http://perut.org/

I’m glad to see that your head’s in the right place as far as sustainable solutions. So many people these days do *humanitarian* projects that ultimately serve very little besides the originator’s ego. It will be interesting to see where this goes.

From my perspective it seems that it would be good to develop the home-made hot air balloon in kit form (financial limitations of helium) then package with instructions and supply local individuals with these kits so that they could serve specific communities like the Shipibo. If you got something like that up and running you could probably get a very strong donor response from members on photo.net for compact cameras that would serve your purpose. Sounds like fun- and definitely useful in certain situations.

Heck, you might consider hitting up goprocamera.com for camera sponsorship. Would be an intriguing application for their product. They’re light, shoot video and stills, and are cheap enough that they could potentially float you some units without breaking the bank.

Anyway- keep truckin and good luck.

Mike Bergen
NGO AidJoy

So on the one hand, I’m just trying to bring the price down, and at the same time capture much *better* imagery, both on the basis of resolution and recency. The whole kite rig can be put together for only $50, and balloons are not much more, at about $150 (remember with GPS you’d probably have to buy a few of them, and they’re illegal in some countries).

I’d also say that the definition of the user base is important. I’m not just wandering into some settlement and launching a balloon – I’m working with dedicated groups of educators and aid workers who have worked with these communities for an extended period of time – years, in some cases. It’s just as important that Carla, Nancy, and Ysabel of Manzanita “A”, Daniel Miracle of Escuelab, and Ernesto, Sandy, and Sara of CEDRO become familiar with these techniques, since they have the trust of the residents of their respective target communities. And traditional GIS practices ask a bit much technologically – the way we’re doing it, you don’t even need to download an application – you can generate the map at an internet cafe using Firefox, if you like.

Of course I’m also trying to push the envelope here a bit, and to explore what works and what doesn’t, but it seems like a lot of the web-based neogeography toos have a lot to offer at a low barrier-to-entry compared to the GIS toolchain. So that’s an area of interest/research to me. (Full disclosure; I created Cartagen, which tries to completely upend some of the tile-based systems used by even the most cutting edge neogeographers, so obviously I have weird ideas about how maps should be made, LOL)

Finally, though, I’d say that beyond being cheaper and better (resolution, recency), the most important part of this balloon/kite process to me is that it does more to include residents of these kinds of settlements in documenting and *defining* their geography. To me, GPS is a great tool, but it’s kind of a black box as far as users are concerned — hell, I don’t even really really know how they work. Simply taking pictures of your home from above (pictures which YOU OWN, no less) makes immediate, tangible sense. You can even see yourself in every picture, holding the string! Which is to say that it’s a lot more tangible than a satellite. So there’s this other, more psychological, epistemological angle which is important.

Sorry to blabber on — I hope that makes some sense? Please don’t hesitate to criticize – I’m still refining these ideas so I’d love to hear your thoughts.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by TheEyeOfTim: Grassroots Mapping in Lima (via @BoingBoing) http://tinyurl.com/yf9kpm2…