Ken Snyder

<p> Shannon McElvaney at ESRI is working on a book on GeoDesign -- a growing movement of academics, community planning and development practitioners, ecosystem managers, and geospatial tool developers interested in the nexus between geography, design, planning, ecosystem management and community decision making.  Shannon asked PlaceMatters to contribute to the book, asking us a series of questions.  In the process of answering the first question &quot;What does GeoDesign mean to you?&quot; i fell in love with the combination of the two words and how they truely captured the range of interests engaging in the GeoDesign conversation. </p> <p> Here were a couple of my thoughts: </p>

At the GeoDesign conference in San Diego we heard mention of folks at MIT using helium balloons with cameras attached to take aerial pictures. Thinking this was a fabulous idea I decided to find out more and see if this was a technique [...]

In 2009 we worked with Ron Thomas, Mary Means, and Goody Clancy to help plan and run a large 500+ person visioning event in the town of Shreveport. We set up the event the night before with computers at every table for brainstorming and a [...]

<p> Given today it the release date of the new iPhone, I want to talk about something else at Apple the really caught my attention -- their automated customer care.   Last week I had to call Apple to find out how to get the sales tax removed from a purchase given our 501(c)3 status.  It was a complicated set of questions I needed to ask -- and yet the conversation was as smooth as talking to a live person.  It struck me I was getting a sneak preview of something that is going to radically transform how we use technology on a daily basis -- FINALLY. </p>

<p> PlaceMatters has partnered with the <a href="http://www.charretteinstitute.org" title="National Charrette Institute">National Charrette Institute</a> on a number of occasions, providing trainings and giving panel presentations at conferences. One of our common themes is &quot;High Touch, High Tech Charrettes.&quot; During the sessions we talk about the advantages of low tech and when it makes sense to bring in high tech. Below I have embedded a video that is a montage of clips filmed during a downtown revitalization Charrette in Wichita Kansas. In this project, PlaceMatters partnered with Goody Clancy to help residents go through a series of exercises including keypad polling and mapping exercises to brainstorm about the future of downtown Wichita. </p>