I'm in Trinidad!

It's warm, there's sand in my toes and there's a most bubbles competition planned for tonights hot tub. Yes, I'm in Trinidad!

But, why?

If you look in to the dim and distant past, and if you squint, you will see a land full of geo-promise. A world where if only we could design the right file format then all the worlds location information would somehow magically combine in to one giant fireball of goodness. It would explode like an orgasm of color and rain down sweet droplets of geocomputing all over the world. We would all share our map data using The One True Ontology in The One True Format which was to be designed by a crack committee of geoexperts.

That was the design anyway.

What happened was that Jack won and we're all stuck with shitty shapefiles. Sorry did I say we? I meant you. I use my file format (which I'm imensely proud of), KML.

So here I am in Trinidad, and essentially I'm surrounded with fucking morons. That's not meant in any way personal! It's just the official Google term for non-Google employees. Fucking morons. Did you know that the Chinese term for people beyond the great Wall was 'blood sucking ghosts' because nothing COULD exist beyond the wall? Well it's like that in the 'gol. It's basically a desert of lepers, ex-bubble employees and freetards out there and we can only man our walls with layers of pay-per-clicks to distract them.

Back to my bubbles. It's GSDI 10 (as if 9 were not enough). That's Geo Spatial Data Infrastructure, 10th time around. That should tell you something. If they can't get it right the first 9 fucking times, and these are the people building the dream, can't we all just get the hint and move on? I certainly did!

You don't see 'Web Browser Conference 10' do you? Or 'The Insides of the TRS-80 Conference, 10th edition'.

The speakers basically consist of large government departments and the companies selling them mainframe-era GIS systems for millions of dollars. A few freetards have been thrown in - the losers from the OGC (We give them money and I've asked one of our people to find out what they actually do with it (note: maybe just fly to places like Trinidad?)). Oh and the cute GeoServer people... Yes, one day you may replace ESRI over Jack's dead body but by then we'll own the ecosystem with Earth so go knock yourselves out.

It all blurs in to one. But, it's in Trinidad! Reminds me, USGS are here! How the hell did they scrape together the money for the flight? Probably accepting donations from their rangers or something. I always warned Vanessa the public funding route would never work out - just look at the USGS guys hawking for change and a place to sleep tonight. I told them the beach would be good enough.

Will there be a GSDI 11? Ok fine - so long as there's no national anthems played and it's somewhere warm. But please! No more "Future Visions for SDI" talks by old white guys looking backward. No more "Here's something some dumbass low-level Mapping Agency employee did once in his spare time with ESRI ArcSomething" talks. We get it. You all use ESRI and want a biscuit. Well done.

This is the downside to my job of running Google. If the downside to your job is listening to a bunch of paleotards in Trinidad blather on about the 70's, then it's not that bad... But ol' Ed would much rather be in the bunker designing the next map. Until we've sold these moron governments some ad-supported or Earth Pro installs though, I'm stuck here with you babe.

Until GSDI 11, be seeing you.

Sent from yet another dumbass OGC committee meeting. Please, God, no more.