This site may be new for 2010 but my idea of the Spatial Stage site started a few years ago when I graduated college in 2007. At the time I was still new to GIS and didn't have much experience in the field. I was also spending more time in the motorsports scene. In 2002 I worked at my first rally event, the Rim of the World Rally based out of Lancaster, CA. The event was a blast and I branched out working other events in Southern California.

If you are in the U.S. and reading this there is a chance you have no idea what a rally is (well beyond a group of people protesting maybe). The basic definition provided by Wikipedia reads:

Rallying is a form of motor competition that takes place on public or private roads with modified production or specially built road-legal cars. This motorsport is distinguished by running not on a circut, but instead in a point-to-point format in which participants and their co-drivers drive between set control points (stages), leaving at regular intervals from one or more start points. Rallies may be won by pure speed within the stages or alternatively by driving to a predetermined ideal journey time within the stages.

The big difference I noticed (my brain recently crammed with geography knowledge) between rally here in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the world is mapping. Websites for major rallies all over the world had wonderful maps showcasing their event and everything that was going on. Meanwhile here in the U.S. I was finding an occasional Google Map with a single point showing where the service park would be or maybe a couple hand drawn maps, but nothing to help bring that "WOW" factor to the website and maybe get some more people interested in showing up.

And  from there I came up with "Spatial Stage" and its play on words for both GIS and Rally. "Spatial" is a major part of GIS whether it be spatial awareness or a spatial database, while "Special Stage" is the common rally term for a competative stage in a rally.

Originally the site was setup to provide mapping for anyone in the motorsports community who wanted a map of their event. And it wasn't about making money; I wanted to help the community and do this for free on my own time. Unfortunately no one seemed interested and the site went down.

These days I am looking at GIS and motorsports in a more analytical way and so I resurrected the site as a blog and project development site. You will find regular posts about GIS, geography, motorsports and the automotive industry coming together and doing big things. I'll be starting with some older stories from the past few years because I feel they are great examples of what I want to talk about. And if you know of a great example of these topics that you would like to share, feel free to let me know and I will post it here with anything you want said about it (of course you will be mentioned for the story too!).

You will also find at the top links to projects that I am working on related to GIS and motorsports. These projects will be ongoing and updated with pictures, data and stories of what has been happening.

So thats about it. I hope you are as excited as I am to look at these topics in a new light. Visit often or subscribe to the RSS Feed. I'll try to get a Twitter or Facebook system going here shortly to spread the word as well.

And of course if you need a map made for your motorsport event, feel free to ask me! I still love to do that work!