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CRM in the 21st Century - Episode 15
190 Plays10 years ago
On July 25, Chris Webster gave a talk in San Diego and the monthly meeting of the San Diego County Archaeological Society. The talk was titled, "CRM Archaeology in the 21st Century".
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Podcast Network
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Episode 15: Digital Site Recording in CRM Archaeology
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, episode 15 for August 24th, 2015. I'm your host, Chris Webster. For today's episode, I'm going to play the audio from a talk I gave at the monthly meeting of the San Diego Archaeological Society on July 25th. The talk was about digital site recording in the field in CRM archaeology. I have a presentation that went along with it, but I don't use text, just images, so the presentation is really necessary for understanding the content, so don't worry about it.
00:00:36
Speaker
Please excuse the audio at the beginning and throughout. The talk was outside and I just had my recorder sitting on the table. One more thing, I'm still looking for a regular host of this show. If you're passionate about technology and archaeology and can commit to two episodes a month or 24 episodes a year, let me know. Don't worry about equipment and recording software. We'll figure all that out when the time comes.
Hosting Opportunities with Chris Webster
00:00:56
Speaker
If you're interested in talking about a hosting gig, then send me an email at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com. All right, on to the talk.
00:01:22
Speaker
And also the, what would you call it, a host? Host, producer, yeah. For the CRM Art Podcast Network, which is very useful. I know myself and there's another of other people that I've talked to that have really found this podcast to be very useful and very interesting as well. And he has also published the book Field Archaeologist Survival Guide, Getting a Job and Working in Cultural Resource Management.
00:01:51
Speaker
which you can find printed by Left Coast Press. So please welcome our speaker tonight, Ms. Houston. Thank you. Speaking of podcasts, I am recording this, so you can listen to this again later. And just in case anybody is wondering, it's exactly eight hours to hear from the Curry Village in Yosemite National Park. Exactly. Yeah, exactly, with a little bit of traffic in LA.
00:02:20
Speaker
All right, first, thanks to Nikki for contacting me about this. This is really great. I've been working down in, well, El Centro when Nikki contacted me. And then now we're in Ridgecrest. It's just kind of a coincidence that this weekend we're in Yosemite.
00:02:37
Speaker
First off, about the podcast. Has anybody here listened to the Sierra Marcheology podcast? Just had a curiosity. Nice. We got a few. Has anybody listened to podcasts at all or know what a podcast is? All right. Sounds good. Sounds good.
Diverse Shows on Archaeology Podcast Network
00:02:52
Speaker
Well, you can find it. We started a network in December called the Archaeology Podcast Network, just www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. There's currently seven shows on there.
00:03:03
Speaker
One from the University of Sheffield in England, and we've got a bunch produced right over here of a number of different topics. Not just CRM archaeology, but we're branching into all sorts of archaeological topics. We've got several other shows coming online, too. One more question. How many CRM archaeologists are in the audience? Okay, we've got a few.
00:03:25
Speaker
What I'm going to talk about, and the reason I started my company basically about two and a half years ago, is moving CRM archaeology forward into the digital future, really. I'm
Digital Future in CRM Archaeology
00:03:36
Speaker
going to get into this later, but the short answer is we're not going to get any more money for what we do anytime soon. So you've got to work within the budgets that you have.
00:03:44
Speaker
And rather than just complaining about not having enough money to do what you need to do, work more efficiently with what you're given. So that's what I've been trying to do. And that's what we've been working on. And in case anybody's wondering, this presentation is from a company called Prezi. And they're not PowerPoint. So it's not boring. It's a whole different thing. And it's not supposed to be really an oval either. It's supposed to be more of a circle, but that's all right. There's a little bit of distortion going on.
00:04:13
Speaker
So, first we need to talk about why should we even use technology. We're archaeologists, why don't we just go out there and dig, why don't we just go out there and walk, you know, record sites. And in CRM archaeology, it's all about efficiency, okay? It's all about making sure that we're doing everything just right and in the best way that we possibly can. Otherwise, you know, we have no more money. And like I said earlier,
00:04:37
Speaker
We're not going to get a big pile of money to do an archaeological project, right? We're just not going to do that. So prime example, you know, we've been given a relatively small chunk of money. I'm working with Steve O'Neill back here of Ultra Systems to survey 30,000 acres by December at China Lake. So, you know, and we've already in a month, we just finished our third 10-day rotation and we've surveyed about 3,000 acres, recorded about 50 sites and a little over 300, just under 300 isolates, I think.
00:05:06
Speaker
And that's largely because of the technology we're using. And the young people I've hired a survey. So yeah, it's all about efficiency. It's all about maximizing efficiency. That's what my whole goal is. And my company, everything I do, every decision we make, every piece of technology we use, we're not tied to anything. We find something. We say, OK, will this work? Will it not work? And if it doesn't work, we throw it away. We try something else.
00:05:35
Speaker
The whole goal is to have archaeologists do archaeology and not all the paperwork and office stuff. And we don't digitize site forms because we produce them as site forms in the field. So we don't have reams and reams of paper coming back to the office that need to be typed up by somebody misreading my left handed chicken scratch and then calling up months later and saying, oh, do you remember this? No, I don't. That was acre number two thousand five fifty out of three thousand. So, you know, we don't rely on those sorts of things.
