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Jack Dangermond, the founder and owner of ESRI, has just released a great video thanking GIS people for the work they are doing in the Covid-19 crises and setting forth how GIS is a key tool in the global response to the pandemic. Jack, of course, makes an ESRI-centric presentation, but that's OK and still very inspiring, as what he discusses also applies to other GIS communities, such as ours, QGIS, MapInfo, and all the others. GIS people worldwide are making a great contribution, whatever tools they use. Every one of us can contribute our skills and our knowledge of GIS to helping the people and the communities around us cope with the crisis, even if it is nothing more than clicking open a pandemic example map to keep an eye on real data, so we can discuss Covid-19 with family and friends using an evidence-based approach to the pandemic. There are so many wild rumors flying about, and the way to help people deal rationally and effectively with fear is through solid, accurate information. GIS is a great way to understand and present the real information that is there. I differ with Jack on a few points. First, he implies the ESRI toolset is now free. It isn't, although in praise of ESRI they have greatly loosened up their licensing. But for all that, the ESRI toolset behind the slides in that video remains far too costly and beyond the reach of most of the world's population that needs GIS in a time of crisis. But you can say that about Manifold as well. For all the better price/performance Manifold offers, the price of Release 9, what you have to pay to get 9's essential ability to handle the data sizes required to deal with Covid-19 in the detail a really strong epidemiological response requires, remains too high for most of the world. I very strongly believe Manifold has to change that. Now is the time for all of us to do all possible, not to hold anything back. Manifold has resources and reserves. Now is the time to commit them, to go all in. I also respectfully differ with Jack on the dashboards. While 100% agreeing dashboards are a great idea for presenting data, I respectfully note the Johns Hopkins dashboard which has become ubiquitous ends up underlining the lack of data-handling backbone in the GIS technology powering it. In too many cases it is too slow and jerky, showing the results of building an end result based on too many layers of technology where each layer has inadequate performance to handle the data volumes in play. That's a situation where 9 can help, sliding Radian technology into those layers to improve performance. For now, that's a technical challenge to do with 9, but the magnificent ideas Jack shows in his video set out a guide for how to make that easier, to help guide the web services technology Manifold is making ready. As is well known, Manifold is developing powerful web interfaces that will be built in, native, to 9. Those are the key to point and click Enterprise integration for presentations and sharing. While that work goes on, the GIS community and we in Manifold already have very rich toolsets to help cope with the pandemic, using a mix of Manifold, ESRI, Q, MapInfo, FME, the various web servers, many varieties of enterprise DBMS, both FOSS and commercial, and a wide array of language tools and libraries. On the front lines of GIS work fighting the pandemic I think most of the work is routine, unglamorous but necessary slicing and dicing of data to whip it into shape for collaborative use. We certainly have the tools for that. But most important of all, we have the intense skills and knowledge and genius of a world-wide community of very smart and very dedicated GIS people. Together, we can all make a difference in a time of great need. Thank you, Jack, for reminding us of that.
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