performers that also call this city home.
On Saturday November 17 the talented team of organizers responsible for TEDxVictoria found the top minds on Technology, Entertainment and Design and put them on stage at the conference center for our viewing pleasure.
Being a foodie and a gardening enthusiast my favourite talk was by local author Carolyn Herriot, from ‘The Garden Path’. But there were close to 20 different performances, speakers, videos, and presentations that moved me to tears, and brought me to laughterall within the course of 18 minutes.
If you have heard of TED and you were not at TEDxVictoria I’m sure there is a good reason why you missed such a momentous event. It was amazing to see that the kind of inspiring, revolutionary, out-side-of-the-box thinkers we watch on TED.com live in our own backyard.
The success of the event was due to the spectrum of knowledge and the passion of the organizers who made the day run so smoothly. So, thanks to all of you and the CloverPoint team is already looking forward to next year!
I recently stumbled across this beautiful “quiltmap” in the tech-reject bin at work.
What you’re looking at is a screenshot from an interactive proof-of-concept of raster textures propagating within shape files. This technology will play a key role in the exciting upcoming release of Facemap to MapSocial.
Wanna find out more? Join the MapSocial Community.
In honour of coffee, and how much we love it here at CloverPoint, we have decided to make an event out of Wake up Victoria this Friday, September 28th 2012 from early until 10:00 AM.
What is ‘Wake Up Victoria’ you ask? Well the Downtown Victoria Business Association (DVBA), and Downtown Victoria cafes are giving away free coffee as a thank you. That’s right, I said FREE! Just bring your own mug to any of the locations on this map, and enjoy your delicious coffee.
The crew at CloverPoint will be touring the town searching for the best coffee (and giving away free stickers if you find us). Follow us as we post all the photos on MapSocial and tweet about our adventures. If you see us be sure to say hello!
Like MapSocial on Facebook and we will invite YOU to post YOUR downtown cafe pictures. Who knows, we may even buy you lunch if we think the photo is worthy!
Thanks to the Downtown Victoria Business Association and all the cafes downtown. We’ll see you on Friday!
