Po Ve Sham - Muki Haklay’s personal blog

As part of the Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities, we are organising a one day seminar titled ‘Mapping for Sustainable Communities - An interactive day of reports and discussion for community practitioners, academics and community groups‘.

This event is scheduled for 17th June 2008, starting at 10.30 and finishing with a reception around 7.00 in the evening. It is free and open to anyone with interest in community mapping.

This is how we describe the event:

The seminar will consider recent work and ways forward. It is being organised by University College London and the London 21 network as part of their ‘Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities’ project funded under the UrbanBuzz programme and their Environmental Justice programme. These projects use internet-based and paper mapping along with other tools to work with communities on collecting and collating local information.

The seminar will bring together academics, practitioners and community groups to discuss the use of mapping as a means of engagement and tool for collaborative action, and to consider the benefits and limitations. The seminar includes sessions for academics and practitioners and a celebration of community work.

Outline Agenda
10.30 am “Academic” Session - Theory & Research

• The use of different methodologies in participatory mapping
• Mapping, impacts and inequalities
• Panel discussion: the balance between participation and the use of technology

2pm “Practitioners” Session - The Practice of participatory mapping

• The use of mapping with local communities
• Mapping, empowerment and Community Development
• Local Government, Regeneration and the use of community mapping
• Practical workshop: starting a participatory mapping project

4.30pm “Community” Showcase - work in progress

• A brief introduction to the development of the two projects, followed by presentations about the five case studies.

6pm Reception

Now, just because a session is tagged as academic, practitioners or community, it doesn’t mean that we want just one group - the whole point is to have people from different groups joining the discussion throughout the day. The titles are about the ‘hats’ that you put on during a session!

The conference is free but numbers are limited. Register on-line at http://www.communitymaps.london21.org/includes/mcsc_conference.php

Below you can find the presentation that I gave at the Open Knowledge Conference on 15th March. The presentation focuses on the issue of environmental information and Open Knowledge and covers several areas of open information and access to environmental information, starting with a short overview of the background, followed by some examples of environmental information over the internet from the past 14 years. It continues with a few examples of recent development and a discussion of the work that we’ve been carrying out at UCL recently. Finally, there are observations on access to information in the environmental field. The presentation contains notes that explain each of the slides – for a version with the notes, click here.

One interesting observation from the discussions during the conference was that the discourse of Open Knowledge, which is a political discussion, is lacking in the area of political philosophy, and bringing this issue up will reveal, I suspect, inherent differences which are very significant for the substance of the licenses’ structures, software design and many other aspects in this area.

What I mean by political philosophy is that if you approach Open Knowledge from an egalitarian or altruistic approach then you would have a specific set of perceptions about what it can be used for, by whom and under which conditions, which will be very different to an approach taken by a strong techno-libertarian believer. The egalitarian approach might emphasise the fact that the use of your knowledge must be beneficial for society, and, if the data or software is used for personal benefit, then there should be some social payback. It is likely that no demands will be made restricting further use. The techno-libertarian approach will pick and choose which rights you want to protect (yours) and which you don’t (for example, those of media companies). You are likely to dictate certain conditions on the use of your data, to further your belief.

The core issue is what is the social change that you are trying to lead and what levers are you using to achieve it?

The argument against an explicit discussion of political philosophy is that it can destroy Open Knowledge projects (such as OpenStreetMap, where a whole range of underlying political philosophies can be found), but the problem is that the licensing and legal structures around them are unsatisfactory exactly because the politics remain unarticulated.

Even if in many projects the politics are hidden, I think that conferences and meetings (such as OKCon) should be the right forum to discuss these aspects.

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For a more detailed analysis of public access to environmental  information, see Haklay, M., 2003, Public Access to Environmental Information: Past, Present and Future, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 27, 163-180
and other publications.

As in 2007, I am a member of the Association of Geographic Information (AGI) conference organising committee. Judging by the 2007 conference, this is going to be an excellent event. The range of papers, speakers and more importantly participants created an entertaining and educational two days, in addition to the networking and meeting of some familiar faces, including former students who are now part of the GIS industry.

However, over the past few years, the relationships between the academic side of GIS and industry – especially through the AGI – have not been as close and collaborative as they should be. This is a shame, as the many MSc courses in GIS programmes across the country are a significant entry route to a career in GIS. As I’ve noted, it is crucial for GIS professionals to keep up with the wider field and to learn about developments at every opportunity. This is not just true for people who are working with GIS on a daily basis, but also for academics who are carrying out research with or about GIS and GIScience and who educate future generations of GIS professionals. It is therefore unfortunate that only a few academics showed up to the AGI conference last year.

This year, the AGI has very generously put in a special effort to outreach academia. Two opportunities are available – for students there is a competition for a free day pass and an opportunity to meet prospective employers. For academics and researchers who submit a paper to the conference, there is another competition which is based on the papers that have been submitted with an award of significantly subsidised conference fees. So that’s a clear signal that the AGI is keen to see the academic side of GI at the annual conference – now we, as academics, need to do our part!

As part of a research project with UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs, I’m co-organising a session in the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, 27-29 August 2008, on the geographicla aspects of social enterprise research. The detailed call is:

Social enterprise and social entrepreneurship have grown in quantity and strength in the last decade in the UK. Positioned within ‘Third Sector’ social enterprises are characterised by their business-like approach to social action and have grown in the UK under New Labour. The relevance of social enterprise to Geography has previously been by-passed by particular discourses that debate the political-economic and socio-economic nature of non-state, non-commercial organisations - namely volunteer or non-profit organisations. This work helps to define and map the landscape of the Third sector but is yet to give adequate attention to organisations and individuals who use their entrepreneurial ideas to deliver social change while aiming to be financially sustainable.

There is a need for more social and cultural geographers to examine the nature and emergence of social enterprise/entrepreneurship in the UK. Whilst some work has explored the interrelationships between people, place and volunteering (Milligan, 2007), work on social enterprise/entrepreneurship in this field is scarce. Social entrepreneurs identify social need at the local, national and global scales; generate interest from a variety of social, cultural, economic and political spheres; and create tangible/intangible social impacts on individuals, communities, and cultures through their encounters with people, environment and place.

For social and cultural geography, social entrepreneurs not only present the opportunity to revive long-standing debates over agency, community, citizenship, space and place but also to make contributions to recent work on mobility, diasporic geographies, geographies of enchantment and especially to rethink the links between modes of economic activity and the creation of social goods.

This session aims to move current debates in geography, e.g. within geographies of volunteerism, forward by looking at individuals as drivers of social change from a new perspective. This is also pertinent given that social entrepreneurship/enterprise is fast becoming the major force of change in UK society. This session stems from a collaborative research between UCL and a leading supporter of social entrepreneurs (UnLtd), and we want to create a forum for debate about the emergence of and contribution to be made by geographies of social enterprise.

We invite proposals from geographers to present papers on:

• Geographical patterns of social entrepreneurial activities
• The role of Social Enterprise, Voluntarism and Charities in shaping places
• The concepts of space within the third sector, and how its geometry changes as result of social enterprise
• The merits and demerits of mapping social impact
• The relevance of non-spatial mapping to better understand social entrepreneurial activity.

If you are interested, please send expressions of interest to both m.haklay@ucl.ac.uk and LauraFry@unltd.org.uk

Deadline for title and abstracts (c. 200 words): 10 February 2008

This session is part of two planned sessions about Social Enterprise. The second one is a closed session organise by Dr. Sarah-Anne Munoz, which will focus on Social Enterprise, Social Theory and Geographies of Empowerment.