UMI is growing and looking to expand its core team to include a seasoned technology professional who is comfortable managing projects, interfacing with customers, speaking at public events, designing systems architecture, overseeing offshore development, contributing to core products and developing/maintaining new ones.

Only those comfortable with the entrepreneurial ethic need apply–that means a can do ‘whatever the cost’ attitude, passion for the geospatial, excitement over creating the Next Big Thing and interest in joining a small group of management-limited, relatively meetings-free run and gun starup.

We don’t have a job description for this role, but can tell you a few things we look for:

• 15+ years experience
• Extensive project management/people skills
• Varied DBMS skills - you need not be a DBA, but you must have strong competency with flavors of SQL
• Varied programming skills - Programming isn’t something you’ll need to do (much of), but you must have this foundation to be able to manage others and make informed decisions about technology strategy
• Varied systems/environment skills - Vservers, various flavors of Linux, SOAP, REST, etc, etc…
• Geointerest or background

We aren’t looking for a lifelong ESRI booster. Somebody who understands the geo in the context of interactive web applications will have the ability to quickly learn and adapt. For Urban Mapping, the technology is only a means, not the ends, to achieve our goals.

If you are interested in this role, please forward a resume with a note describing your interest. Send it to talent [at] urbanmapping [dot] com with GEOTECHNOLOGIST in the headline.

Rafe Needleman’s Webware offers a concise overview of UMI’s neighborhood database product.

Urban Mapping seeks an inquisitive and capable entry-level researcher for a unique multidisciplinary role. Working with business and technical staff, we seek candidates who have proven themselves in conducting research through non-traditional and creative channels. You will support development of Urban Mapping’s print and digital products by taking guidance from product managers to identify, source, standardize and manage spatial data. You will use your technical skills to manipulate data, create reports and contribute to development of our home-grown tools.

Required skills include:

• 0-3 years professional experience
• Interest/background in geography, urban planning, cognitive psychology or computer science
• Strong computer skills (PC/Mac)
• Able to structure/perform complex web searches (think Google advanced search)
• RDBMS experience including basic SQL
• Detail-oriented, self-managed
• Clear, cogent written and oral communication skills.

We pride ourselves on working in a creative, entrepreneurially-driven environment. Our methods are novel, but our approach has yielded valuable insights and results. We are interested in candidates who have a solid technical foundation but want to apply these skills in a broader context. This position will be a contract position of about 20 hours per week.

Please Note: If you come from ‘traditional’ GIS training, this position is (unfortunately) not for you.

Urban Mapping employs user-focused techniques to develop geo-spatial data products to industry and innovative maps and wayfinding-related tools for consumers. We are based in San Francisco.

To be considered for this position, please forward a resume and brief note speaking to your training and experience. Email to talent [at] urbanmapping [dot] com. Indicate “Geodata Analyst” in the subject line. Compensation is hourly rate. No phone calls please!

MSR brings geo-philes something new to play with. The project (Hotmap: Looking at Geographic Attention aggregates map tile downloads at different zoom levels, allowing you to see that more map tiles for an area in the Gulf of Guinea (off the coast of Ghana) have been downloaded than for all of Africa.

-via Adena

Urban Mapping seeks a detail-oriented and communicative individual to manage our globally-distributed research staff. In this role you will work with remote project managers and researchers ensuring we meet internal objectives, liaise with core UMI staff and support global resource needs. This is an unusual role in that it blends traditional elements of project management with domain expertise in urban planning, demographics research, cognitive psychology and geospatial technologies.

The ideal candidate for this position will have completed advanced studies in urban planning/demographic research, demonstrated project and people management skills, shown familiarity with basic GIS concepts and exposure to SQL and/or programming languages. Foreign language and international experience is also desired.

Please note this is a full-time contract position, expected to last 3-6 months, beginning immediately. This may become a temp-to-perm opportunity, depending on the candidate and UMI planning. Pay is $20-$30/hr, depending on experience. Also, note the above are ideal qualifications, and we encourage you to be in touch if you feel your background and skills are a match. To be considered for this position, please forward a resume and brief note speaking to your training and experience. Email to talent [at] urbanmapping [dot] com. Indicate “Project Manager (Contract)” in the subject line. No phone calls please!

UMI’s Ian White will speak at GeoWeb 2007 in Vancouver, British Columbia, July 23-27, 2007. His talk, Web-based GIS or GIS-based Web?, will address how neogeographers have changed consumption habits of spatial data.

Umibot feels that many readers won’t bat an eyelid over this, but my master feels strongly, so I must be a good slave and report…

The original idea was to have a Top Ten list, but frankly there aren’t many moves worthy of the Power Move moniker, so we will instead post them when we think of them.

Our favorite is AskCity’s draw-your-own-polygon and search within. There’s no hiding the fact that this take some serious geo-skillz to implement. To hell with ZIPs (or neighborhoods for that matter)–draw your own boundary!

This screen grab shows an area being drawn near UMI’s offices. As it is late morning, we are always hunting for new lunch spots in this half-industrial/half developed part of town.

This grab shows results–presto!

Ian’s panel at the SXSW conference last month got him thinking on a post-modern GIS stream of consciousness sort-of-thing. The idea is this: everything whose location can be known will be known. Costs have fallen, technologies have evolved, and ubiquity is near. This mean the value and importance of attributes will continue to increase–tying location to metadata that is related to some asset–will broaden the appeal of spatial awareness. A simple example is the Empire State Building. We all know (or rather we can know) where it is. What we don’t know is hours of operation, handicap accessible entrances, admission fees to visit the observation deck. Tim O’Reilly riffs on this with the idea that Data is the Intel Inside.

Ian White will present at the third annual O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference in San Jose, California, May 29-30, 2007. His talk is entitled “How Open is Open?”

Ian White will participate on a panel discussion entitled “Local Search and Technology Obstacles” at Directions Media’s annual Location Intelligence conference in San Francisco, California, April 16-18, 2007.