It’s a steaming hot Sydney morning as Stephen Lead and Danny Savic, the co-founders of Full Extent sit down to chat on a rooftop balcony in Darlinghurst, Sydney, above the art gallery-cum-office where they work.
The Darlinghurst office is owned by the founders of Azuron, an IT services company which holds a minority share in Full Extent. The office is located just near the police station on Bourke Street — a colourful part of town.
Lead and Savic are passionate about understanding locations using data. Whether it’s Maroubra or Melbourne, the ability to overlay data on a map, can show trends which help government shape policy, and the community understand what’s happening around it.
“Spatial people aren’t good at presenting information to everyone,” says Savic. “We’ve got a framework for managing it.”
The pair are GIS experts (geographic information systems). In past lives, they’ve built maps for government departments, as well as large companies. They’ve now taken their passion, and started Full Extent.
Full Extent provides software which converts large volumes of information — reports, documents, data — into a form which can be represented on a map. A government department might have huge archives with information on historical land values, sediment studies, or fire safety reports: the Full Extent software enables this data to be used.
Full Extent provide a platform for displaying information geographically (Image: screenshot)
The company is finishing a project for the NSW Department of Lands which has taken reams of paper-based publications, analysed the contents, and converted it into a format which can be mapped. Different types of data are categorised differently, and saved as layers, which can be turned on or off on a map.
“The Department is trying to follow the lead of the NSW Government and make data accessible,” says Savic. “While governments are good at producing lists, there is a barrier for the community. We blended our user interface experience as well as content and started producing maps.”
Traditionally, GIS systems have required a significant amount of expertise to use, largely because they’ve been built by people who are experts, for other experts. The user interface is often clunky. Full Extent want to provide something similar to a CMS, which once installed, can be used and updated by anyone.
“The way the framework works is you take a mapping layer — an example is rainfall gauges — and then allow the map admin to take layer and repurpose it elsewhere,” says Lead. “The framework makes it easy to use the data.”
Both Lead and Savic say they’ve learnt how important it is to build flexibility into the software. They underwent a complete rebuild, after recognising this. Each customer requires a high degree of customisation — even things like the size of the pin on a map — so it’s essential to avoid hard-coding values.
One of the challenges for Full Extent appears to be managing the long sales cycle its software necessitates. Until now, the Department of Lands project has been the focus, although the pair have been meeting with a number of potential clients. Depending on the size of a particular project, government departments will often choose software based on a complex, often drawn-out tender process. At this point, the software install is managed by Full Extent too, reducing the opportunity for fast growth which comes with a self-service model.
“It’s still early stage but we’re expecting service to be a part of it. If they have an internal developer and designer, we can still help,” says Savic.
Full Extent will also target the mining and media industries. Savic says mining companies have regulatory obligations to report certain information to the community. There is also potential for media outlets to localise their content.
The pair say one of the ‘tricks’ is that framework publishes maps as actual content, making the information indexable. It means you can search for “beaches documents NSW” and potentially be directed to a map with the layer you’re looking for. Full Extent uses the KML format preferred by Google (description here).
Another challenge is the several groups involved in decision making on the customer side. On one hand, you’ve got the mapping expert; on the other, a business development person. The mapping person is used to the current system, as troublesome as it may be for a member of the community to use, while the business person sees the value in accessible content. Having existing relationships has helped, says Lead.
Full Extent decided against applying for accelerator programs like Startmate, as it seemed to early to know if it would be worthwhile.
“Our costs are reasonably minimal. It’s not like we massively need the investment,” says Lead.