The Fulcrum Focus

The first in our series of customer spotlights, Blaine Hackett is the Director of Business Development, GIS for RESPEC. Blaine has been working with Geographic Information Systems since 1990. He received his B.S. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Masters of Geographic Information Science from the University of Minnesota. He has worked in diversified GIS environments including state and local government, consulting engineering and planning, non-profit and Fortune 500 companies. Our team sat down with him and picked his brains on data collection methods, the GIS industry and the future of geospatial technology.

Last week I attended an event with the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF) intended to showcase various cloud-based technologies for the GEOINT (geospatial intelligence) market, with speakers from HumanGeo, Agilex, DigitalGlobe, and more. The objective was to give quick lightning talks on cloud-based platforms enabling GEOINT capabilities, as part of the USGIF Innovation Task Force series.

This time last year, I was a FEMA employee working in the field of GIS. I was pondering at that time how to develop mobile GIS data collection software that worked on an iPad or iPhone and could be deployed into the field with the Public Assistance teams (their current process involves paper and GPS units, and a lot of data entry done in hotel rooms). This mobile app would need to be extremely easy to use, be able to feed data into a database, and the data be viewable on a live map. This was a challenging proposition, but one that excited me.

Fulcrum’s SpatialVideo collection capability can be a valuable addition to data collection workflows, including mapping of rights-of-way, assets, pipelines, electric lines, environmental monitoring, and more.

Jason and I were in Portland, OR last week for the annual FOSS4G conference. FOSS4G (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial) is the largest global gathering of developers, users, decision-makers and observers focused on open source geospatial software.

As part of yesterday’s update to support complex relationships between data types in Fulcrum, we also added another new powerful capability that makes offline fieldwork even easier for teams.

We on the Fulcrum team work hard to make collecting your data a breeze. And we’re always thinking of ways to make Fulcrum more valuable and powerful for you, our customers. To that end, we are pleased to announce the release of webhooks for Fulcrum.

Over the last few months, we’ve been working hard to bring Fulcrum for iOS to the next level, making data collection even faster and more powerful. The app has been rebuilt from the ground up with tons of features and improvements all around, as well as a whole new refreshed look and feel. Announcing Fulcrum 2.0!

In our previous post, we shared our experience at JIFX, the experimental event series organized several times a year by the Naval Postgraduate School at Camp Roberts, CA. JIFX provides a unique setting for field experimentation, bringing together industry, academia, and government to test and refine technologies in real-world conditions. Unlike traditional demonstrations, this event places engineers and their systems side by side, enabling direct collaboration and hands-on integration. Proving success—or uncovering failure—in this environment helps stakeholders see technologies in action while allowing engineers to push the limits of their software, hardware, or systems. As an engineer and designer of Fulcrum, participating in this kind of field experimentation is invaluable, providing firsthand insight into how the platform performs in dynamic conditions and where improvements can make it even more effective for field data collection.

Last week, Tony and I spent the week out at Camp Roberts in California, testing Fulcrum in the field with FEMA for disaster relief needs as part of the RELIEF field experiments.