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Digital Site Management with Michiel Kappers of InTerris Registries - Ep 102
227 Plays6 years ago
Chris interviews Michiel Kappers at the 2019 Society for California Archaeology meetings in Sacramento last March. Michiel runs InTerris Registries, a digital site management software with a lot of power. Learn more about it and how you can use it on your next project.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, Episode 102. I'm your host, Chris Webster. Paul Zimmerman couldn't make it to the conference I was at. Today I talked to Michael Kappers of Interis Registries about using that platform for artifact and excavation management. Let's get to it.
00:00:23
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hey, this is Chris Webster here for the Archaeotech Podcast, and I am sitting in the Bare Bones exhibit hall where some of the exhibitors have left, most everyone's drunk or hungover, and not here yet on Sunday morning, the last day of a conference, which is typical of any archaeology conference. And I'm sitting here with, in the English pronunciation, Michael Capers of QLC and in terrorist registries. Michael, how's it going? It's going very well, thank you.
00:00:57
Speaker
Great.
Michael Kappers and Interis Registries Overview
00:00:58
Speaker
So give me, I want to talk about interrest registries, but so people know what this is, give me your two sentence elevator pitch on what it does and then we'll get into it later on.
00:01:09
Speaker
We have created an archaeological information system that can be used to collect, manage, analyze all data for one or more archaeological projects, ranging from project management, field data, artifact analysis, images, it has its own integrated GIS, and it has features for repository storage, box administration, etc.
00:01:33
Speaker
OK, we're going to get into that a little bit later. But what's your background? How did you get into this? How did you start in archaeology? How do you from the Netherlands? Yes, originally from the Netherlands. I've been in the US since 2013. Well, I think since I was four years old, I could pronunciate the name Tutankhamun.
00:01:52
Speaker
Nice. And that's where it all started. So my parents had one of these images above their record player. And that interested me a lot. So big jump forward. I've never been to Egypt so far. I didn't do anything with Egyptology or any archaeology from that region. I ended up studying archaeology in Leiden, Leiden University in the Netherlands.
00:02:14
Speaker
And there initially went
GIS and Early Career Influences
00:02:17
Speaker
towards Caribbean archaeology, but then decided or was drawn to more the technical aspects, the more methodology of archaeology and started to specialise that direction. Where we were using, that was the early 90s, we started using GIS and computer technology in archaeology, as well as infra-retio light systems and so forth.
00:02:40
Speaker
So that's kind of laid the foundation for what I end up doing. Okay, great. What was your educational background with the University of Leiden? So you went through your undergrad and then you had some graduate work as well? Yeah, the system is a little bit different.
00:02:59
Speaker
When I was there, we currently have a Bama Bachelor Master System, but when I studied in Leiden at Leiden University, that was not set up that way. So the first year was a Propedutic year, or however that is pronounced. I'm not sure if that is even a proper word here.
00:03:17
Speaker
It was just like an introductory year where we got introduced to all kinds of different archaeological regions, actually literally regions and methodologies. So one of the important differences is that archaeology is separate in Europe from anthropology. Anthropology is something completely different. There's some overlap.
00:03:40
Speaker
also with history, but it's all separate. We have a faculty of archaeology in Leiden, and that's where I studied. So after the first year, you kind of are supposed to make up your mind which direction you want to go.
CRM Work and System Development in the Netherlands
00:03:54
Speaker
And often that is literally a regional location on the planet. And since we had some people doing work in the Caribbean, because the Netherlands still has a few little specs in the Caribbean that are part of the kingdom,
00:04:08
Speaker
So it was relatively easy to do work there and I ended up doing Caribbean fieldwork also in the Netherlands and different locations but mainly in the Caribbean during the studies. So during the whole studies of archaeology in Leiden which typically lasts about four years so first year introductory year then three years until you got your
00:04:30
Speaker
a DRS doctorate, whatever. It's not a PhD, but it's a little bit more than an MA, but it's comparable with master, somewhere in between. But it took me six years because I added so much more time for fieldwork and for technological developments and get acquainted with all that kind of stuff.
