FOSS4G update: sponsorship, logo, web site

The organizing committee has been working away on various tasks for next September’s FOSS4G conference in Denver. We now have sponsorship details sorted out – you can download the brochure here (PDF). We are offering a 10% discount for any sponsors who commit by the end of January.

We also have a winner in our logo contest, which you can see at our new FOSS4G Denver 2011 web site. We had over 800 votes in total, thanks to everyone who voted! The logo design was an interesting process. Creating a logo is always tricky because you have as many different opinions as people involved in the process! We used a site called crowdspring, as you will know if you voted – multiple people compete to create your logo, which we found worked very well. And then they also have a voting process you can use if you like, which I found very helpful to choose a winner from the multiple good entries.

And as mentioned in passing above, our web site is now up and running - it will have a lot more content added to it over the coming weeks. But check out the timetable leading up to the conference – some significant items coming up are the call for workshops which will be out in mid January, and the call for papers which will be out at the beginning of February.

ArcGIS for iPad: one small step for usability!

I just did an "upgrade all" on my iPad applications, and happened to notice that ArcGIS for iPad v1.5 includes the following enhancement:

We have simplified the experience of identifying locations on the map. A simple tap on the map replaces the Identify Location tool.

This is nice to see, since I'd pointed out in a couple of my recent usability presentations that it took a minimum of six clicks, and more typically 9-10 clicks, to display feature information on ArcGIS for iPad, and suggested that perhaps a single tap on the map would be simpler. My voice has been heard!! Or maybe it was just a coincidence :), but either way a big usability improvement for the product, well done ESRI folks!

Don't make me think: Ignite Spatial NoCo 2 from Peter Batty on Vimeo.

Update: hmmm, I just tried it out briefly (rather than just reading the description), and looks as though it still takes 3 clicks to actually see the attributes of a feature, and still has some significant issues distinguishing between features that are close together. So some improvement but not as good as I had hoped.

Help us choose the logo for FOSS4G 2011!

As I've mentioned previously, I'm going to be the chair of the FOSS4G 2011 conference in Denver next September, and I wanted to ask for help in choosing our logo. We've been using a cool site called crowdspring, on which people compete to design your logo, with the winner getting a prize. I have been very impressed at the quality of entries. Please take a minute to have a quick look at these entries and vote for the ones you like (you can rate with up to 5 stars), and feel free to add any comments.

Thanks!

Ubisense myWorld featured on Google blogs

Today I had a guest post about Ubisense myWorld published on the Google Geo Developers and Google Enterprise blogs, check it out! Thanks to Mano Marks of Google for working with me on this.

FOSS4G Denver 2011 venue preview

Now that wherecamp5280 is out of the way for this year, I'm getting excited about organizing FOSS4G 2011 here in Denver next September (in case you missed the news, I'll be the conference chair). This will be a rather larger event - we're expecting 1000 or so attendees.

I walked down to the Sheraton in downtown Denver the other day to take some pictures for marketing purposes (for the web site and brochures, etc), and I really think it's going to be a great venue for the conference. Here are some pics ...

All the conference sessions will be within the hotel itself, and a large new bar connected to the hotel lobby is nearing completion, which will have 130 different beers on tap (I will try to do my conference chair's duty and sample all of them once it opens, later in December!). So that should all be conducive to great socializing and networking. Right across the street there's an excellent assortment of reasonably priced "fast but fresh" food places, so loads of convenient food options very close by, though of course the conference will be well catered! Plus there are literally hundreds of bars and restaurants within walking distance - the location gets an outstanding score of 95 for walkability at walkscore:

This hotel’s Walk Score:®

95 out of 100 — Walker’s Paradise

View on WalkScore.com

Walk Score

On top of that, there are free shuttle buses that run continuously up and down 16th Street right outside the hotel, which makes it easy to get a little further afield around the downtown area.

I'll be sharing lots more about the conference plans over the next few months, stay tuned!

WhereCamp5280 review, and thoughts on unconferences

Last week we held the second annual wherecamp5280 unconference in Denver, and I think it was a great success again. The first one was organized by me, Eric Wolf and Ben Tuttle, and this year Steve Coast took the lead on organizing the main day while I did the social event, Chris Helm and Sean Gillies organized a hack day beforehand (aka hooky bobbing, courtesy of Sean, a new term to me I have to admit!), and Hurricane Coast took the lead on a follow up ski (and xylophone) mapping event. There have been several good reviews already from Andrei, James and Michael.

As those reviews mention, a couple of big hits in terms of topics were Google Fusion tables (unfortunately I missed Josh Livni's talk as I had to leave early to organize the party) and a lot of interesting discussion around HTML5, Polymaps and other items relating to handling vector graphics in browsers - Chris Helm did a great ad hoc talk on the latter topic which generated a lot of good discussion, and there was a lot of discussion at the hack day on this. I also enjoyed Eric Wolf's talk about the work that USGS has been doing with the OpenStreetMap software stack combined with USGS data, and Steve Davis's talk on how he created some really nice basemaps for City of Atlanta. I felt the overall event was a good integrated mix of "neo" and "paleo" topics and experiences, without using those labels or worrying about them (which is how it should be).

