Edward Flaherty

A Personal Summary and Reflection on...

2004 ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo

Natural Spaces Public Places

28 Oct-2Nov, Salt Lake City

As invited speaker and Chair of the ASLA Computing Professional Interest Group, I attended and participated in the following programs:

1. Friday 29 October: ESRI GIS Expo where I heard GIS presentations by Jones and Jones; The Design Workshop; EDAW and University of Texas. Most interesting was the Fritz Steiner UofT presentation which was how ESRI and Community Viz software were used to examine development scenarios in the five adjacent counties of the Austin, Texas region. The University organized, bringing the counties and other stakeholders together for a $1.25 million study done by Fregonese and Calthorpe http://www.frego.com/, a firm that provides innovative solutions and technical expertise that help cities shape when, where and how their communities grow.

• Design Workshop said for their 130 employees, their annual technology budget was $800K including training.
• Software companies present were ESRI, including Jack Dangermond; Community Viz, who are changing their business model and making their software free--it is software that lets users manipulate, in real time, land use policies, taxing policies, implementation programs and volumetric urban design--extremely valuable community public participation tool http://www.communityviz.com/ ; Wacom showing its tablet/pen input hardware; and, Sketchup showing its user friendly 3D conceptual modeling software.

2. Friday 29 October: Council of Professional Interest Group Chairs where I learned that the ASLA plans to upgrade the visibility of the Professional Interest Groups. Members of the groups are now encouraged to submit for LATIS publications about the groups which now carry a $2,500 stipend for publication. Details of all can be found on the ASLA Web site, ...hehehe...tell me when you find the right page and I will post the link. :)

ASLA is also stressing a newsletter and a significant Web site. Currently our Web site links to the ASLAcomputingBlog and provides a couple GIS links--needs help. Also, the newsletter is non existent. I am not interested in it. I would rather see membership contribute short news items to the Blog, http://radio.weblogs.com/0119189/.

3. Friday 29 October: Gathering of Michigan State University Landscape Architect alums where I met student friends I had not seen in 40 years. One is now President of Canadian Society of Landscape Architects. I also met with a number of Florida Landscape Architects and discussed how the 2005 ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo, scheduled for Fort Lauderdale would affect practice in our state.

4. Saturday 30 October: met and prepared in the morning with 8 co-speakers for our afternoon 90 minute roundtable entitled: Have we embraced Design Computing? The roundtable speakers included:

Madis Pihlak, Roundtable Chair and Director of the Stuckeman Center of Design Computing at Penn State.

Walt Bremer, Professor, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Head of GIS Lab, http://www.calpoly.edu/~larc/faculty.html#waltb

Joe Blalock, Assistant Professor, Ball State University, http://www.bsu.edu/landscape/profile/0,1898,3238-772-50696,00.html

Fred Abler, Professor, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, of the Collaborative Design Agent Research Center, http://www.cadrc.calpoly.edu/frameset_start/start_news.html.

Tom Papandrew, FASLA and Past CEO from Belt Collins http://www.beltcollins.com

Tom Barratt, Tom Barratt Ltd, http://www.tblla.com

Russ Adsit, FASLA from Fisher and Arnold, http://www.fisherarnold.com/

Ed Flaherty from Johnson Engineering, http://www.johnsonengineering.com/ and http://radio.weblogs.com/0119189/

Dan Moynahan, Director of Marketing for Nemetschek Software(Landmark, C4D), http://www.nemetschek.com/.

All covered current software and hardware being taught in school and used in practice. Barriers to progressing in design computing include hesitancy among older generation decision makers, software user interface awkwardness and hardware/network capacity issues. Steady progress was noted on all barriers except the older generation. Conclusion is that when the current college generation of computer users become decision-makers, the software, hardware and network issues will successfully coincide to allow emergence of dynamic digital design computing workplaces.

A CD from the presentation is being distributed and when I have it I will upgrade the summaries of each of the speakers with the focus of their contributions

.

5. Sunday 31 October: held a Computing Professional Interest Group meeting with those present including Walt Bremer, Joe Blalock, Michael Flaxman and Mike Heacox. This discussion focussed on limited interactivity among those already enrolled in the ASLA Computing Professional Interest Group and what might be done to facilitate the positive potential of enhanced interaction. The discussion centered on the gap between student activities and professional offices. This Computing Group was identified as an opportunity to help bridge that gap while at the same time facilitating interactivity. Joe Blalock agreed to examine how to bring numerous university digital activities into the Group. Walt Bremer agreed to examine and support how Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) could give the group a new dimension. All agreed that the theme "Integration" would be the focus of the groups efforts this coming year. So the Blog, the Wiki entry, the list-serv and the Web site should serve as a range of integrating conduits to bring an enhanced quality value of communication between offices and schools.

Sorry to miss David Myers and Christopher Seeger at Salt Lake.

General Comments:

At the national meeting/expo, there needs to be an online meeting portal to facilitate digital communication and follow up meetings. While the traditional post-it notes/kiosk is cute and somewhat functional--it just does not handle the needs of over 1,000 attendees. What should be done in 2005? Local wifi, local portal, large screen(min 70") on wall with attendees in d-base configurable/searchable, to state, to professional office to school to??...with big ëyouíve got mailí icons? And a number of dumb terminals(iMacs?) for people without smart phones, PDAs or laptops?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

end

1:47:45 PM    comment []