00:04:49
Speaker
In the end, when I was done, I started working in the Netherlands at one of the larger projects that existed then, and I was hired as a GIS specialist at that time to create GIS maps and do data work.
00:05:06
Speaker
After that, a very large project started, a so-called Beethoven project, which is a railroad project from the port of Rotterdam to the German Rugerbeet. And this was a huge project. So when you say one of the big projects, you kind of mean like CRM.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, it was actually, this was all CRM work actually because right when I finished my studies in Leiden, the Treaty of Valletta was ratified. So the Netherlands was one of the first countries that ratified the treaty and which says that a certain amount of money, development money in a project needs to be spent on archaeological research.
00:05:45
Speaker
if it affects any known or unknown archaeological sites. Sure. The unknown part, of course, to find out if there are any sites that will be impacted. Yeah. So that huge railroad project was actually the first project that was set up based on that new treaty. OK. So I think we had about 100 million euros translated. No, 100 million gilded. So it's about 50 million euros available for archaeology only. So we could do a lot.
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's a lot of money. Yeah. And that was actually the first big CRM-related work that we could do there, because there was a lot of money. The railroad company paid for it. And a lot of the universities, based on that, set up their own CRM firms, some of which still exist. Others are gone. But that was the start of CRM work in the Netherlands. And this was in the 90s? Yeah, that was like halfway in the 90s, 96, 97-ish. OK. Yeah. OK, cool.
00:06:43
Speaker
Well, it's funny because right around 96 is when I was in the Navy, the US Navy. And one of the places we went was St. Martin. Oh, really? Is St. Martin half owned by the Dutch? Yes, the southern half is part. And it's tiny, tiny. And it's already split in half. So it's even tinier. But it's even a separate country within the kingdom. So yeah.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah, St. Martin was really nice. I like that. Yeah, it's fun. Okay, I'm gonna guess that while you're on these projects and you're the GIS specialist that you are, you know, you guys are collecting a lot of information, you're collecting artifacts, and you are probably realizing that there might be issues around this data collection and things like that. So were you guys using some sort of database or something to input stuff besides the GIS or integrated with the GIS that led to kind of thinking about all this?
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, so this big project, this big railroad project was actually the start of database systems for archaeology in the Netherlands because I was not part directly of that but that was the first project where from the management team set up by the railroad company
00:07:46
Speaker
A all-over covering database tool was created to collect all data from all the sites throughout the whole project. And we're talking about sites ranging from Mesone, Neolithic, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 years old, up to medieval, or even a little younger. So it's all very different, very different methodologies, very different time spans and periodizations. But they all had to fit in that one system.
00:08:15
Speaker
And there was a lot of, I say that, people didn't like that at first, especially the academics that through their newly set up CRM firms were wanting to participate
Founding a Company and Expanding to the US
00:08:27
Speaker
in this huge project. But there was a lot of friction between the empty, the management team of the real world company, which was populated by mostly archaeologists on a management level to oversee this whole huge project. And they designed this database system.
00:08:44
Speaker
And that was very, well compared to what we have now, it was very small but the core is still kind of the same. So it was basically the field data collection and rough sorting. And then there was a GIS component.
00:08:59
Speaker
But that was based on MapInfo. MapInfo is a desktop mapping. I remember that. OK, and not everybody knows it because here most people work with ArcGIS as right products. But in Europe, we also have that and use that. But in archaeology, MapInfo is a lot more common.
00:09:16
Speaker
OK. It's actually also much more simpler, and it's a lot cheaper. And usually, we were able to do anything that we needed to do GIS-wise with map info. So based on some of the map info programming tools, those were used to add the GIS aspect to this whole system. Gotcha. The system was called Digit, very original. Digit? Digit? Nice. Now, wait a minute. This is the Netherlands. What is the Netherlands word for it?