00:06:06
Speaker
So yeah, efficiency. Before we get into sort of what tech is available and what's going on, just a quick going back to see what's been
Evolution of Archaeological Technology
00:06:15
Speaker
going on. So before serum archaeology, you had paper, paper, paper, and then the post sort of serum era, 70s, 80s, still paper, paper, paper, stacks and stacks and stacks of paper.
00:06:27
Speaker
You get into the 80s and 90s and we start incorporating some other things. You know, we've got GPS. That's actually a GPR, if you can believe that. The ground-pintering radar, it's massive. And then, you know, we move on and we start getting some LIDAR, some FLIR, some XRF, and some stuff that we can actually use. Now, a lot of CRM companies aren't using these things because it's not in the budget. So, you know, it's mostly academic projects and CRM projects when they can get the money to do that. And now,
00:06:54
Speaker
in this decade were into drones and tablets and i think that uh... people look back on the tens if you will and call it the age of the tablet because it really is changing everything the uh... apple ipad came out in two thousand ten i believe it was april of two thousand ten and things haven't been the same since really
00:07:17
Speaker
Again, before we get into too much, you have to look. There's people out there trying to push different technologies on archaeologists and trying to say, oh, let's try this, let's try this, let's try this. But you really just have to ask.
00:07:29
Speaker
What do I really need? And don't try to overdo it. For example, starting my own company. I didn't have a GIS department. I didn't have a human resources department. I didn't have any departments. I had me. So I did a small cell tower project at the University of Nevada, Reno.
00:07:49
Speaker
There wasn't really much to it. The product that I was giving them was a very short, like a letter report, and the only map that was supposed to be in there, they weren't asking for shape files, they weren't asking for anything. There were no sites anyway. So the only thing they were asking for was a simple map on a quad map that shows the half mile radius around the cell tower and any resources that were located.
00:08:11
Speaker
So, most companies would send that to their $150 an hour GIS person and say, produce this map for us and be done with it. I used a $6 app on an iPad, pulled in the quad map, drew what I needed to do on there to scale, and it was perfect. And it took about 15 minutes.
00:08:28
Speaker
And I'm not saying big companies are going to go that route because people need to be employed and do things, but that's also a mentality that really kind of needs to change. For example, I hear constantly, well, if we do this, then this person's out of a job. My thinking is, okay, try not to do that. But if this one person is out of a job and 20 people get to keep working because the company didn't go bankrupt,
00:08:55
Speaker
then maybe it's worth it. And like I said, using the right tool for the right job. Another example is site forms. Do you need just site forms to be produced from your project or do you want to take those data and do
00:09:10
Speaker
some fun analysis with it later on. The way we're collecting data, well, the way most companies collect data, you just write it down on the form and you own the California DPR forms and about IMAX, whatever you're doing, and digitize those into, say, a Word document and then print out a PDF. Well, that's not data you can do anything with. The way we collect data, it's into those forms mostly. I've created these, I've duplicated the DPR forms on
00:09:35
Speaker
in a database format, so we're collecting the data, and when we export it, we import that into Word. We don't type it into Word. But before we import it, it's just a spreadsheet full of data. So at the end of, at any point in time on my project, and we upload every day, if not several times a day, at any point in time, I can go back through the data and say, how many FAR features do we have? How many obsidian flakes do we have? How many whatever, because it's all right there. It's exported from the field as usable data.
00:10:04
Speaker
A question people might be asking when they get a little inundated with technology is what's the right technology? And that's always that's always a question that I hear. And the answer is there is no right technology. The technology is the right technology is whatever works for whatever task you're doing. And if it's not working, then don't use it. Don't try to cram, you know, cram it into a box and say this is what we're going to use.
00:10:27
Speaker
There are multiple ways to do the same task and some are more efficient and appropriate from others.
Affordable Tech for Archaeologists
00:10:32
Speaker
So just keep that in mind. So let's look and see what's just generally available. And the whole point of this talk is not to talk about fancy expensive equipment. This is to say, what can you do right now with probably your cell phone sitting in your pocket? Think of that as a tool, not just a device for texting. So tablets, tablets are super easy. Like I said,
00:10:58
Speaker
Tablets are so cheap, you can just carry them around in a Ziploc bag. There's three Apple iPad Minis right there, four iPad Minis right there.
00:11:06
Speaker
Those are the actual ones that we're using on our projects. I've got this one in an Otterbox case, and these three in a Lifeproof case. They're all rugged, durable cases. But that being said, and we'll go over this later, and I'll show you how this is true. I could smash these all on the rocks right now and still save a ton of money, because they're cheap. Tablets don't need to be treated with, you know, kid gloves. They don't need to be handled carefully, necessarily. I mean, you don't want to destroy them, obviously,
00:11:35
Speaker
You put them in the right cases, you put the right screen protectors on them, and they'll be fine. And if you do destroy them, I'll show you later on how it's not really gonna matter financially because you're saving so much money.
00:11:47
Speaker
without digitizing because you're recording digitally in the field called born digital data. So let me go over a couple apps that we're using in the field right now and you could buy all four of these. Some of them are free, but you could get all four of these for less than $30. And if you're on one iTunes account, I particularly use Apple. Some of these translate into Android.
