Friends of Mikel Maron moved into Weaver House, an unusual and historic building in London's East End. After a visit, he became completely fascinated with its peculiar setting and the intense activity in the surrounding rail yards. Investigation through a horrendous number of sources brought out that Weaver House was situated right in the middle of the largest construction project ever in the UK, Crossrail.

Most people are at an information disadvantage. The local government and transport authorities have professionals, software, and data that average folks can’t match. They make things available under public disclosure laws, but wading through them takes concerted effort. Documents and plans are filed and keyed to so many different systems--local planning, regional transport, parliamentary bills, international Olympics--that linking these together in any semantic way is an astounding task. Yet there’s one simple system that they all could easily hook into--geography. Maron simply wants to be able to search and ask for all the information about a small half kilometer square area.

To that end, Maron is pushing for GeoRSS, open geo data, and open source geo software--not for the Web 2.0 holy grail of a good restaurant review--but to provide the simplest and easiest way to organize information about the world, and put everyone on equal footing when it comes to deciding our future.