00:09:43
Speaker
The Dutch word for it. This was really the name for it. It was called Dig It? Yeah, it was called Dig It, based on the English, of course. Yeah. Nice. Well, you need to know we Dutch. If we don't speak foreign languages and mainly English, then we do not count in the world. So we are so tiny, we have to adopt other languages as well. So if you wanted it to be used outside of the Netherlands, you had to give it an English name? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. That's awesome. I like it.
00:10:10
Speaker
All right, so how does this develop into, well, you were something before in terrorist registries. Yes. And how does this develop into that? So there were several attempts. After the railroad project, I joined up with a colleague at that time that I met at the railroad project who was also very handy with programming and everything. So we were kind of for several projects.
00:10:32
Speaker
The no actually that was the project before that at that project before the railroad company projects we decided to team up and set up a private company the two of us together because Then the railroad company project could hire us to do all that technical work, which they did they for about I don't know three or four sites We did all the digital stuff in this project
00:10:57
Speaker
and the total was about 40 sites on the total project that were investigated and excavated. So we did that and then eventually we decided, so we had to deal with this dig it thing, but eventually towards the end of the project we decided we need to come up with our own project and we started building something
00:11:19
Speaker
Well, that was a failure, not so much technically, but more personally because the whole business construction set up that didn't really work out. Oh yeah. That's tough. Yeah. Yeah. So then that was around late. Yeah. Around 2000. So early 2000, 2001, I think 2002. Yeah. Then we started with another, um, two other people. We joined as three people to start a company and build something that has evolved into what it is now.
00:11:49
Speaker
It was eventually called Archilink. In 2012 we decided we have to expand because it's too specialized to just maintain and manage only for a very small country as the Netherlands is. And I had some connections already in the US because of my friends and colleagues from the US that I worked with in the Caribbean and the Pacific.
00:12:13
Speaker
So I was visiting a lot and knew my way around here. And that's when we started to visit the SAA's for the first time, which was actually here in Sacramento in 2012. Yes. That was the first time we were there with a booth. Yeah.
00:12:28
Speaker
Arculink booth and is still based from the Netherlands. And in that time, in that year, about six months later, we set up the American branch company for that. And we moved over here. I personally moved over to the US in 2013 and dealing with all the American aspects of the whole product.
00:12:49
Speaker
Now, during the years, the development kind of, how is it, diverged or split a little bit because the demands in Europe and Netherlands were a little bit different compared to here. So, as of now, this is completely separated over the last, yeah, since the last couple of years. And in order to be more flexible as well, I've changed the name from Archilling Americas, as it was called here, into interrest registries.
00:13:15
Speaker
That is done mainly because of name differentiation with Dutch products in the Netherlands, of course, and also because we do get some requests sometimes, it has not really developed into anything serious, but from other branches, other niches like biology, geology, forensics, and the system could be used for that as well. It's all based on material that has been collected
00:13:42
Speaker
somewhere on the geographic location. The data needs to be stored, the material needs to be described, and then it's physically stored on another location in a repository or something. And that's all the same with biological specimens, geological forensics, archaeology. Useful for all kinds of things. Yes, exactly. I want to get more into the programming in a minute, but where does the name and terrace registries come from?
00:14:09
Speaker
Well, at the time, yeah. It was actually also the name of my own company in the Netherlands when I worked together with the three people in the Netherlands. And I kind of lifted that name, brought a name with me in Terrace. I saw that name. It was in the description of a painting that I owned, a migrant in Terrace, blah, blah, something about a group of people. And it sounded nice. And when I looked it up, it meant something like
00:14:37
Speaker
from the lands in the earths and that sounded very applicable. Now that you say the interrest sounds very Latin in origin. Yes, yes, correct. Yes, true. And then the registries is to register data.
00:14:58
Speaker
Nice. Let's talk about the program for a little bit. We'll take a break in a couple minutes here, but let's talk about who... Now, when you came over to this country, to the United States, you said there was a fracturing of the software a little bit, probably because they do things a little differently in Europe. Yes, yes, a little different. Yeah, but I see you at different conferences.