00:12:07
Speaker
and virtually none of them go into Windows Phone because nothing does. Sorry if you've got one of those, but Microsoft said they're getting out of that anyway. They're getting out of the hardware business and just focusing on the software. The first one is iAnnotate. It's an amazing PDF program. You can link it to Dropbox or other servers. On each one of these tablets, like I said, we have a 30,000-acre project right now split up into four distinct areas.
00:12:36
Speaker
And the GIS department for the prime contractor has created basically renumbered the PLSS grid system, the section numbers, and each one of those sections is a page in what he calls the map book. So rather than walking around with, you know, in 110 degree weather with a sweaty folded up 11 by 17 map that people are trying to draw on,
00:12:59
Speaker
I do all my transect information right here. This is an actual block that we did, an interesting shape. So the whole section is almost in there. It's a one mile by one mile to the red lines right there. And those are the transect numbers. And we have a little buffer zone that we're walking with a little thing there. But anything you can do on a paper map, you can do right there, except it's right there. And I can take a screenshot of that. I can save it. And without connectivity, without any cell service, because we don't have it mostly on Channel Lake.
00:13:25
Speaker
Without cell service or anything, the iPads in particular have the ability to do what's called an AirDrop, and you can just instantly set it to the... It creates basically its own ad hoc Wi-Fi slash Bluetooth network without any external resources, and you can send it to another tablet. You can do that with anything in the tablet. In addition to the maps, I have our entire resource library on there. I have a PDF version of
00:13:49
Speaker
to lose his bottle guide, I have a projectile point resources, I have everything. If we're in the field and we need to know what is this, is this important, should we record this, we can, within just seconds, we can look at it without carrying a three ring binder full of resources, which I'm sure a lot of people have done before. And I've done it lots of times, which is half the reason I've done this. So save your back. There's another program called iDraw. It's a vector drawing program. I think it's like,
00:14:15
Speaker
I don't know, $6, $7, and it's one of the most amazing apps I've ever seen. I wish I had taken a video of doing this. I did this in the field in just a few minutes, and I'm not an artist. I'm not a sketch artist or anything, but we ask Sierra Marcheology field technicians who also aren't artists to draw projectile points every single day. So if we're going to ask him to draw it on paper,
00:14:34
Speaker
There's no reason we can't have them do it here. What I did is I took a picture with the tablet of the projectile point. You can create layers. I put the picture on the first layer. I created the second layer. Then I did the boundary, the border of the projectile point. Then I created a third layer and started working on the flake scars.
00:14:50
Speaker
And then you can just delete the picture layer and export it to anything you want as a photo, as a high-resolution photo, as a Photoshop document that preserves the layers, as pretty much anything you want. And like I said, $6, $7, and it's an amazing application. And we use that all the time. So this is the big one here right now. And this is going to take a little bit of backstory, too. There's an app called TapForms.
00:15:18
Speaker
Since the iPad came out, it's been rated the number one database application for Apple devices. And I've talked to the developer. He won't develop for Android. So if you're waiting for that, it's not going to happen. But this database application, you can craft however you want. And one of the nice things about the way that I import data is that anybody that's filled out an agency-specific site form, say the California DPRs, Nevada IMAX, whatever,
00:15:44
Speaker
If you fill that out, you generally probably don't go top to bottom. You'll say, okay, I'm gonna fill this part out, then I'm gonna fill this part out as you record the site, as you walk around the site. I've taken that experience and I changed the DPR around into fields that made sense for me and fields that made sense for my crew. And I've got different sections down here and all this stuff and you can expand and contract sections as you need. And then you fill in the information, you type right on the screen,
00:16:11
Speaker
You basically create a finished document in the field, okay? And I don't have to be a slave to the format that they've chosen for the California DPR. I can move these around however I want. And the reason for that is because the next step of this is to export the data. It comes out as a CSV file, so basically just something that can rewrite by any spreadsheet program.
00:16:35
Speaker
And the column headings are these individual categories here. And each row is a site. Each row is a sheet of paper, if you will, to think of it that way. And then I used to use the mail merge feature in Word and create a new catalog, they call it. When you first set up the template, you have to assign it to the CSV file and then
00:16:56
Speaker
pull in all your fields. But once that's done, you have to only do that once. And then at the end of the day, if we've got one site, 10 sites, 20 sites, it doesn't matter. Isolates are a good example, too. We sometimes have 20, 30 isolates at the end of the day. All I have to do is say, OK, here's the file for the day. Open up Word, the template file that I've created. It says, where's your file? I said, it's right here on the hard drive. And then I hit one more merge button. And it just instantly creates however many site records I have for the day. And they're digitized. And then all we do is we spend
00:17:25
Speaker
five minutes going through making sure somebody didn't have a heat stroke while they were typing and didn't wax poetic about rattlesnakes or something like that. So what you have to do anyway, you have to do that even if with digitizing. So we spend maybe five or 10 minutes on each site record versus the typical two to three hours that it takes to digitize a complicated site. So
00:17:48
Speaker
Those are just some of the apps that I use. And like I said, there's no, there's no one way to do anything. And if anybody is interested, uh, dig tech, we do create the, we've got lots of clients actually, uh, on the West coast. We do create forms for people and set up the merge documents. If you're ready to go digital on something, you can just download top forms for, I think it's eight, 99, $8.99 and you're fully digital. And most people probably have word already. So.
