First and foremost, we needed to understand our audience’s perceptions of the company’s brand.  If we had tons of cash, we would have conducted focus groups, but we’re a small company, so we sent out a questionnaire to a limited but targeted group of people.  The idea was to ask the same questions to a varied group of people and see how their responses differed or correlated with what our marketing messages intended to convey.  The group included:

• Staff members: 2 who had been with the firm longer; 3 who had joined us recently.
• Members of our constituency: clients; non-client stakeholders.
• Remotely connected people: friends of the company’s owners; people who knew about the company, but who didn’t necessarily know what GIS is, our industry, and/or products.

We asked straightforward questions:

• What does the company specialize in?
• What is your current perception of the company?
• What do you think the company’s strengths are?
• What do you think the company’s mission is?
• Is there an aspect of what the company does that is not clear to you?
• What differentiates the company from other GIS software companies?
• What do you think the company’s values are?

The survey uncovered both some strengths that we could build upon and expand as well as some aspects of our mission and offerings that we needed to more effectively articulate and clarify.

So, first the good news.  All survey respondents understood that the company specializes in building web-based geo-enabled/ GIS/ geospatial software, and that we like to take on and solve interesting and complex challenges that involved geographic data.  We were both surprised and pleased about some of the strengths and differentiating aspects that respondents highlighted:

• Best suited to work with clients in academic, government, nonprofits, and NGOs
• Socially responsible and aware
• Willingness to work on projects that have socially-redeeming values
• Patience and honesty
• Extremely strong customer service
• Agility, creativity, and flexibility, i.e., think from the customer’s perspective and needs rather than providing out-of-the box solutions
• Interested in bringing very advanced technologies to the fore, i.e., an intellectual approach to what can be done with GIS data instead of a boilerplate approach
• Tailor-made, visually beautiful work that is also budget conscious
• Dedication to stay on the leading edge of the field
• Work that bridges between pure research and real world solutions
• Intellectually motivating projects and work environment
• Smart, capable, professional yet casual staff

This was probably best summarized by one of the respondent: “When we first came on as a client, I accidentally sent an email to avencia.org, not .com.  This isn’t a slight.  As much as it’s a for-profit entity, I see [the firm] largely aligned towards the pursuit of information and a sense of social justice.  Its values aren’t political or partisan, they’re academic.”

Interestingly enough, though, while we discuss how our products have been used in some of our clients’ projects in each of our bi-monthly e-newsletter, and while each of our products also has its own dedicated website, the survey revealed that a) some respondents did not know we have product offerings beyond our custom software development services, and b) they didn’t understand the relation between our custom software and analysis projects and our software products.  It was also not entirely clear if all respondents understood that one of our strong interests lies in engaging in geospatial analysis and modeling rather than just building solutions that display data points/ assets on web-based maps and software.

So we now knew what we were communicating effectively as well as several aspects of the company we needed to work harder at articulating in the future.

Once we determined what the brand provides, what had been clearly understood and what needed to be better explained, we needed to fully understand who the brand is and how people perceived it, not just in terms of offerings, but in terms of its personality.  In turn, this personality is what would determine the tone of our new communication pieces, e.g. whimsical, academic, witty, light, didactic, etc.  Thus, part of the survey, we also asked the following questions:

• Which well-known personality does the company remind you of?
• Which personality characteristics does this person embrace?

We smiled at the following responses:

• Barack Obama
• Alton Brown
• Richard Feynman
• Google
• Harry Potter
• Buckminster Fuller

And embraced the following personality traits:

• Smart, serious, sophisticated, but not afraid to be witty and funny as hell
• Hard-working, creative, eager, intelligent, very detail-oriented, involved, focused, earnest, light-hearted, youthful, idealistic and inventive
• The Underdog
• 4 parts knowledge, 3 parts good people skills, 2 parts geek chic

Strengthened with what we’d learned from our customers, employees and partners, we conducted a four-month re-branding campaign that began with a letter from Robert Cheetham, (Azavea’s president and CEO), press releases, announcements about our new name and our newly acquired B Corporation status, articles in our e-newsletter, and Google ad campaigns.  Each communication piece attempted to reinforce what the survey had revealed as well as clarify areas of uncertainty.