00:15:19
Speaker
whether CRM is a high component of this thing, but also other conferences, including the SCA, where we're at now, and the SCAAs in particular, there's a lot of academics there too. And a lot of those academics do not work in this country. So, since you've got this program here, I'm assuming it is flexible if somebody said, I want to take this program and I do want to work over in Europe, or I do want to work in Africa, or Egypt, or something like that.
00:15:43
Speaker
then they can adapt it to their needs. Definitely. Yes, yes. That is absolutely true. There's clients that use it here in the US, but there's also people from the US that take it abroad to do their work over there. Yeah, we think the program is flexible enough to accommodate most, if not all, methodologies or a combination of different methodologies. So although it
00:16:05
Speaker
evolve from the way we excavate in Europe where, especially in the Netherlands, we have usually excavations with very large surfaces, large units or trenches, 20 by 30 meters. That's very common and then about dozens and dozens of those all connected to excavate whole settlements. It can also be smaller, but that's not a very strange thing.
00:16:27
Speaker
And usually not an enormous amount of levels. We might go deeper a little bit. We don't find a whole lot like Mediterranean tell excavations, which are completely different. But even those would fit in here. Although, I mean, we have had some people that use the system and divert away from it again because they didn't feel comfortable with it. But also distance might be a complicating factor if there's not enough support available.
00:16:57
Speaker
but we have tested it at many different sites and methodologies and projects around the world and Where we were involved ourselves. It always works fine. All right Let's take a break real quick and we'll come back for the second segment with Michael cappers
00:17:12
Speaker
Hey Chris Webster here with your Wild Note Pro Tip. Check out wildnoteapp.com to check out all the features of the application. So what I'm going to talk about today is the review and edit screen on the web. In case you didn't know, you can click on any of the columns in that screen. Well, except for a couple, but most of the columns in that screen.
00:17:28
Speaker
and sort all your surveys by any one of those things. So what's really handy for archaeological site recording, for example, is to sort by location or site number, whatever you happen to call it. So you can see all the records associated with that site. You can also sort by person, or date, or survey ID number, or survey type, like form type. So check out all those features and more at wildnoteapp.com. That's wildnoteapp.com. Now back to the show.
00:17:53
Speaker
All right, welcome back to the Archaeotech Podcast. This is Chris Webster. And again, I'm at the Society for California Archaeology meeting. So you'll hear people in the background because as people wake up from their hungover stupor from the night before, they're going to wander into the book room and see what's here and come in. So let's keep talking about terrorist registries. I want to know how.
Artifact Tracking and Management with Interis Registries
00:18:12
Speaker
the system is used i see stuff on your table every time i come here we've got barcode readers and things like that so let's start you know obviously you know audio medium we're not going to get into what it looks like and how stuff looks like that but if you're using this on an excavation what is the general workflow somebody excavates out an artifact okay how is
00:18:31
Speaker
How do we know where that artifact is? I'm curious, to start, how is interrest registries organized internally so that I know that it's from this unit and this level, and then we'll go from the artifact and see where that artifact's journey is through the system? So the system, as explained in the first part, the system evolved from this huge project in the Netherlands railroad project and was basically a field data collection system and rough sorting system.
00:18:56
Speaker
This is not a copy of that system, but it builds on the foundations, the same data structure in the core of the database. Currently, it has grown to the top level where we can now incorporate full project management and all the way down with very detailed specialist and lab analysis tables for. What do you mean by full project management? I'm curious about that.
00:19:20
Speaker
In the system, when you create a project, that's actually a field project. And it can be all kinds of different field projects. It can even be just one little piece that was found by someone and brings it to the organization who uses the system to a full excavation or survey or anything. However, above that, there is another project level, more overall project management.
00:19:45
Speaker
And there you can manage and track a large scale project that might incorporate one or more field projects. Oh, I see. OK. At that level, you can also connect external documents and like communication and reports and et cetera, et cetera.