00:18:16
Speaker
That's all you need, and you can go digital in the field. Well, in a tablet, of course. The tablets are cheap. So Dropbox, another app we use pretty extensively. People say, have questions about its security, but I got it around the California BLM permitting, so they think it's secure enough. There's other cloud service applications out there, but Dropbox integrates with so many other applications that it's just a logical choice for this stuff.
00:18:42
Speaker
You can use other things, but it might not integrate specifically, like from TapForms, I can export directly to Dropbox, and I have a folder for each one of these iPads that it just automatically exports into that, and then we can sort that by tablet. And it's not that expensive. I think at $100 a year, you can get, what is it, a terabyte of data. Yeah, it's a terabyte of data, so 1024 gigabytes.
00:19:06
Speaker
which is quite a bit of space. And you can share it too. That's another thing, the prime contractor I'm working with. The GIS department saves GIS data into Dropbox. We save our Trimble data into Dropbox and he can pick that up and he can show us stuff and all the site forms go in there so they can look at this stuff anytime that they want. It's just perfect.
00:19:35
Speaker
The CRM Archaeology Podcast brings together a panel of cultural resource management professionals to discuss the issues that really matter to the profession. Find out about networking strategies, job hunting, graduate programs, and much more. We'll often feature interviews with college professors, CRM business owners, and experts as well. Check out the show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com forward slash CRM Arc Podcast. Let's get back to the show.
00:20:14
Speaker
So I was talking about saving money. Let's go into that. So this is gonna be very basic, very
Cost Savings with Digital Tools
00:20:21
Speaker
basic. But for anybody familiar with California DPR forms, most sites are gonna require a minimum of three pages. You're gonna have the primary form, you're gonna have a photograph record, maybe, maybe not. But for this example, we're gonna have a photograph record and you're gonna have either an ARC form or BSO or something else. You're gonna have one of those other forms. So let's just say minimally we'll have three pages, all right?
00:20:43
Speaker
On this project that I'm on now, we're budgeted to record 400 sites. That's what they think we're going to get. Let's just assume we get that. 400 sites in a year for a typical CRM firm is not going to be out of the realm of possibility.
00:20:58
Speaker
I know that when most people do proposals, they'll budget, say, three hours for digitizing and completion of the site records, not including the field work in the office. So if you've got 400 sites, three pages, three hours, you're looking at 1,200 hours for digitizing for these 400 sites. A typical field technician rate, which is probably who's doing the digitizing of $55 per hour billable.
00:21:21
Speaker
That turns out to $66,000 and we're doing the same thing for, I don't know, maybe $2,000 and the cost of tablets. These tablets are 350 to 500 bucks a piece, depending on which one you get. So I actually want to shoot a video this year of the end of a rotation, taking each one of these tablets and putting it under the tires of the truck and just running it over because why not? We'll just go buy new ones because you're saving so much money. In reality, though, what I'm really going to do,
00:21:50
Speaker
Part of what my company does is I like to I like to try out new technologies. I like to try out new things. So so other people don't have to when I have a blog in my podcast and we'll talk about that. We actually have a podcast called archaea tech podcast that we talked about that stuff on. So I'll do those things. So when Apple comes out with new tablets in October like they usually do, I'll buy four while I get into the crew start. So I'm going to buy eight new tablets and then
00:22:15
Speaker
I plan on every year doing that, and you don't have to do that. Your tablets will work for several years without really needing an upgrade. It's another thing you can do because we're saving so much money. These tablets are paid for already. They're paid for by work. They were paid for after the first rotation that we worked. So I'm going to donate them, donate all of them. I'm in the Civil Air Patrol, so that's where they're going to go first. But after that, local area schools, archaeology clubs, things like that, you're saving the money. Why not?
00:22:43
Speaker
Before I get into one of the things to close out, some things to do with the extra time and money, because people always ask, what are you supposed to do with all this? Are you supposed to underbid everybody and do that? I'm not saying don't underbid everybody. Just bid the normal amount and build some more stuff in, like conference presentations, which we never get to do. One of the biggest problems in serum archaeology is nobody ever sees our data. And that's one of my biggest things.
00:23:09
Speaker
This is why I started the podcast and some other things that we've got coming on down the line. But I feel like half of our job is doing the fieldwork and writing the report. The other half is making sure people know about it. And a lot of times we're working on public land anyway. The clients might have something to say about that, but there's usually something you can work out. There's usually something you can say without giving away too much information.
00:23:30
Speaker
You can do extra analysis. You can build that into your projects and say, listen, those other guys, they're charging about the same amount we are, but look how much extra. Look how much work with the value we're giving you. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna do all this stuff to your, to your project. The clients really like that. Or you can go on a hike with all your free time. And, uh, and as I tell,
00:23:49
Speaker
the employees I've got working for me now, no matter how big we get with this, no matter how efficient we get, and you know, DigTech is gonna start taking all the business from everybody else and doing all this stuff, but I told them the door to my yacht is always open. So,
Sharing Data & Improving Field Efficiency
00:24:05
Speaker
they can come in any time they want. Like I said, don't use technology as something, you don't feel like you have to use it on your projects, but just think, if there's something I wanna do, can this be done more efficiently, right?