I felt, as did several others I talked to, that last year's event was excellent but this year's was even better. There were actually fewer people this year, 70-something versus 100ish, but a stronger set of sessions this year and more interaction, as well as more people at the party :) !! There was a great assortment of interesting geo-people, and a (pleasantly) surprising number who flew in from out of town. I go to a lot of conferences, and continue to think that the unconferences I've been to rank right up there with the best events I've been to. Steve wrote a post with his perspectives on organizing an unconference, and how it took 6 hours of his time (which excludes the party organization, by the way!). This raises the interesting question of whether all the time that people invest in traditional conferences is really worthwhile (especially since I'm chair of the upcoming FOSS4G event!), and for small events I think it really is a valid question, though I don't think the unconference model can scale up too much or it loses its informality and interaction, which are really the things that make it so good. The 75 people or so that we had this year felt like a good size.

This year we had less organization than last year. There was only one pre-arranged talk this year - Steve asked me to do a short 20 minute keynote to kick things off, and that was only fixed a week in advance, and wasn't publicized ahead of time (now everyone knows why Steve was busy beforehand). The previous year we did a little more to get a few speakers lined up ahead of time and we publicized them and potential talks. We felt we needed to do that in order to get reasonable attendance, and to persuade sponsors to support us, since it was the first time we were doing the event, and a lot of potential attendees really didn't know what an unconference was all about. Personally I don't think that those slight differences in "pre-organization" made a material difference to why this year was even better than last year. It's really down to how many people come ready to talk about interesting things, which more people did this year. And it's hard to manage that or predict it, but I think a lot of it has to do with it being the second year of the event, and we had such a great buzz this year that I'm sure that will contribute to another great event next year! Talking of which, there was some casual discussion afterwards about whether there would be a wherecamp5280 next year, since we have a geo-extravaganza of bigger conferences coming to town, and a lot of us who have been involved in organizing wherecamp5280 will be heavily involved in those. I think there was a sentiment that people would like to keep it going and not lose the momentum that we have. And that momentum should mean that it will take even less than 6 hours to organize next year :), so I think it's highly likely there will be another one in 2011, probably earlier in the summer.

And last but not least those who stayed late at the party got to witness a quite extraordinary sequence of geo-karaoke duets from the legendary James Fee and Andrew Turner. I am still debating whether to release some video footage or whether to honor James' plea that "what happens at wherecamp5280 stays at wherecamp5280" :).

Triple geo-conference goodness coming to Denver!!

Denver has always been known as a center for geospatial activity, and we have a great triple bill of events lined up, one in the near future and two back to back in September 2011.

The one coming up is WhereCamp5280 on November 19th. Eric Wolf, Ben Tuttle and I ran the inaugural one last year which was a great success, see James Fee's review. I hear a rumor that James will be back this year, so I guess he must have liked it! Eric and I have both been a bit swamped on other things recently, so Steve Coast has kindly taken up the organizing reins this year, thanks to Steve for that! Last year we were kindly hosted for free by Denver University (DU), this year we will be at University of Colorado Denver on their Auraria Campus, which has the advantage of being within easy walking distance of downtown. And this year we've decided to do one day rather than two. But two things that haven't changed since last year is that the event is FREE, and we'll be holding the social event on Friday evening at my loft, I expect there will be plenty of geo-beer from the Wynkoop Brewing Company downstairs and that may fuel some geo-karaoke later on. All this is thanks to our kind sponsors, who at the time of writing include Enspiria Solutions, ESRI, Google, MapQuest and Waze.

I'm expecting a great group of interesting attendees and presentations again this year, so highly encourage you to come along. And remember it's an unconference, so we are looking for as many people as possible to participate - prepare a short presentation or come prepared to lead a discussion on a topic that interests you!

Sign up for WhereCamp5280 here, and if you feel like sponsoring at anywhere from $16 to $1024 (can you tell that a techie geek set the sponsorship amounts?!) that would be great, but otherwise just sign up and enjoy the great free education, networking, and beer :).

So WhereCamp5280 is a great local event, but in September 2011 the global geo community will be converging on Denver for a fantastic double bill of FOSS4G and SotM.

For those who don't know, FOSS4G stands for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial and is an annual international gathering organized by OSGeo. The last North American event was in 2007 in Victoria, BC, and since then it's been in Cape Town, Sydney and Barcelona, so we're delighted to have Denver join that list, and expecting a great turnout from around the world.

Eric Wolf and I led the bid to bring FOSS4G to Denver (which is one of the things we were busy on that was competing for time with WhereCamp5280). Eric was originally slated to be the conference chair, but unfortunately due to circumstances beyond his control he has had to stand down from that, and I have just taken over that role in the last week (well unless the OSGeo board fails to approve the change at their next meeting, but I'm assured that's not very likely!). I'd like to publicly thank Eric for all the work he did to bring the conference here - it was his idea initially, and definitely wouldn't have happened without all his efforts. We have the core of a great local organizing group set up already, but are still interested in recruiting a couple more folks, so if you'd like to help out please let me know. It's going to be a great event, and I'll be blogging plenty more about it over the coming months.

And on top of that it was announced today that Denver has also been selected to host State of the Map (SotM), the global OpenStreetMap conference, also in September 2011. I attended SotM in Amsterdam in 2009 and thought it was a fantastic event. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it this year, but I will definitely be there next year :) ! The two events are distinct, but several people were involved in both bids, and we recognized that a lot of people would be interested in attending both, so the intent is for them to run back to back. The SotM date isn't fixed yet, but FOSS4G is locked in for September 12-16.

So if you're in the Denver area already, plan to be at WhereCamp5280 on Nov 19, and if you're not, make plans to be here in September 2011!