Navigating

My name is Ismail Ibrahim, I am a struggling Johorian entrepreneur who is working out on a bootstrapping venture that provides location information services (geographical data) by Geo Sense Sdn. Bhd. an MSC Status company locates in Cyberjaya and Johor Bahru.

Prior to Geo Sense, I have had extensive experiences in planning and implementing ICT infrastructure, software and entrepreneurship developments. Among my previous working experience were from 1995 to 1998 when I have had an opportunity managing various projects under Johor eGovernment initiative, known as Johor Information Infrastructure. JII gave first hand experience in dealing with Government process, which later help me a lot in understanding what works and not in public offices. Late 1998, I worked with Yayasan Pelajaran Johor and Perbadanan Usahwan Johor in formulating the strategic plan for local entrepreneur development. I co-founded among Malaysia first business and technology incubation centers, Johor Incubation Center (JIC), which at that time were regularly highlighted in various Internet and technology news. JIC exposed me to local and oversea entrepreneurship development especially in the area of managing innovation, people with ideas, venture capital and navigating irrational exuberance. It was until mid. 2002, I left a salaried position to become full time entrepreneur.

My first entrepreneurial venture was M-Apps Solutions Sdn. Bhd., which was among the first few Johor based MSC Status company. M-Apps is specializing in mobile and wireless solutions. M-Apps solved and enhanced eGovernment applications by linking Government information with comprehensive content management platform and channel the data to user mobile devices such as PDA and Mobile Phone. Empowering users to access critical information via mobile devices. In 2005, M-Apps was acquired by The Media Shoppe Berhad (TMS) and co-listed in MESDAQ market. Since 2006. I sits as board member of TMS.

Upon listing, I relinquished my management position and move on to area of my great interest, which is Geography in the form of location information, technically known as GIS. Since 2006, I have been a frequent participant to Where 2.0 annual conference in San Francisco, where innovative Web people meets GIS conscious people. I learned how information can be geographically classified, stratified and the fact that the vast critical data are geographically based (geo data). This is true to Government data as they are very much territorial in nature. The tools to manage strata data is know as Geographical Information System (GIS), every geographically large and complex organization such as Government needs GIS but not every office can effort to have one. This is mainly due to the complexity of GIS itself, the cost of putting up the infrastructure, acquiring the data and lack of expertise. Often time there are duplicated investments in GIS initiatives, issues in data ownership and communication breakdown between GIS and IT. These have somehow played down the potential of location information to help organization in visualizing their existing and future positions and making better strategy decision.

Realizing all this issues and with a new game plan, in May 2007, I formed a company known as Geo Sense Sdn. Bhd. our mission is to provide simple web based platform for untrained GIS users so that the majority of managers will be able to make sense out of their existing proprietary location information data. Geo Sense is inspired by Google Maps and Google grands plan in indexing world information geographically. Geo Sense platform was recognized by Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) with Pre-Seed grant and followed as finalist to 2008 MSC APICTA award under eGovernment category.

Along the ways, Geo Sense saw the opportunity to provide much premium data which is in the form of imagery. People understand and interprets images faster than anything else. Users, being GIS expert and non-GIS start using earth visualization media such as Google Earth to share location information. Aerial photo provides better visualization for decision making and becoming useful tool for planning and strategy support system. Unfortunately Google aerial imagery comes from Satellite and for Malaysia; most of the imagery are out dated with low resolution. Tropical cloud further hindered the usage for critical planning and monitoring. Thus the only alternative is small aircraft or helicopter. Unfortunately due to it cost and service limitation, not all organization has the access to this facility .

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been known in defense industry, in 2008, more than a million UAV flight hours were logged in Iraq and Afghanistan. UAV able to be pre-programmed to discreetly fly lower to the ground taking optical high resolution aerial photo and feeding live video footage to the ground control. UAV is also being studied in many universities worldwide for various military and civilian applications. One of Geo Sense ideas is to deploy UAV for high resolution aerial photo services. Since early 2008, Geo Sense has been working with various organizations locally and internationally on civilian UAV technology development for applications such as land management, mapping, town planning, environmental changes etc. Geo Sense has unveiled a project called AirSense, a showcase of high resolution aerial imagery on demand, UAV is deployed in updating more than 200 sq km involving more than 50 urban areas. AirSense is a showcase of how Government especially local and community can share geo data using contents aerial imagery. It is also twofold objective to develop professional team in managing services of civilian UAV development and applications.

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