00:24:19
Speaker
And it probably can, because the first thing I always think of, I don't try to invent new things because it's 2015. Chances are somebody else has already figured out. So do the research and just do what they're doing. And if it doesn't work, modify it, but then tell people about it and help try to change the world. And that's it pretty much. Use technology to find the bigger picture and don't let it keep you down. So any questions?
00:24:47
Speaker
Go ahead. For the site forms, the pictures, do those go over in the Excel spreadsheet too, or do you have to put them in by yourself? So that's a good question. No, the pictures don't. And the pictures are a problem with this application, with tap forms. That's the one major problem that we have. The reason for that is we still take pictures in there. Our photo log is created on the fly. So that's pretty nice. But the pictures themselves,
00:25:14
Speaker
The way this developer has chosen to save them is like a 16 or 20 digit random hexadecimal number. That's your photo number. And it's completely unintelligible. It doesn't translate into anything. So we figured out a way to correlate that with the photo logs and then to renumber automatically the photos. But one thing I didn't mention is I've been working pretty closely with the Center for Digital Archaeology in Berkeley. And they've been doing basically
00:25:41
Speaker
They've created a new style of database that really no one's ever seen before. You can have this massive, massive, massive database. And usually when you see a massive, massive database on a tablet, you'll get the little spinning wheel of death for a while as it tries to access information. But the way that they've
00:25:56
Speaker
I mean, I can't even really explain it. The way that they've created this database, you can access any bit of information in milliseconds. And it's extremely fast. So it doesn't matter how large your database is. So what they're doing with that, they're building on top of that a user interface that looks like whatever you want. And they've been doing this for
00:26:15
Speaker
five, ten years now they're actually currently on a project in Israel and they did a huge rock art project in Australia. So it's all been academic projects and I interviewed them on the podcast last fall and I said hey what you guys are doing here would work really well for CRM. So now we're kind of partnered up on that and as soon as they roll out they're gonna roll out California DPRs first and I'm switching immediately to that from TapForms because it's it's perfect. I would say still use TapForms if you've got
00:26:45
Speaker
Any sort of, if you've got a piece of paper that has information on it that you eventually put into a computer, you can use tap forms. Okay. And it works on your cell phone, your tablet, whatever. Uh, as long as it's Apple, of course for tap forms, but so if you have Android, uh, Memento DB is another.
00:27:04
Speaker
halfway decent database application that I've used before. So yeah, photos are an issue, but once the CODA team rolls out their system, it won't be an issue anymore because their system will build a photo name that's related to the site. It builds it automatically using different pieces of data. So that'll be perfect. And it'll export actually from the tablet as a PDF. So that's another thing. Kind of changing workflow on this, because you got to really think outside the box when you're doing these things.
00:27:34
Speaker
I know in the past for me, typically, you work for a company, you record stuff on paper, you come in, you digitize it, you turn that into a Word document, and then that gets passed around the office as references get added, analysis happens, things like that. But what I'm proposing is collect the information on the tablet, send it back to the office, sure, but in the office, they drop it right back down on the tablet, or you sync your tablets up through the cloud if you have that possibility.
00:28:00
Speaker
And then the site workers are finished on the tablet. The computer's completely taken out of it for most stuff. I mean, there's some complicated sites that might need some extra stuff, but for like 95% of what we do, if not higher, finish it on the tablet, absolutely everything, and then export straight to PDF from the tablet. And what we're working on for the future is actually before you export, before you even start, actually, the program asks you what state you're in, then it asks you what agency you're working for, and it creates the form that's appropriate.
00:28:31
Speaker
And what I'd like to see in the future is a more generic form, because if you've worked anywhere else in the country, I've worked in 17 different states. And shockingly, an archaeological site is an archaeological site, is an archaeological site. They all have the same bits of information. They just are put in different places on forms. So why not have a form that is mostly generic, but tailored to like vegetation and things like that, and counties and all that stuff is specific to the region you're in?
00:28:56
Speaker
but that people can work all over the place and see basically one interface. And then when you export it, it looks exactly like whatever agency you're working for is expecting to see. So that's the eventual goal of some of this stuff. Any more questions? Go ahead. Well, I was wondering, and I'm asking this because one survey I did, I ended up doing mostly feature drawings by hand. I was wondering, does eye draw work well for feature drawings, or have you tested that out?
00:29:25
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, I have I've done features and profiles with it. So like any good photograph it depends on the It depends on the lighting conditions you've got so you want to make sure you get a good photo if you're doing something like a feature or a profile you'll still want to try to get as You know as on top of it or you know the profile as you can and you can I wouldn't want people to get into this habit, but
00:29:49
Speaker
Once you take the picture, there's no reason you can't draw that feature drawing anywhere else. Take it back to the office and draw it there. But what I do is I still draw them in the field. But now you've got the actual feature or profile or whatever you're doing in front of you. And you've also got it on a photograph sitting on the tablet. So you've eliminated the person that needs to take measurements for you. Because in iDraw, you can do everything to scale. You can actually say, this is a 100 centimeter by 100 centimeter
00:30:18
Speaker
block and then when you draw a line it says this it'll show you that the distances that you're doing and you just you can put a grid up there for your drawing you can then take the grid away when you export and things like that so having somebody take measurements is kind of kind of gone by the wayside for what we're doing so so yeah it works works really well for that. Is all this valuable information you're sharing with us in your book that you wrote?
