A video of my presentation at the recent OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference is now online at Vimeo. There's also a copy of the slides at SlideShare. I talk about the four major business models that have been tried in regard to creating geodata, and how they are all handicapped by the very high costs involved when you use the traditional approach which involves paying the people who create the data. And I discuss how crowdsourcing completely changes things by reducing this labor cost to zero. From everything I saw at State of the Map, I am convinced that use of crowdsourcing in general, and OpenStreetMap in particular, is going to massively grow over the next couple of years.
Other videos are being posted online at the sotm09 channel on Vimeo - I recommend you take a look. There are lots of great presentations, but one that I guarantee will make you smile is this 5 minute one on Mapping of Historical Sites in Japan - check it out :).