00:20:04
Speaker
Wow. OK. So that's a little extra at the top. Nice. Then when you go down to the quote unquote project level, which is basically a field project, that's where you start describing the specific field project details. So what site it is, who does the excavation, what's the reason, et cetera, those kind of descriptive information.
00:20:26
Speaker
So as an example, yeah, I'm going on a project with a company as a technical support for Wild Note in a couple weeks. It's a 90-mile transmission line, so that would be the high-level project. And we're doing the survey in there. So the survey would probably be a project within that project. And then if there were any sites that needed to go to excavation or phase two testing or something like that, they would be other projects within that project system. Correct. Correct. Cool. Yeah. I like it.
00:20:51
Speaker
All right, so you've got the project within a project and somebody finds an artifact. Yes. What's that artifact's journey through the system? Exactly. So within a project, you create the proveniences. We have five fixed levels of provenience, which sounds very rigid, but it fits any excavation. Nice. So at the top, we start with the trench or the unit or the block or whatever you want to call it. Just little side note. Sometimes people look at this and they see wording and semantics and, oh, we don't call it that way.
00:21:18
Speaker
I encounter the same thing. Yes, but we work with language lists and it's very easy to modify that. Anyway, so at the top level of the proveniences, the units, the trenches, as soon as you start digging, you create a surface. Some people say, oh, we don't work with surfaces and whatever. No, you always work on a surface. You might not notice it or call it that way, but you are creating services and those services are most of the time horizontal and vertical profiles.
00:21:47
Speaker
So we call those planar in the system. The planar are the surfaces that are created and they could also be named levels but some people call level the volume that's excavated. So there is a difference and why is there a difference?
00:22:02
Speaker
The services that are created are the services that we, as excavators, see. And that's what we draw, and that's what we take photographs of. And those are infinite flats. Those are basically 2D, two-dimensional representations of what we excavate. And they cut through features and layers and strata, et cetera, which are the three-dimensional objects. So units, the services, the planar,
00:22:30
Speaker
And on those services, whether it's a horizontal or a profile, we recognize the layers and the features. That's the third level. The layers and the features are treated the same way in the system because they all consist of dirt that are described the same way. They just have a different interpretation. Sometimes it's a layer. It can be a natural layer or a cultural layer, a middle layer. And sometimes it's a feature. It can be a pit, a half pit or a post hole or a burial. But it's all dirt.
00:23:00
Speaker
and it needs to be described. Of course sometimes you find your material in there in those features. Now these features or strata or layers they are then subdivided into the two final levels that are kind of hierarchically on the same level data-wise which are first of all the fills.
00:23:19
Speaker
And again, this is semantics. You might call it differently. And segments. Now, the difference between fills and segments is that the fills are the natural subdivision of a feature or a layer. And the segments are the arbitrary or administrative subdivisions of a feature or a stratum. And those can be quadrants or halves. If you bisect a feature or a trench or a pit to excavate, that's administrative.
00:23:49
Speaker
And when you bisect a feature and you discover it has different layering in it, that will be the fills, because it's natural. Now you can make it as complex as you want, but this system, having set up the system this way, allows the maximum flexibility when needed. Nine out of ten times you don't need that all, but that's why the system always creates automatically
00:24:15
Speaker
one fill and one segment because it's always at least one fill and one segment. So without going into much detail more now because it's very difficult without visualization, but this allows a lot of flexibility. Those are the five different levels. So it's actually four hierarchical levels and the lower level has two different items, fills and segments.
00:24:40
Speaker
Now, those deepest levels, so we use these barcode tags, which are not mandatory, but it's basically your FS number. And the tag is arbitrary. The number is arbitrary, but usually it is set up with a prefix that indicates the project or project code or something. And then just a follow number, start at one. Make sure it's unique throughout the whole database or even in the world.