00:30:45
Speaker
No, because the book, the book is not about this stuff. Um, the book is about, uh, so I, I shovel bumped with my wife. We actually met on a project in downtown Miami and then worked all across the country and ended up in Reno where as you do, she got out of archeology now designs like high end knitting patterns. So, um, and dies her own yarn in the, in the kitchen, which is fun. So.
00:31:10
Speaker
Anyway, the book is not about archaeology. There are some things in there, but what this was written for is
00:31:24
Speaker
All that stuff you didn't learn in college. When you get out of college and you go to your first CRM project, I didn't know how to screen on my first CRM project. I didn't have that. My field school was Olduvai Gorge in Africa, so we didn't have Shaker screens. And I stood there waiting for buckets to fill up, chatting to this guy, just trying to be friendly. But really, I was watching somebody go to the screen, so I knew how to lift the damn thing up and use it.
00:31:45
Speaker
There's stuff like that in there. I feel like some of the archeologically related things in there are like what UTMs are. People don't know what UTMs are when they first come out usually. Unless you learn the stuff in your field school, but not all field schools are created equally. There's one in there. I think it's a really important skill even in the age of trembles, which we're actually eliminating this month probably. We're going to be using some of your GPS on the tablets.
00:32:14
Speaker
I think to properly know how to, and it feels weird saying this in a technology talk, but to properly know how to really record a site even digitally, I think you need to know how to compass and pace a map too on paper. You need to know what you're doing because when you're doing it on paper,
00:32:30
Speaker
You're more attuned to the geographic features. You're more attuned to the drainages and to all the other little things. And when you're just doing it digitally on the Trimble or whatever GPS you're using, people just tend to get roads, features, artifacts, whatever's on there, and forget all the extra stuff that makes the site important. So that's my experience anyway. Is there a field school that teaches the technology as well as you are using it yourself? Or are you the field school now?
00:33:01
Speaker
We should be. I don't know, honestly. I've heard of a few that are starting to go over some stuff, but mostly what the field schools are covering from what I know are your basic things like total stations and stuff like that. You know, the typical stuff you find in a field school. I haven't heard, this isn't to say it's not habitating, but I haven't heard of a field school that's using tablets in this way and teaching people this stuff right out of the gate.
00:33:23
Speaker
But real quick,
Life as an Archaeologist: Chris's Book
00:33:24
Speaker
the rest of what my book is about is basically living as an archaeologist because one of the biggest problems we have at CRM is turnover. And I feel like one of the reasons we have a big turnover is because of quality of life. And if you don't know how to live in a hotel room, which sounds absurd, but if you've never done it before, if you don't know how to live in a hotel room and keep yourself happy, you're just going to quit and we lose a lot of good people that way. So just because not because they didn't like the archaeology, but because they weren't happy living on the road. So that's what the book tries to help out with.
00:33:52
Speaker
You had mentioned, beginning of your talk, not using GIS people. Obviously, GIS is not meant for creating a map. You're just using a GIS person to create maps that are truly utilizing them. But does any of your technology adapt? Can you adapt your sites?
00:34:17
Speaker
I'm sorry, I had a project site a year ago, a thousand acres. We had such dense artifact recoveries from the survey that try to figure out where one site started and stopped and the next one. We ended up doing that back in the office.
00:34:34
Speaker
Right.
00:35:00
Speaker
The short answer is no, and this goes back to not trying to cram the technology into every situation. Sometimes you might just have to go back to your original methods. That being said, with Bluetooth submeter add-ons for these things that cost anywhere from $2,000 to $3,000, because that's most of the cost of a submeter GPS is the submeter part of the GPS, the rest of it's just
00:35:23
Speaker
You know, typical windows. So with the sub meter GPS on there, or even with just regular GPS, it really wouldn't matter if you're just trying to figure out where your site is and you've got people recording things and you're doing stuff and you're trying to figure out what's going on.
00:35:38
Speaker
There are plenty of GIS mapping programs on the tablets that you can collect data in while you're doing that. And I'm not sure if that would solve your particular problem, but it's the first place I would look if I had that problem. I would look to these GIS programs and I would look to the way that they sync with the other tablets in the field and everybody can do
00:35:57
Speaker
you know, you can you can survey the thing, you can do what you got to do, and everybody's recording, everybody's doing what they got to do, and then they come back, sink the tablets, put it all up into the GIS on board on the tablet, and figure out what you've got from there. I think that would be possible. Among others. Yeah, yeah, the triple R one is what I'm going to be trying out in a week or so. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting it. I mean,
00:36:27
Speaker
The Bluetooth add-ons for Submeter, they're all pretty much the same, from what I can tell. They all will, you wanna make sure you don't get an older one that needs to have its own proprietary application to read the coordinates. You want it to just link to your tablet and then anything that uses coordinates, instead of using the onboard GPS, uses the Bluetooth Submeter add-on, right? So that's the only difference between all the little ones that I would say. The biggest thing is the app. What app are you gonna use?
00:36:54
Speaker
You know, that's the bigger component. Trimble's own Teraflex looks like a decent application, but it's got a yearly fee, too. But there's plenty of... Again, it's trying to figure out what do you need. You know, do you need just basic site recording? Or do you need complicated GIS analysis?