This enabled us to articulate a clearer and stronger value proposition, i.e., the primary reason a potential client should hire us.  We wrote a more precise internal positioning statement, i.e., statement that expresses how a company wishes to be perceived.  This is the core message an organization wants to deliver in every communication medium.  And finally, we crafted a new tagline (Beyond dots on a map.) that I think differentiates our brand while being meaningful and evocative.

Our new website comes as a summary of the entire re-branding process, and it attempts to emphasize the following:

• Our expertise in spatial analysis and geoprocessing
• The distributed geoprocessing work we do
• A better correlation between our clients’ projects and our products
• The R&D work we are involved in
• Our interest in projects with positive social value and our B Corp status
• Stronger emphasis on the culture and the people behind the company

So a new website is indeed much more than a fresh face on an organization – it can be an opportunity to re-articulate what the organization does as well as what it stands for.

Our new website was also an opportunity to improve the systems that underpin it – check out Jeremy’s blog to read more about that.  What’s your feedback on Azavea’s brand?  What well-known personality does it remind you of?  Make sure to let us know.

Japan is also moving ahead with its Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS).  The QZSS will provide navigation coverage for Japan and portions of the surrounding Asia-Pacific region, with full operational status anticipated in 2013.  The first satellite was originally scheduled to launch on August 2, 2010, but the launch was postponed due to a suspected defect in the satellite’s reaction-wheel assembly system.  The defective part has since been replaced, and the launch has been rescheduled for September 11, 2010. 

The QZSS will provide high accuracy positioning to most of Japan, even where urban canyons or mountainous terrain might otherwise be an issue.  Following a campaign by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the satellite has been nicknamed “Michibiki,” which means “guiding star” or “showing the way.”  The satellite also has its own mascot as well as a dedicated website that will provide 3-D interaction and information about the satellite beginning on August 23. 

The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System Orbit will keep a navigational satellite almost directly overhead at all times, providing greater positioning accuracy for GNSS users in Japan (public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

So, enjoy — and stay in touch.

We’re looking forward to working with you to go beyond dots on a map.

A Literary Map of Manhatten: Having grown up in a small town in the Midwest, my New York City was the New York of books and movies. When I finally got to the city and visited the Met for the first time, I was so excited to see the place where Claudia and Jamie lived in From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler!

Get London Reading: London is the other city forever connected with literature in my mind. I haven’t made it there yet, but until I do, this site provides a great overview of the writings associated with the city!

The combining of literature and geography doesn’t require mapping software or a digital interface. For decades, beautiful literary maps have provided a visual representation of the connection between writing and place. In 1993, the Library of Congress hosted “Language of the Land: Journeys into Literary America,” an exhibition of literary maps, that later traveled throughout the United States. An online exhibition provides access to some of the maps and photographs that were part of the exhibit. I’d love to see another exhibit like this!

Earlier this year, Robert Cheetham gave a presentation on HunchLab, our web-based geographic crime visualization, early warning and risk forecasting application at the Space Time Modeling and Analysis workshop as part of Redlands GIS Week.

Other presentations from the conference can be found here.

We have extended our hot spot/kernel density tool to allow for the animation of the maps to see how the density shifts through time.

With our NSF SBIR Phase IIB, we are working on different risk forecasting tools. The first tool that we are building in collaboration with Jerry Ratcliffe is a web-based near repeat analysis and visualization tool.

While collecting links for this post, I stumbled across this video of Jerry and Little Nellie.

Many of these conversations focused on the use of geography in the study of history. From historic photographs to maps to artifacts used at a particular place, both non-profit organizations and the academy have embraced geography as a way to connect the past to the present. Azavea has worked on several projects that use GIS to help understand and visualize the past including PhillyHistory.org and AfricaMap.