00:25:06
Speaker
That number is then entered into the system. And again, the number can be a barcode tag, but that is not mandatory to use barcodes. It just speeds up work. Not so much in the field, but later on in the lab. Yeah, for sure. But even if you don't use barcodes, you still create those numbers, FS numbers, and assign the numbers, enter the numbers in the database and connect them to a provenience.
00:25:30
Speaker
And then the number sticks with the material. That's the connection between the artifacts or the samples taken from a provenience and the connection with that provenience. So that's the field level in a nutshell for as much as possible.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, as much as we can in an audio version here. So what's the setup look like in the field when you're using interrest registries? What do you have out there to make all this work? It depends on the size of the project and the structure of the project. If it's very small, some people still use paper. Just come back and do data.
00:26:06
Speaker
Yeah, and come back and do data entry, or they use a tablet in the field and just enter it right away in the field. Some do a combination, and they write a lot of stuff on the tags and order bags. And when they come back, they just first enter and scan all the bags into the system and enter the data right then. So there are different ways to do that. OK.
00:26:26
Speaker
And once it's in the system, then you can start processing the material. So there's a first rough sorting level or an artifact sorting level in the system. So this can be of course bulk material that is attached to one tag or one FS number or a special find, just one thing or sample.
00:26:46
Speaker
and it needs to be treated. Most of the time you want to wash, dry and sort. If it's just one piece you might want to wash and dry it or if it's very delicate you do something else with it. If it's a sample you might do something else with it and treat it the way it's needed to be treated.
00:27:05
Speaker
But let's focus on a bag with bulk material that explains the best how the procedure is done next. And it's very common. Wash your material, dry the material, sort it into different material categories and enter it in the database per category. Possibly count or weigh the material or both.
00:27:27
Speaker
and for a basic level describe the material. In a sense choose the material category, maybe choose a subcategory if you want to define it already a little bit more on this level.
00:27:41
Speaker
These are things you can customize in the system, I assume. Yeah, those are all fields available on this level. When we go deeper down to the specialist level, that is completely open and that is totally customizable. Nice. Because everybody wants a different lab or different specialist table. Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:59
Speaker
So that is something where the fine and the minute details will be stored and registered for the material. But on this level the rough sorting might be sometimes just the sorting in the main categories and then go to specialist level or you can do a little bit more with that subcategory and maybe object and object part and etc those kind of information.
00:28:21
Speaker
is available on this level. Even some date felt dating fields are available, but those are not mandatory. The only mandatory fields throughout the whole system are the technically mandatory fields that are needed to be able to connect all the data through the system in the different tables that are populated in the background, through connections and etc.
00:28:41
Speaker
So, when entering on the previous level, on the field level, on the FS number, it needs to be connected to a provenience. And you need to fill out at least those five levels. Transunit, etc. Planum, or level, feature, or layer, and fill-in segment. Sometimes you don't have all that information and you can just use an in-depth, or a 999, or even the word unknown, or whatever you like. It's all alphanumerical. But it needs to have a connection.
00:29:10
Speaker
and then next for the rough sorting you need to choose the number that you are describing or sorting and choose a sub number sorry a main category okay the sub number is when you want to already split up main categories on this level into sub categories and you can use sub number or sub letter
00:29:32
Speaker
And once that data is entered and you store the record, a new tag will be printed. And that is the tag, the barcode tag that will remain with the material. Well, cool. So this runs on Windows machines? Yes, this is Windows-based. So is it software that's downloaded? Is it web-based? How does somebody get their hands on it?
00:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, what we currently do is we usually set up a Dropbox folder with the client for data exchange and for distribution of the new software. But also for database, if they need help when they work in single database files, we can just transfer that and we can do stuff. So the system can work with those kind of files, but it can also work in a network with a client server database setup. That's all the technical stuff that we might cover later.
00:30:22
Speaker
All right, so somebody's decided to go down this road and they've got a project they want to use this on. What does this cost? Is it subscription by the month? Do you buy it one time? I mean, how does it work?
