Our take on real-time geocollaboration is somewhat different than ESRI’s. Our system is meant to support an internet meeting. Users get together in a conference session, and in the session, the map view is shared and synchronized (in every aspect: layers in view, display characteristics, scale and extent). We feel that this is a requirement for holding a meeting.

The user is aware of the presence and activity of others through a roster. But beyond that, the software is meant to support a great deal of direct interaction (as opposed to an interaction through geodata). Each user has a map pointer that all the other in the meeting can see (all of the pointers can be active at once = no control passing) and the georeferenced annotations (point, line and polygon), which any user can add, can be edited by anyone.

As it works out, our users oftern talk to each other on the telephone while they conference — and the logged chat ends up being used to record observations, findings, etc.