The GIS Forum…join now

The GIS Forum is the result of a twitter coversation from a month ago. Today it is a well designed site that has the promise to be an exceptional resource for the geospatial community. The masterminds of behind the site have created a site that combines a traditional forum with a blog roll and wiki. The forum sections set up so far focus on the technical areas of geospatial technologies such as Desktop GIS, CAD, Server-side GIS, LBS, and others. While there are conversations already going on in the forums, the power will come as the community grows and people share their personal experiences. The same holds true for the wiki. In the wiki you can post education details like how-to’s, where to access data, and how to create connections with other geospatial folks.

Beyond the content The Geospatial Forum is well designed and easy to navigate. The designers went all out and made the search box obvious (a personal beef with some forums). The interface is clean and informative to allow you to easily find what you are looking for in different ways (tag clouds, by user, by topic). There are also groups that you can join on the site that are regional and topical. This brings the additional ability to talk to people with more specific interests such as GIS and Education or the Southeast US (the two groups I have joined so far). Overall, I think the site is going to be a great resource to the geospatial community as the number of folks participating grows.