In one session, however, we were encouraged to look beyond spatial analysis and history. What about applying GIS technology to other fields in the humanities such as literature? Place has long been recognized as a great influence upon many writers and their work. Flannery O’Conner, William Faulkner, and Zora Neale Hurston are inextricably linked with the American South just as Dickens is forever associated with London and Mark Twain with the Mississippi River. Other writers create their own locations as varied as Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Jonathan Swift’s Lilliput. Travel writers, journalists, and non-fiction authors also help tell the stories of a place and describe the culture, people, and events that are intimately connected to a region.

With geography so interwoven with literature, it seems like GIS could be a perfect way to help further analyze and understand both fiction and non-fiction. A little bit of online research led me to some great literary GIS projects.

A W.E.B. DuBois map (c. 1896) of Philadelphia's 7th ward.

Mapping the DuBois Philadelphia Negro – Led by Dr. Amy Hillier in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, the Mapping DuBois project uses GIS technology and archival data to depict the demographics of the Seventh Ward of Philadelphia in 1899 when W.E.B. Du Bois surveyed the area as part of his book, The Philadelphia Negro. Azavea assisted with the GIS technology for the project.

Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania – Developed by the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, this literary map shows the authors and works associated with counties across Pennsylvania. Clicking on a county provides additional information about the authors as well as links to books, newspapers, and maps related to that area.

The Map of Early Modern London – Using the Agas map (circa 1560), visitors can gain a better understanding of the relationship between the geography and history of London and how those factors influenced Renaissance theater in the city.

Haverford College Department of Classics – Want a better understanding of the geography of Homer’s poems? View locations associated with Homer’s ships using Google Earth.

Google Lit Trips – Developed as part of the Google Certified Teachers program, Google Lit Trips enables teachers and students to view locations associated with certain books by downloading kmz files for use in Google Earth. Works range from Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey to Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann.

 Once all currently planned satellites have been deployed and added to those already in orbit in existing constellations, it is anticipated that positioning services, particularly in “urban canyons” and other locations where signal strength has previously been an issue, will be significantly enhanced for navigation system users around the world.

The Compass Navigation Satellite System will initially provide service to the Asia-Pacific region (public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

The IIF satellites are part of the ongoing modernization of the GPS constellation by the United States Air Force.  The IIFs have improved atomic clocks used for timing and are therefore expected to provide more accurate navigation signals than those currently available from the rest of the GPS constellation.  The IIFs will also broadcast the civil L5 signal for safety-of-life applications, which has the potential to enhance indoor reception with its wider bandwidth and lower frequency.  The new satellites will also be compatible with the Galileo, GLONASS and QZSS constellations.  In addition, the IIFs will assist the IIRM series already in orbit with military-specific M-code, a unique encryption for military users requiring secure access. 

The new satellite, officially known as GPS IIF-1 SV-1, is expected to begin broadcasting its signal to GPS users following a three- to four-month testing period.  In addition to being the first in the new IIF satellite series, this launch was significant for another reason as well.  GPS IIF 1 SV-1 was carried into orbit on a Delta IV rocket, making it the first GPS satellite since 1985 that was not placed in orbit by an Atlas rocket.

The new IIF satellite series has finally launched. (Public domain image courtesy of http://pnt.gov/public/images/.)

I could quibble. For example, there are no tiles for the highest zoom levels, and that just seems like a sad omission. Nonetheless, there’s global coverage and it’s a major vote of support for OSM.  BTW, I also think the design of the new ArcGIS.com web site represents a vast improvement overt the ArcGIS Online system.  It’s got a straightforward user interface and muted style that’s easy on the eye.

B what? you might ask!

Last spring Azavea joined a regional organization called the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) of Greater Philadelphia.  Originally founded by Judy Wicks of the White Dog Cafe, SBN is now part of a national network of private, independent, locally owned businesses that operate in support of a “triple bottom line“.  The triple bottom line extends the measurement of business success from the usual bottom line (profits) to “people, planet and profit” and is based on the idea that companies should consider environmental and social impact as well as the usual profit motive.  While the idea was originally developed by a UK management consultant, John Elkington, it has spread to many parts of the world.