00:37:11
Speaker
If you need complicated GIS analysis, then you're going to pay some money for an application. If all you're doing is recording points, lines, and areas, then any one of, you know, dozens of free GIS mapping programs on the App Store will work. So you just have to make sure they export in the format that you can still use, which most of them will if they're recording shape files. So, but that's where reading the reviews comes in handy too.
00:37:35
Speaker
So there's actually a Facebook group called Cell Phones and Archaeology, I think it's called. It's a good one to join because they talk about a lot of this stuff. There's a lot of really uber geeky people on there that try out a lot of these applications. And if you go on and tell them you just bought a Trimble R1 and say, I'm using it with this device, what would you suggest for GIS? And they probably have an answer for you in a few hours. But that's another thing with technology is
00:37:59
Speaker
that I didn't even talk about, which is social media. This is such a collaborative process and there's so many variations out there.
00:38:08
Speaker
I mean, it would be impossible for me to say, I mean, I have figured out some of this stuff on my own, but other stuff I've just before I even delve into it and put a lot of time into it, I go on a bunch of the LinkedIn groups related to technology and some of the Facebook groups related to that and say, Hey, has anybody tried this? And if so, what were your results? And you get answers instantaneously because people are addicted to Facebook. So yeah, but in a good way in that in that respect. So any more questions?
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, well one of the things I've done in the past and and we're still doing is I'll first talk to you about and all this is on the my website dig tech dash LLC comm forward slash tablets If you just google dig tech you'll find it or you'll find the little amplifiers they sell for guitars, which I realize is also the name anyway
00:39:07
Speaker
So yeah, one of the first things we'll do is find out what do you already set up with? What do you already have? Should you go Apple? Should you go Android? We'll try to answer those questions. And then based on that decision,
00:39:20
Speaker
The next decision is usually what kind of tablet to get. Let's say you're going on Apple. A lot of people think, well, I'm going to need the full-size tablet. It's going to be the 64 or 128 gigabyte memory with the GPS, the full-size Apple iPad Air 2 with 128 gigabytes of onboard memory.
00:39:40
Speaker
And the GPS is going to cost you over $1,000. I mean, that's just all there is to it. And I've used the full size one in the field. But what I've come to realize is that if you're willing to adjust to a little bit of a learning curve and the smaller form factor on the tablet, the minis are way better. The minis are way better.
00:39:57
Speaker
And if you're uploading every day like you should, because you're used to doing that with your GPSes, you don't need any more than 16 GB or whatever. Apple's probably going to eliminate that, so it'll be 32 GB. But that one with the GPS, I believe, is still under $500. If you're going to get a Bluetooth sub-meter add-on, you don't even need the one with the GPS. And that's another thing while we're talking about tablets.
00:40:21
Speaker
To get GPS on a tablet, you have to get a cellular enabled tablet, but you don't need a cellular data plan. It's just when they put in the cellular antenna, they package the GPS antenna with it. If you don't have a cellular plan, you don't have a GPS antenna.
00:40:36
Speaker
These three all have GPS antennas on them, but I don't have cellular plans on any of them because we don't have cell servers in most places we're at anyway, so it's kind of useless. And
Using GPS on Tablets
00:40:44
Speaker
when I do need service on this, I probably got it on this, and I'll just tether to my iPhone and upload my data and be done with it. So you don't need separate data plans, so don't let them tuck you into that if that happens. So once we decide what kind of tablets you need, then we find out what kind of forms do you have.
00:41:02
Speaker
What are you writing on that you eventually digitize? If you don't ever create a digital record of something, then you probably don't need it in your tablet. But if you're eventually making something digital, then there's no reason why you can't start it digital. And that's what we'll go over next is what forms do you want. And, you know, we have an hourly rate, but we're really fast at that. So.
00:41:20
Speaker
We'll create the forms, and then we'll say, do you just want to export this normally from TapForms and have it go into a database? Fantastic. You can do whatever you want with it from there. If you want it to go into a Word document, then we'll also create the Word merge documents for you, too, and then show you how to use it all. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but if you're open to it, you'll realize the first time you see 20 primary forms,
00:41:44
Speaker
instantly become Word documents, your soul. So you're like, wow, I just saved a whole day's worth of work. So. Profiles in CRM, a weekly podcast, ask CRM professionals eight simple questions. The first questions establish education, location and experience. The last questions are a reflection of that experience and the answers will surprise you.
00:42:13
Speaker
Check out the show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, and at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com forward slash profiles. On that page, you can also request to be interviewed for the show. It only takes 20 minutes and you don't need any special equipment. Let's get back to the show.
00:42:39
Speaker
All right, anything else? I've used EndNote in the past, honestly, just for references.
