GIS and Geospatial information is rapidly growing with the addition of social media and authoritative source information. The web, the cloud and the move towards making GIS ubiquitous so that more people can have access to information, has created more bandwidth to be able to view and interact with more different data types. But how do you get all those types of information into a usable format for the intended audience? What tools do we have at our disposal?

Here are some of the questions discussed in the panel.

• What process is in place with various companies to create “authoritative source information?”
• How is social media used to provide an accurate picture of an event or place, and integrated into a whole geospatial fabric? Give examples.
• As data is growing in volume, what kinds of challenges do new data sources like crowdsourcing create for organizations?
• New technologies include virtualize computing environments, the cloud and SaaS, social networks, more quantitative science and more integrative, analytic, predictive real time efforts. As GIS becomes more able to manage larger datasets, does it also become easier to use and allow more people to use it
• How are multiple services integrated and shared so users can put data in a blog, with new web maps that support visualization, popups, and intelligence? Can this type of of technology used everywhere on any device, and integrated into social media and how is this accomplished?
• Community Analyst, an easy application that was announced last year, allows “anyone” to create maps. Are there comparable products on the market that allow you to map data coming from various sources?