Benjamin Brown: Using new media, forestry skills to aid workers in woods
Transcript
Ben Brown:
My name is Ben Brown. I’m a new media major at the University of Maine. My dad and both of my brothers have worked in the woods all of their lives. It’s been a very pervasive part of mine. I spent a lot of time going home on the weekends to basically work for my dad. My capstone was the Forestry Finder Web application. I made it specifically to assist people within the forestry industry.
Coming from a background where I had that sort of experience, it gave me insight into what I could potentially do to help, using these technologies. Forestry Finder is a lightweight app that anybody can use with very minimal interaction and get a lot of feedback. It allows you to basically put pins in a Google map that everybody can see.
You can use it to locate damaged equipment. You can use it to locate a job site if only one person has been involved. You can use it to place pins in a Google map where perhaps wood has been left behind or there is something to consider when you’re going in and removing the wood in the first place.
The best thing about it is at all stages, you can find some use for it. I began working with my family in about the end of high school driving skidder. Basically, that entails getting in a large piece of equipment and then spending all day going back and forth between the slasher and finding wood out in the woods. I spent a lot of time going the wrong direction, and wasting fuel having to drive back. I thought, how can I improve this?
The point of new media is it’s supposed to express itself through everything. You can use it to improve anybody’s lives. This app obviously has many different situations that it can be useful, not just in forestry. I’ve had agriculturalists come up and talk to me about how they were interested into it and how they wanted more information.
In new media I really enjoy how much freedom there is. I began thinking it was going to be like a computer science degree. Not only did I get the projects that encouraged me to learn coding, but I’ve also learned about creating good compositions with videos, editing, taking photography, creative design. I feel like basically, I can go anywhere with this degree.