---
title: "Eric Gundersen on Mapping, Open Source in Government, and Features"
url: "/podcasts/drupal-voices/eric-gundersen-on-mapping-open-source-in-government-and-features"
type: episode
date: 2009-10-26
updated: 2014-04-09
---

# Eric Gundersen on Mapping, Open Source in Government, and Features

#  Eric Gundersen on Mapping, Open Source in Government, and Features 

  

*Podcast episode player*

[Eric Gundersen](http://drupal.org/user/10223) is the [President](https://developmentseed.org/team/eric-gundersen) of [Development Seed](https://developmentseed.org/), which Eric describes as a hybrid between a International Development organization and an IT shop -- quite a unique combination.

Development Seed is at the heart and center of the Washington, D.C. Drupal community, and a crucial player in helping bring Drupal into the United States Government. Eric talks about discussions that he's had with Aneesh Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer of the United States, as well as Vivek Kundra, the Chief Information Officer of the United States.

At DrupalCon Paris, Eric had mentioned that there were representatives from the White House and a number of other Government agencies that were coming to the DC Drupal meetups that DevSeed hosted, which we saw the fruits of with the big news over the weekend with [WhiteHouse.gov going Drupal](https://dri.es/whitehouse-gov-using-drupal). Eric was also a key player in coordinating some [Lullabot on-site training at the Department of Commerce](https://www.lullabot.com/articles/bringing-drupal-to-the-us-government) earlier this month.

Development Seed has also earned a reputation within the Drupal community as putting out some of the most innovative and cutting edge work in the realm of Drupal Distributions and Products -- specifically with [Aegir & Drush](https://www.lullabot.com/drupal-voices/drupal-voices-62-adrian-rossouw-aegir-drush-and-future-drupal-distributions), the [Features module](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2009/may/29/making-and-using-features-drupal) & [Feature servers](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2009/sep/03/5-minute-feature-server), [Context & Spaces](https://www.lullabot.com/drupal-voices/drupal-voices-11-young-hahn-context-spaces-modules), [Open Atrium](http://openatrium.com/) distribution and most recently the [Managing News](https://www.theindependent.group/) distribution.

Eric also talks about some of the Mapping and visualization work that he's been doing with the [Location](http://drupal.org/project/location), [Geo](http://drupal.org/project/geo), [Open Layers](http://drupal.org/project/openlayers), [Mapstraction](http://drupal.org/project/mapstraction) and [Data](http://drupal.org/project/data) modules along with using tile data sources of [Open Street Map](https://www.openstreetmap.org/) and [CloudMade.](http://cloudmade.com) Six months ago, Eric would have recommended using [Nice Map](http://drupal.org/project/nicemap) along with a WMS server, but now he would recommend using these other modules.

For more information on the WhiteHouse.gov move to Drupal and who was involved with that, be sure to check out these posts:

- Personal Democracy Forum's TechPresident on [WhiteHouse.gov Goes Drupal](http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/whitehousegov-goes-drupal)
- Tim O'Reilly's [Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal](https://www.oreilly.com/radar/)
- Slashdot thread on [White House Website Switches To Open Source](https://news.slashdot.org/story/09/10/25/1126210/White-House-Website-Switches-To-Open-Source?art_pos=7)
- Dries Buytaert's post on [Whitehouse.gov using Drupal](https://dri.es/whitehouse-gov-using-drupal)
- Ping Vision's Laura Scott asks if [WhiteHouse.gov goes Drupal: can open source lead to open government?](http://pingv.com/blog/laura/2009/whitehouse-gov-goes-drupal-can-open-source-lead-open-government?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter)

[Download Audio](https://www.lullabot.com/audio/download/636/DrupalVoices067.mp3)