In March 2008,
the author and two colleagues (William C. Arlinghaus and Ron Horwitz)
served as co-chairs for the North American Bridge Championships held
March 6-16 in the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center. The
event took over the entire 72 story hotel; effective communication was
critical. One facet of an elaborate system was a laptop display
projected on the wall. Google Earth captured some of the more
complex arrangements concerning restaurant location and contact
information. Marty Hirschman and his committee compiled and wrote
the Restaurant Guide given in hard copy to all participants.
Often, however, as at many conferences, participants did not always
have handouts with them when they wanted them. Thus, competitors
could come to a staffed desk, ask
questions, and navigate through the streets of Detroit on a laptop to
find where they might be going, first in the virtual world so that they
were ready to proceed with adventure in the real world. The
Google Earth display was a fine feature in support of other materials.
Unzip the associated files archived in Deep Blue to uncover the .kmz
files and load them into Google Earth. Turn on the 3D Building
switch in Google Earth to obtain a more realistic view of downtown
Detroit.
Static screen shot from Google Earth:
Solstice:
An Electronic Journal of Geography and Mathematics,
Volume
XIX, Number 1
Institute
of Mathematical Geography (IMaGe).
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rights reserved worldwide, by IMaGe and by the authors.
Please
contact an appropriate party concerning citation of this article: sarhaus@umich.edu
http://www.imagenet.org