Where can we find someone that knows...

Check out the embedded map below (email subscribers may need to click though).

It is from a free service called Map My Followers, a site that presents a mashup of information about a given user's followers on Twitter, superimposed on a Google Map.

The image above presents a visual representation of a sample of 100 of the folks that follow me on Twitter, overlaid on the standard Google map, and hovering on the little marker for each person pops up their Twitter name as well.  On the lower right, a tag cloud of common terms from my followers profiles is displayed, which provides additional insight (beyond geography) of these 100 followers interests.

Sort of neat, kind of cool looking, and quite honestly the kind of capability, presentation, and wow factor usually lacking in the traditional workforce analysis tools that attempt to perform similar functions. 

Imagine if you were the person in charge of sourcing and staffing a project team to support some new organizational initiatives.  Factors like geography, skills, interests, availability, and prior experience would all come in to account as you attempted to assemble the team. Instead of a map of Twitter followers, your 'map' would be sourced from core HRIS information,  internal talent profiles, internal skills inventories, and perhaps even insight from the CRM system (as to the size and strategic importance of the opportunity), and augmented by your database of external talent (maybe even a custom LinkedIn or boolean search result on top of that).

Build in more advanced filtering capability and have the tag cloud on the right be user configurable and actionable (let me click on a tag and have the mashup highlight all the people that match that tag), and now you have the start of more dynamic and adaptable tool for insight and action into the workforce (and perhaps even all the available and accessible talent).  Make hovering over the map marker pop up a lightweight bio, with essential information displayed, and include the ability to quickly contact the person via email, IM, or even a Tweet.

I love checking out all these new and innovative services that seem to be proliferating lately, the cleverness and industry these developers show simply by accessing open APIs and re-imaging the data is outstanding.

What I don't love is after spending a lunch time playing with a cool site like Map My Followers is having to try to piece together similar organizational insights in an aging set of enterprise tools that were designed in a different age.