Hikoi ki runga i te mata o te whenua

Dunedin

Mauri ora ki a koutou

Ra Apa 15 Whiringa-a-nuku 2008
I left Dunedin on Wednesday morning at around 5am and headed up to Christchurch to meet up with Huia at TRONT. Awesome drive from Dunedin to Christchurch (South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand) - around 300-400 odd kms along some stunning coastlines!!

Christchurch Square

The idea was to catch up with her about her mahi with GIS and their capturing place-names project. So when i arrived at the outskirts of Christchurch i decided to park my car there and head into town via the local bus.

I found the bus within 10' of parking and arrived into town at the exchange with around 10' to spare before my meeting started!. I was only 2 blocks away from Te Waipounamu House where Huia works - short walk along busy streets packed with tons of people!!

We jumped straight into our meeting after we grabbed a couple of glasses of water - long korero until around 1pm, then we grabbed lunch at a local eatery. It was then that i got to meet Takarei - the enthusiastic driver of the South Island-Place-names-program!!

Great korero - he invited me to stay for a couple of days and observe them in practice. They had a hui with local kaumatua on Thursday & mapping on Friday - unfortunately i was tied up!

The day was long starting at around 4:30am and finishing around midnight - i stayed in town with my Aunty and caught up with some much needed sleep before heading up to Nelson / Motueka!!
Huia @ work
Her advice:

- Set up the database first before you embark on capturing information
- Get a hold of the NZGB data of registered names
- Obtain the topo 260 series for the rohe: hardcopy & digital
- Get a hold of the TUMONZ or LINZ topo data
- Aerials - these would be quite useful
- Plot the data from NZGB
- Match / Check those with local knowledge
- Interview locals & plot their knowledge of place

Set out a budget for the following:
- Video camera & incidentals
- Digital recorder
- People to operate those items
- 10 hours of tapes for each person
- koha
- kai
- Hardcopy & Digital plans/maps 260s
- coloured dots
- Label maker
- a scribe
- people (2.5)

Set out procedures & protocols for "Managing the Information" including:
- Access to the online data
- Layers of information
- Restrictions to data/information
- Maintenance of the information system
- Initial & on-going training (GIS)
- Security
- Backup procedures
- Information system protocols & management

Procedure
- Design & build database
- Gather all the resources together in preparation for capturing data
- One person interview or one area/block/rohe at a time
- identify type of feature
- add a description
- place dot at that point on the map
- add place-name label
- record using: video, digital recorder & scribe
- add feature & information to database
- Digitise feature into GIS/Mapping system

Other:
- 4Gb RAM to run ARC-GIS well


- naaku noa -
- H24 -