00:42:59
Speaker
No, I haven't had a chance this year yet, actually. Some of the, most of the projects I have, Steve can tell you, he's writing the reports. So, we're doing the field work. But, anything else? I have a question, curiosity, where are your projects right now? Right now we've got, so we're partnered with Ultra Systems and they won the five year NAVFAC Southwest contract. So, as part of that, we just finished in
00:43:29
Speaker
for 10 day sessions, just about 15,000 acres of survey in El Centro. And now we've got 30,000 acres in Richcrest, China Lake. So we'll see, possibly some stuff in, yeah, my company's based out in Nevada, but all my work's in California this year, which is coincidentally enough. But we might have some stuff coming up in Lincoln County, Nevada over the winter. So, all right. And just, if you go to the,
00:43:58
Speaker
Archaeology Podcast Network website periodically. We are rolling out some other stuff, and I'm not sure if it's gonna be tied to that website or tied to my company website, digtech-llc.com. But we've got some other helpful things for initially CRM with them branching out into archaeology, then branching out into the other environmental scientists, some educational resources that we're working on right now. We're hoping to roll that out at the beginning of next year. So, yeah, everything I do is based on
00:44:28
Speaker
having archaeologists do more archaeology and less office work, and also educating people somewhat uniformly on stuff that we never really get educated on. It's all on-the-job training. So go ahead. When you were showing the apps that you were using, the first one that you used instead of bringing a map into the field, was it? I annotate. Just a lower case, I annotate. OK, thank you. And honestly, for that particular use, if you use any PDF viewer rather than a paper map,
00:44:56
Speaker
it'll probably work. The thing I like about iAnnotate is I can use different colors and line thicknesses and different things to illustrate stuff on my map like you saw there.
00:45:05
Speaker
And not only that, but I annotate links with FTP servers and Dropbox. So it'll, it'll actually, if I wanted it to, I don't have it doing it for this particular circumstance, but if I had a need to, as I did that stuff in the field, when I came back into the office or if I tethered cell service, the annotations I made on that map would save to the server. So yeah, you can add notes, text, pictures, voice notes, whatever you want. It's pretty versatile. I annotate is really versatile.
00:45:36
Speaker
You can export only the annotated pages if you want. You can export the entire PDF document. You can add extra pages to do different annotations on anything you can possibly come up with. And again, that's another $8 or $9 application. I don't even know what it is, but it's cheap. And a little iTunes hack, if you guys didn't know you could do this. I have one iTunes account for the company. And as long as all the tablets are signed into that account, you'll only buy the app once.
00:46:05
Speaker
And then, like, my wife and I have been doing this for years. We have one account. And you download the application, and it instantly downloads to your other devices if you have it set up that way. So we've only paid for all these once, and I've got it on probably six tablets. And I guess real quick, it's getting late, but I'll address a few quick questions that I didn't get to on here about the tablets and their durability.
00:46:29
Speaker
Like it's find the right case, Otterbox, life proof, they're rugged, life proof is waterproof. You can dunk that in a stream and it won't hurt it. I usually, except for the waterproof ones, if it's not waterproof, I'll usually pop out the screen protector that comes with these and I'll get a Zag invisible shield screen protector. They're way better than the ones that come with it. I actually dropped, I was sticking it in the back pocket of my vest one time and I dropped, I missed and I dropped the tablet face down in a dry stream bed. And I did that thing you do when you drop a tremble like that and you're just like,
00:47:00
Speaker
Like, look at it, and it was fine. And if you do damage the screen protector, they'll replace it. It's a lifetime guarantee. The other thing, real fast, people always ask about is battery life. So the batteries on these things are incredibly good. We've never had one die. That being said, I send everybody in the field with extra USB batteries, and they come in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shapes and sizes.
00:47:26
Speaker
If you're concerned with battery life or you're, you know, crews watching YouTube videos in the field, then then get them get some extra batteries. I mean, this thing was like fifteen dollars at Costco. It'll give you a little bit of a charge on an iPad, enough to get you through the end of the day. This one actually has a little solar panels on it. So if you're stuck out there for a while, you can recharge it. But yeah, they're that technology is really advancing quickly.
00:47:50
Speaker
and you can get stuff for a pretty reasonable price. Less than 30, 40 bucks typically. Enough to get you through the rest of the day for any USB device. And I think that's pretty much it. That's most of the questions I usually get on those. So. Your website's digtechllc? Digtech-llc.com. Yep. Yep, and if you Google, like I said, if you Google Digtech or Digital Technologies and Archaeological Consulting, which is a mouthful, then you'll find it.
00:48:20
Speaker
And of course, Archaeology Podcast Network. I
Feedback & Suggestions from Listeners
00:48:24
Speaker
think that's it. Thank you so much for presenting. As is traditional with us, we would like to love you for being a presenter. Nice. And you also get a year free membership at CCAS. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you again. All right. Yeah. If anybody has any questions further, just go to the website. My email address is right up on the front there. So we can talk about it.
00:49:06
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the archaeotech podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com forward slash archaeotech. If you like the show and want to comment, please do. You can leave comments about this or any other episode on the website or on the iTunes page for this episode.
00:49:12
Speaker
When were you in?
00:49:26
Speaker
You can also email us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com or use the contact form on the podcast webpage. If you'd like us to answer a question on a future episode, email us. Use the contact form on the website or tweet your questions with the hashtag archaeotech or tag at arcpodnet in your tweet. Please share the link to this show wherever you saw it. If you'd like to subscribe to this podcast, you can do so on iTunes or on Stitcher Radio. You can also type the name of the podcast into your favorite podcasting app and subscribe that way.
00:49:52
Speaker
Don't forget to go over to iTunes and leave a review of the show. It helps us get noticed so more people can find our podcast and benefit from the content. Also, send us show suggestions and interview suggestions. We want this to be a resource for field technicians everywhere and we want to know what you want to know about.
00:50:24
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle and was edited by Josh Phoebus. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:50:49
Speaker
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