When Scott Elliott asked me to contribute to Directions, I jumped at the opportunity. As an industry consultant and observer, I had admired his former company, Wessex, for years. Wessex was not the gorilla in the marketplace, but was an important lynchpin -- a lynchpin for the many might-be geographic decision support users who aren't necessarily ready for big-time budget commitments.

Budget has been an obstacle in the growth of business geographics software (or commercial GIS as it once was known) and Wessex was one of the few parties knocking down the walls. In some respects, Wessex set a standard for later entrants such as EASI Demographics, Bamberg-Handley and GeoLytics. Left alone, many vendors in the GIS community seemed prone to focus only on the “enlightened” users who were prepared to open up sizable investments into the technology. Scott, however, understood that the US business resources need to be painlessly ushered into this technology. Most "can-be" users need to touch and feel before springing for their wallets and Wessex, perhaps more than any other “geo” vending entity, was sensitive to pricing their products so that users can get hands-on at an acceptable cost.

It strikes me that the issues central to our ability to grow the geodemographic domain are often not discussed. Simply put, we rarely acknowledge that the US business public is not nearly as advanced with "spatial" literacy as geo-zealots sometimes assume. The tendency to undervalue geographic relationships is pervasive in our society. There is a fundamental lack of education, stemming from primary schooling onward that has left a void in our sense and sensitivity for place.

We had fun poking fun at our secondary schools, but spatial illiteracy in the US doesn’t just mean that we can’t identify capitals, states and countries. It’s evident in thought processes. Just think -- if we only had a dime for each moment a friend or relative claimed that their spouse couldn't read a map or follow directions, we might even be rich! I wonder if these jokes are as frequently repeated in France!

Wessex and other low-cost providers are important pieces in our industry’s puzzle. They help "can-be" users through it. Get familiar with lower cost data, get familiar with this processing, get spatial ... And invariably, with the introduction to business geographics through a low cost package, users quickly realize what they've missed. Geodemographic expenditures seem to get recategorized from discretionary to required budget items. Once using the data, we realize how crazy it would be to evaluate investments without it. Too much is at stake ... real estate investments can be much more systematically directed, marketing dollars can be more effectively allocated, and freight can be much more intelligently routed.

Geodemographics increasingly functions like airbags or seat belts in our cars -- we need to move fast and we need these "seat belts" to control our risk. But we also need the equipment at an affordable, "get familiar" price. Would you have paid $100,000 for a seatbelt? Only if you were intending to do a lot of very fast, very risky driving. At a lesser cost, however, the transition is natural.

Today, effectively eight years after the 1990 Census empowered the geodemographics industry, there are still firms in the industry that resist Wessex' example. At Daniel Consulting Group, we are increasingly creating custom interfaces and wizards that help extend, simplify and empower mapping software. We have also worked on some darn sophisticated projects (warehousing, spatial interaction and neural net models ...), but we've learned along the way that it is equally important to summarize and simplify the picture.

I tip my hat to Scott and look forward to seeing this communication grow. I encourage the reader to give us feedback -- let us know how we can direct this discussion, so that we can keep Directions focused on your needs.