Year One, Check

Here is an unstructured list of some of  my favorite moments of the past 365 days since Platial launched. This coming year will be full of even more surprises, distractions, disruptions, discoveries, learning, frustration and surely maps so thanks so much for journeying with us!

• Our first hackathon November 7-9, 2005 at the Jupiter Hotel with our brand new team Anselm, Chris, Tracy Catherine and special guests Poly 9 and the super smart web team at ESRI. My best friend Scott, even managed to make it to the kick-off. I should mention that I wish we had the energy to maintain life in a perpetual hackathon. We've had some brilliant hackers, academics, artists, UI folks and friends come to Portland over the year to help out with our major pushes. They're usually 3 or 4 days of super intense work where we make a giant step forward. Since then we've been fortunate enough to welcome Sayumi, Aaron, Rama, Tylor to the team and Rael and Stikkit team into our space!
• Getting funded by top-tier investors who believe in our mission, was the first validation that we were building something that could potentially benefit the world at large. We deeply want to create a post-geo-political picture of the world; a place where you can see into any part of the world through the eyes of its people. We have the chance to help each other navigate the world socially, irrelevant of big media and big politics. We have the privilege of working with some of the smartest investors who truly want to change the world.
• Launching Burnside. When we launched last year, the product codenamed Ankeny, after the first alphabet street in Portland, was riddled with bugs and inconsistencies. (I'm not saying they are all gone- building a mapping application is one the most challenging things I've ever done- even the folks at Google will probably tell you it's nontrivial.) Burnside, the second alphabet street in Portland was our first large improvement to the overall product which launched in February.
• In March/April, people really started to understand what we were trying to build with the People's Atlas. Some of the most inspiring example articulations of Platial were from Annalee Newitz who wrote about us in Wired, Engsan Kho who made us this video and Elizabeth Blair who created this piece on NPR.
• We've released a couple of applications this year that stand out as the things I am very proud of.  These have felt like a gift to ourselves and to our users. We feel like we're working for our users. It's hard to sift through all of the feedback and feature ideas and choose those we think will be a great resource overall. The two this year are Today Nearby (which needs some love and updates) and MapKit (which is getting a lot of attention at the moment and is on over 1000 new sites/blogs since we launched it a few weeks ago).
• Mapmaking. We started Platial because we've been making maps and psychogeography inspired art for a decade and when Google released their api it blew our minds to think we could do this every day with others who share the passion for mapmaking and neogeography. So late at night when we're making maps we'll spot others making maps too and sometimes it changes the way we view the possibilities. Baostar, Tracy The Astonishing always show me something new but so have Wept and Paiges who are incredibly good at putting personal feeling and story onto maps. Ayogist has shown us that we should focus on supporting the map publishing tools for bloggers, Tana that we can support local business, local farms and local food!  Hundred flowers, Placekraft, Dsudurion, the Londonist, all of the revolutionaries and us3rnam3 keep us excited about how cool the world is (and lots of others too). We've recently been hosting MapMaking tech craft nights and we even got to meet LA user scootdown in person at one of them.  I met the Mayor of Williamston mapping local history one night.
• We've met some of our most inspiring peers in person this year for example Mikel, Steve, Mike Liebhold, Schuyler Erle and Jo Walsh as a reward to attending too many conferences.
• Being (pleasantly surprised). Who doesn't love surprises? Well some that stand out are receiving some of those treats that Baostar is always placeblogging about, seeing Pauric's Make Magazine tabbed MapKit prototype and Tone made this Minimapper, Sayumi made Platial Tetris and the folks at Canwest inspired us to create a Pro MapKit for editors called Newsmapper.
• Great partners-- just a quick note of thanks to Jason and Jake, the other two co-founders not mentioned here who are working round the clock to try to make Platial the best social mapping application in the world. One day we will take a vacation ;-).
• For anyone who now thinks it's pathetic that I do not have a life outside of mapping, this year, my five year old daughter started kindergarten (I get to publish the school newsletter, taking tips from Parent Hacks), my two year old son learned to skateboard and Jason and I finally got hitched! It was a blissful three day wedding festival in the Oregon woods with lots of family and friends. It's worth noting that Erik and Scott give a great wedding sermon (The Sermon of Ideas), Caterina and Tracy are stellar tea maidens for any Wedding Tea Ceremony and that Chris and Donalda truly surprised us by placing real world Platial markers around the grounds for us to attach our stories to.
  

Thanks so much everyone. Onward!

Comments

[Mikel]

cheers platial crew!

a word to anyone out there .. if you're ever in amsterdam at the time as platial, make sure you get some ethiopian food with them.