As part of joining SBN, we filled out an extensive survey created by an organization called B Lab.  B Lab (also based in the Philadelphia region though it operates nationally) was created to promote the designation of a new corporate form, the “B Corporation“.  Under current IRS regulations, there are several types of private for-profit businesses including C Corporations, S Corporations, LLC’s, LLP’s, partnerships and sole proprietors.  Azavea is an S Corporation (which is a C Corporation that elects a special status under Subchapter S of the IRS code).  The B Corporation status represents a new type or for-profit company that uses the power of businesses operating in a market-based economy to solve social and ecosystem problems. B Lab is working with state legislatures to try to have the B Corporation status added as a new corporate form in each state.

Azavea joins other leading B Corp companies

So you might be thinking that all of that Corporate Social Responsibility (or “CSR”, to those in the know) stuff sounds good, but it’s actually kind of hard to measure.  How can they separate the green-washing from the sincere operations?  So B Lab has developed a survey that attempts to capture the business practices of an organization and score them.  Companies that score high enough can become certified as B Corporations.  And they don’t just take your word for it, they audit the firm’s statements to ensure the integrity of the results.

But it’s not all. To become certified, B Corporations must meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards, and amend their corporate by-laws to incorporate the interests of employees, community, and the environment. They also agree to contribute a portion of their revenue (based on the company’s size) each year to B Lab to support the program, and to undergo an audit of their business practices once every 2 years to ensure that their business practices continue to align with the B Corporation’s principles.

You might now wonder why Azavea would qualify.  The B Corporation status emphasizes the triple bottom line of social responsibility, sustainability and profitability (people, planet, profit).  At Azavea, many of our business decisions stem from these three principles.

We were founded in 2000 with the vision to build innovative location-based web and mobile solutions and perform spatial analysis for clients committed to making positive and enduring impacts in the communities they serve. We have worked with numerous non-profit, academic and government clients to answer complex geospatial questions in a wide variety of domains including natural resource planning, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, crime analysis, real estate property analysis, redistricting, political advocacy, and cultural resources.

But most of our B Corporation points came from our management and employment practices, including:

• Financial transparency – we open the books to all of our full-time staff
• We hold at least two meetings per year to report to employees on company performance
• 100% health care, prescriptions and dental care.  For care that’s not covered by our health plan, we offer up to $2,000 per year in medical reimbursements
• Public Transit and biking cost reimbursement plans
• Paid time off for voting
• Paid maternity and paternity leave
• Retirement plan with company match
• Profit sharing plan
• Domestic partner benefits
• 3 weeks vacation plus additional sick time
• Training and professional development opportunities
• Reimbursement for continuing education expenses
• Part-time / flex time schedules available
• Portion of profits go to charitable organizations
• Mission statement that incorporates social value and employee interests

Moreover, our 10% personal research and pro bono programs have enabled staff members to spend some time working on projects that are not focused on the immediate needs of a particular client, while at the same time enabling the company to expand its skill sets and broaden its business opportunities in areas and domains not explored before. These programs have been at the source of projects such as Walkshed (to calculate and map walkability), BusMinder (a real-time bus notification application), a white paper on Gerrymandering, geographic service maps for MANNA, and the Haitian Earthquake Registry, to name a few.

The same service-oriented attitude extends to Azavea’s commitment to redistributing a minimum of 2% of our annual profits to charitable organizations selected by staff through the company’s “Time to Give Back” program.

But we’re not resting on our laurels! In addition to the business benefits, the B Lab survey also highlighted some areas where we can improve.  Here are some of the ideas:

• Establish a Board of Advisers made up people independent of the company
• Develop an environmental policy
• Conduct environmental review / audit and share with staff and customers
• Measure our annual energy consumption and use it to develop metrics by which we can reduce it

We are proud of our new corporate status and look forward to implementing some of the above ideas in our business practices.