As with almost all blogs at some point in time the writer(s) eventually lose interest, become busy with other projects, or just fade into the digital sunset.
I am awfully close to meeting all three of these categories.
It’s time for something different.
When I started GISDoctor.com I never had any real expectations of what I would do with the site, and that shows with the topics I have written about over the past several years. For better or worse, I haven’t written much over the past year. Between my job, renovating a multi-family home, and literally running a 1,000 miles I haven’t had the time, energy or desire to keep the site up-to-date. Twitter has been great for keeping my ideas out in the social geo-sphere, unfortunately, I just haven’t had the inspiration or time to put many ideas or projects into this medium.
But, it’s not truly the end. GISDoctor.com isn’t being turned off, but the focus is going to change.
I still have a lot of ideas I want to share with the community I love. Even though I have a great passion for geo-tech I will avoid writing about it. Over the past couple years I’ve been observing the great GIS-troll war. No matter what project you are interested in, what technology you use, or how you use a given technology there is someone out there who will have no problem trashing you, without any sense of context or content. We are all guilty of this. Hell, I provided one of the most popular outlets for this very practice. But for me, this has run its course and I am really tired of it. Geo as grown by leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. We should be working harder to do more as a community to solve problems and develop ideas, regardless of our personal “stack” choices.
So, where does this leave me and the site at this point in time? Well, I will be cleaning up GISDoctor.com, turning off the comments (if you have anything to say, just twitter it), retiring some old code example pages (I still see some of my Google Maps examples still being used, which is neat), and updating some of the more actively viewed pages on the site. I also hope to change the feel of the site. When I do post, it will be about the G(eography) in GIS. Tech trends come and go, but the geographic problems we are interested in solving, and desperately need to solve, are here to stay.
Thanks for all the clicks.