Laying the Foundations
It's hard to call a period where so much thinking and sorting out of issues has gone on "a breather," but I think the seven weeks that have transpired since the launch of the preview site is as close to one as many of the team members will have in the coming year. But as the holiday season descends, we have all found ourselves busy with clearly defining specific requirements and making strategic choices that will enable us to work effectively on this little project of ours. In addition to defining specific tasks and benchmarks for ourselves and our closest partners, we're working to establish other relationships that can contribute to a successful launch -- only 12 months to go (give or take a few weeks)!
Laying the foundations, setting the table, aligning the stars -- whatever you call it, it's a phase that's both exciting and exhausting. Flushing out all of our assumptions and agreeing on where they fall in the project priorities might not sound like much of a challenge -- that is, until your consider the diversity of the LandScope project team, which includes ecologists, zoologists, botanists, developers, designers, cartographers, project managers, and, yes, even a couple editors. But there's progress everyday, be it on matters technical, structural, or logistical, as momentum builds toward a vision that we share, embrace, and take pride in. There's lots of work to do, but it's thrilling to be getting ourselves in a position to get down to it.
- Kyle Copas