Connecting Grassroots to Government Podcast #2: Will McClintock

Editor’s note: In September 2012, the Commons Lab hosted the Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management workshop. Over two days, we spoke with a number of event participants for a series of video podcasts covering various aspect of the proceedings. Please stay tuned: Additional installments will be posted in the coming weeks and the workshop summary report will be published in September.

We caught up with Will McClintock at the Connecting Grassroots for Disaster Management workshop last year to talk about the future of web-based, collaborative technologies.

McClintock, a project scientist at the University of California-Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute and a senior fellow with the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Center, spoke with us about the current technology developed for decision making, particularly geospatial technology and techniques. He says many of these interfaces are developed without consideration of non-technical decision-makers, further noting that the quickening pace of emerging technology will require faster development in the future and a new way of looking at software.