Pricing and Accessibility of Interis Registries
00:30:32
Speaker
So we split up the costs in three blocks. The first one is probably the most important, which is the licensing. We charge a license fee, a yearly license fee of $450 per work spot per year.
00:30:46
Speaker
So what does per work spot mean? Like a station? Yeah, it means like a location, a computer, but it can be flexible on multiple computers. So suppose you have 10 computers and you have four licenses, you can install it on all those 10 computers, but you cannot use it on more than four computers at the same time.
00:31:06
Speaker
How is that regulated by login, or is there a key or something? How that works is that it's more like concurrent users, and it would ping through the internet. If there's no internet connection, it will tell you, oh, you cannot work with it unless you have, because that's another option. The system is, of course, you can put it
00:31:24
Speaker
fixed on a computer so you can take it outside of network or internet connection and then use it outside in the fields. And that will just bring your counter down with one or how many computers are fixed installed for a certain amount of time. You can also set that for, okay, I want to do that for three months and then automatically it detaches again. That's the plan.
00:31:46
Speaker
All right. So that's the first part. We do have lower licensing prices for academic use, for educational use, for students, and for training and stuff. That's $150 per year per work spot. Wow, that's super affordable.
00:32:04
Speaker
Yeah, we hope that by keeping, we try to keep these recurring fees as low as possible. So, yeah, as many as possible people will be able to use this. Okay. Now the second block would be because that, yeah, that is, well, unfortunately, it is necessary. You need some training and setup and support at the beginning. Yeah, how do you use it? It's not a difficult system, but it's a vast system and you need to understand how everything works.
00:32:30
Speaker
In short, people that still use our system and have done so for many years were able to invest in such setup and support. The people who have let it go are usually the people that were not able to do that. And it's a pity, but you need a little bit of training.
00:32:51
Speaker
Well, anybody that's used Esri products knows that you can't just walk right in and use it. We try to keep it as simple as possible. But it has to be complex to be functional. Well, exactly. It needs all these data levels. It needs to be elaborate enough to do what it needs to do. Yeah, if it were too simple, it'd be unusable. Exactly.
00:33:12
Speaker
And the final block would be so that middle block, training support, etc. just is all based on an hourly or daily rate. A lot of that can be done from a distance. Ideally, also depending on the size of the organization and the amount of people we start on location. But once the start has been done, most things can be done from a distance.
00:33:33
Speaker
And the third block would be the hardware, optional peripheral hardware. And we don't really sell that ourselves because that would only increase the price, so we advise on what to buy and what will work with the system. And we're talking about when you want to use the barcode system, so barcode printers, barcode scanners, those kind of things, but also digital skills and calipers that can connect to the system and then send their data automatically to the fields where you want it.
00:34:02
Speaker
which is very useful in the specialist and lab module.
00:34:07
Speaker
With this running on Windows computers, have you had anybody run this on like a Windows Surface Pro? Seems like an ideal tablet kind of device for something like this. I have had one or two people that had run it on an Apple computer running Windows. Oh, I see, I see. So that's the only thing, yeah. I think it would run great on probably the Windows Surface tablet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're using, myself, but also other clients, we're using Windows tablets. Yeah. And it runs on it. Okay.
00:34:37
Speaker
Because we started so early, many years ago, we were actually using tablets a long time ago. About 15 years ago, we were using Fuyutsu Simen's reflective screen tablets. They were pretty big. I mean, in a sense that they had a big screen. And the more sunlight hit it, the better you could see it. And with an outer box rough casing around it was perfect. But these are no longer made. But that was a larger screen. So the whole system was kind of created before the
00:35:07
Speaker
tablet revolution. So currently our system can run on tablets, but it's not really well designed, super designed for tablet features. And that is one thing that we're also looking at, of course, in the future, or at least this year, we try to have a more tablet adapted field module for that as well.
