Steve asks: Could you discuss strategies for data storage (especially in arcView)?  Do you tend to use a layered aproach with blocks inside tracts inside counties etc.

Answer: ArcCatalog is a great tool for helping you organize your spatial (and plain old tabular data) and you should use it for this task. Within your folders I recommend something like the following image- split your data by typology first- so a folder for admin boundaries, another for infrastructure, another for topology. Under those primary directories you need to decide is your work mostly split by geography or by type of data?

For some orgs I split it into location under this level, so the Admin Boundaries for the USA, for Australia etc, because those areas will have different types beneath them. In the example below we have types under these primary folders- under admin we break down different departments- so HUD have their own boundary sets, Census has their own and so on, then within those we break it into Census Tracts, Blocks, etc.