Northern Colorado, particularly the Fort Collins area, is a hotbed of geospatial technology and innovation – the region is also the center of the craft beer world. There’s no doubt that the GeoGeeks really enjoy their beer (see hashtag #GeoGlobalDomination for examples) but I’m also a firm believer that the GeoGeek, and geospatial tech community at large, can learn a thing or two from the beer industry… like how to cooperate locally.
Micro Brew giant, New Belgium, recently spearheaded an awesome community project that involved 9 local beer makers. The idea was that the friendly competitors would get together and create a community beer, and launch it during a special week of activities. The resulting project brought together a number of key minds in the local industry, helped foster even more community spirit and collaboration, resulting in a win-win for everyone involved.
I’ve seen a fair bit of this kind of local collaboration in the GIS and Geo Tech industry lately, however, nothing the likes of this. Perhaps it could prove to be a fine model to follow. The idea of cooperating locally for the better good in order to compete Globally has tremendous possibilities and this is a fine example that is testament to that concept.Imagine getting a group of professionals together to respond to a proposal for the development of webmapping resource for a large International project. A local meet could result in talent pool with varying skills and experiences all getting together for teh better good. Need an iOS developer or someone skilled in Java or Flex? Perhaps you need to include an iPad version of the project deliverable. Chances are good that by collectively addressing a solution with your local colleagues you may come up with a killer team!
The idea of Geo Tech developers meeting up at WhereCamps, hackathons, Ignite events, TweetUps, DevMeetups has really taken hold lately… hopefully soon we’ll hear a story or 2 about some interesting collaborative efforts that have resulted from these meetups taken place over a beer or 2. I’m guessing that some of the likely hot spots where such events will take place include Fort Collins, CO, Portland, SoCal, or D.C, all regions ripe with GeoTech talent and coincidentally, loads of fine micro brews available too! Cheers!
See details on the Fort Collins Beer Collaboration effort on the New Belgium blog – a fine video is available in the company fb page