00:35:30
Speaker
You were tech hipsters using tablets before tablets were cool. Yeah, and that's how you say that. That puts it a little back as far as tablets design goes. Nice. Yeah, but most of this, I mean, it is an important part, but the whole field part is, of course, only a small. Well, it's an important part, but it's a small part of the whole system. It's not just field data recording.
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, I would imagine in this country on a CRM project, a lot of data is collected. Obviously, the artifacts are collected in progress in the field. But like you said, that is a few weeks worth of time that you're excavating. And then you're spending months, if not years, in the lab continuing with the system.
00:36:10
Speaker
That's why we have put a lot of effort also in all those parts, the sorting of course, the images, the integrated GIS and especially also the specialist and lab module, which allow a whole lot. And then all the features that are already in here, some analytical features, but also for curation, there's some repository and box administration features, which will be enhanced later also with a big new project coming up.
00:36:38
Speaker
OK. I think it's my final question on the system. What about getting your data back out if somebody wants to stop using the system? Yes. That is actually very simple. Yeah. There's several ways to get your data out and export very easily. OK. You can export rough data.
00:36:54
Speaker
If you know the structure of the database and know how these tables connect, you can have the exact copy of the database in an access database, for instance, without a password and available to use however you like.
00:37:09
Speaker
But every screen in the system has been set up the same way. You see a large data grid, and that is usually the result of a query that shows the data which is relevant for that particular screen as a query result, taking all the data from the different tables where it is stored. And every data grid has export functionality. So everything that is currently visible in the data grid can always be exported in one of the most common formats.
00:37:39
Speaker
and you can filter and sort and make a subset and then export that. So it's not just a tabular info, but that is also the same with the GIS. So the GIS data that has been generated in our GIS module can be exported in the most common formats, including of course shape files, a map info, AutoCAD, DXF, etc.
00:38:09
Speaker
KLM's an airline. Yes, not our national pride of airlines. So here in the United States, have you had anything, any interesting projects come up or people using this in some fun ways?
Case Study: Georgia Project and Adoption
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, well, the start is always difficult. And like I said, we've been here now since 2013. So it's about this is the seventh year here and things start to finally pick up. So all throughout all these years, people always showed a lot of interest, but they're very careful with making decisions.
00:38:43
Speaker
And snowball effect is very important word of mouth. So I have a few clients here and there throughout the country, some universities. Within the next few months, we are starting a very big project, new project in the state of Georgia, where at least five organizations are involved, which are Georgia DOT, Georgia DNR, which houses the Georgia SHPO, and the three main universities that are together the repository for the state.
00:39:13
Speaker
which is UGA in Athens, Georgia Southern in Statesboro, and University of West Georgia in Carrollton. I've been and they won in Athens a lot. That's where I got my master's degree. Oh, yeah, that's right. So this is a big project where this group of users and organizations have adopted the system to implement and to try to achieve a certain form of standardization statewide.
00:39:40
Speaker
And this involves not just adaptation of the system, but also adaptation of the system. We're going to add a lot of new features. One of the things is we're going to add a new separate collection management module that will have a lot more collection management features than the ones that are currently in the system.
00:40:05
Speaker
And we are going to expand certain of the already existing features. One of the things that we are going to add is more features that allow quick and easy data entry for very repetitive data and adaptations to better deal with phase one survey projects. And that is also part of that repetitive data where you have maybe a whole bunch of transects with shovel tests.
00:40:32
Speaker
So where this kind of data can be generated very quickly and instantaneously. Nice. So that's going to be an interesting project that allows us a lot more development. Well, maybe we can get a report later this year on how that's going. Definitely. Because I'm sure I will see you at another conference. I think so, yes.
00:40:52
Speaker
How was that, next month? That's right. All right, so where can people go to find this? What's the website? How do they get a hold of you? Yeah, they can go to interusreg.org. So it's interusreg.org. OK, we'll have that in the show notes for this episode. So please check that out. And thanks, Michael, for being on the Architect podcast.
00:41:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paulatlugol.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:41:46
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:42:08
Speaker
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