I had the privilege of speaking on a panel with Sarah Cohen and Steve Doig last week in Baltimore about the future of computer-assisted reporting. Whoever thought I even belonged in the same room as those two gave me way more credit than I deserved.

But in preparing for that panel, I got to thinking: What skills and software tools are we going to be using in 10 years? What skills should we start learning now if we want to be prepared for the future? Or better yet: What types of problems in newsgathering and investigations could technology best help solve?

The other day, I was talking to one of my colleagues about how I rarely use ArcView anymore. Since becoming a full-fledged Linux jockey, I've found so many tools that process GIS data better than Arc ever has. Sure, it still provides a pretty graphical interface, which definitely comes in handy, but most of the time I don't need it. The green and black of the Linux terminal window line suits me just fine.