I recently launched StandingWire to help me reach people in the forestry industry for research calls. I’m keen on understanding current work and tools to identify opportunities for a public or commercial product.
The initial pitch of the StandingWire site is a better interface onto the public register, with filters and statistics, a fortnightly summary and convenient bookmarking.
I’ve now had some of those research calls, made a round of changes to the site and now I have some more questions.
Is more of the public register worth surfacing?
The register holds felling and restocking data that is public but not especially usable. It’s buried inside PDFs. I can pull more of it out and turn it into something you can search, filter and compare, but only if someone actually wants that.
So: who would use it, and for what? My current guess is that felling data might matter to hauliers and sawmills, and that restocking data helps forecast future timber supply. Is this right? Who else? Contractors sizing up work in an area? Agents advising clients? Ecologists, journalists, community groups?
Would owners want to say more than the case documents do?
The second question is for the people whose applications appear on the register. When a woodland owner applies for felling or creation permission, the case documents carry what the process requires — not necessarily what the owner would want a neighbour, a community council or a curious member of the public to understand about the plan. And not everything an owner submits is published.
Would owners want a place to add that context?
If you know someone
I’d like to speak to foresters and estate managers — about the two questions above, and more broadly about how the work actually runs day to day: what tools you use, what data you go looking for and where the technology helps or gets in the way.
If that’s you, or you know someone it might be, please send me a message via LinkedIn or via the contact form.
