Spokane River Google Earth, Ron Hall
Ron Hall
Ron Hall is a Princeton/Cornell/Wharton/Penn State and Eastern Washington University-educated designer, builder, modeler, turf specialist, and geographer who lives in southern Spokane County, Washington. Ron and his wife Lisa came to Spokane in the early 1990s when their golf course construction business was chosen to build the City’s newest and now-highly acclaimed public golf course, The Creek at Qualchan.
In the best sense of the term, Ron is a restless thinker who is always trying to figure out better ways to use information technology to better communicate ideas and choices. He is especially interested in the choices that people make regarding the natural resources in the world around them. In many ways, it’s just an extension of the problem solving he’s had to master to successfully build golf courses, like Qualchan, that are inspired by the same natural features that threaten to wash them away. But in moving toward larger features and issues like the imperiled Spokane River watershed, Ron Hall brings a decided philosophy to bear: the more difficult the challenge, the more important it is that an engaged and well-informed citizenry be directly involved in shaping the solutions.
As he put it to CFJ’s Tim Connor in an interview last year: “While I understand the great man theory, I lend myself more to the great society.”
You can read Tim’s profile about Ron here.
As a partner in our Riverkeeper project, Ron is continuing to help us develop and improve the Google Earth Spokane River Project for a variety of educational, surveillance, and information development purposes.
Here’s a snip from a recent video interview with Ron, taped on an uncontrolled set (his living room), and, yes, we think that was a cat that ran up the stairs during the shoot.
To experience the program on your computer, you’ll need to download Google Earth here, if you haven’t done so already. Then, to run the Spokane River program, you’ll need to download the Spokane River Issues application here. If you have problems or have ideas and feedback you’d like to share about the application, please contact us at info@cforjustice.org.
To learn more about Ron Hall and take a look at some of his other work with 3D modeling and Google Earth, go here and here. To view Ron’s 3d model of the Saranac Building--featured by Google in its world-wide, green building collection--go here.