January 01
2010 Directions Media Webinars coming soon!
Wish Lists at Directions Magazine
In the spring of 1997, and then again in the spring of 1999, Steve Wallace hosted an on-line "Wish List" oriented to MapInfo\'s MapInfo Professional desktop mapping product. This was an effort - as it turned out, a highly successful one - to bring the wishes of the MapInfo user community more strongly before the product development team at that company. Wallace received an extraordinary response, both in the number of participants and most especially in the thoughtfulness of their suggestions.
In turn, MapInfo Corporation responded quite seriously to each of these lists, which were submitted to the company at its 1997 and 1999 worldwide user conferences. In 1997 MapInfo published a formal, public response to Wish List I, and incorporated many of the wishes into later releases of its flagship product.
Over the past two months Steve has worked with the staff at Directions Magazines to carry this work forward. We have had two goals:
- Extend the Wish List benefits to all products in the GIS industry, and
- Enhance the functionality of the Wish List itself.
- Readers can sort by the author of the wish, the date, and the category
- A reader can select those wishes upon which he has not yet voted
- Votes are computed in real time, and the results graphically displayed
- New wishes are submitted in real time; images may be uploaded to illustrate wishes
- Queries across multiple Wish Lists are enabled
It is our hope that this Directory of Wish Lists will make a significant contribution to product development across the GIS industry. The Wish Lists ought to be of enormous benefits to end-users, specifiers, and to developers within the industry. We will be happy to respond to requests from product development teams within the industry for custom extracts from the Wish List Directories. Further, we will be monitoring the list submissions and the voting to ensure that the lists remain productive endeavors.
We hope you benefit from, and participate in, the new Wish List Directory. Please let us hear how we can make it an even more fecund resource for our industry.