One of the coolest things about the internet is that people can find you. (Yes I appreciate that this may also be one of the worst things but bear with me…) A couple of weeks ago, I was emailed via this site (after posting my location on an international email list to help out an MSc student) by a lovely chap, Doug Newcombe who happened to know of a spot at the Upcoming NC GIS conference that needed filling last-minute. To make a 
short story shorter, the Friday before last I presented my research for the first time to a crowd of people who were not neither archaeologists or airborne remote sensing specialists, nor my immediate colleagues but geomancers from every sector and role imaginable from this state and beyond.
If I’m honest I didn’t know what the reaction to my talk would be, (especially as I was too late to make the printed programme). I have spoken a good few times about my research now at various events and actually enjoy it (some AARG old hands have even witnessed me jump for joy at the end of my talk…), but at smaller conferences you always know a fair few faces in the crowd. NC GIS had over 900 attendees with 6 parallel sessions, and while I wouldn’t claim to have attracted 1/6th of the attendees the audience was easily the biggest I’ve spoken to, in a room to match.
Fortunately my job was made easy by the two preceding talks by Jesse Rouse looking at the evolution of 3D geospatial data and its use in academia, and Scott Howell and Tom Elkins on mobile lidar for civil survey, who dealt with the end product and the data capture process respectively, leaving the floor wide for my favourite topic – processing and interpretation. I was pleased to be collared by a small crowd after the talk and at lunch, keen to know more about my work and where they could find out more.
Which brings me back to the internet and the second thing it’s really useful for which is disseminating stuff to people you’ve never met and places you’ve never been, which leads me to the graphic below. This is a map of where people who have landed on my academia.edu page in 2012/13 (having searched for me or something I’ve done within Google or Academia) actually are; 45 countries in total.
View Academia Locations in a larger map
I’m proud to say that I’ve been to 40% of the countries on the list, even if only in passing, but my new life goal might just be to visit all the others…