Where 2.0 conference free passes for IP, focuses on mapping/location innovation

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Tim O'Reilly <tim () oreilly com>
Date: June 15, 2005 11:32:16 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Where 2.0 conference free passes for IP, focuses on mapping/ 
location innovation


Dave, seeing Jeff Pulver's special offer for VON made me realize  
quite belatedly that I should send a special offer to IP for our  
Where 2.0 Conference, to be held in San Francisco June 29-30.    (See  
http://conferences.oreilly.com/where for details.)  The conference  
focuses on the new breed of location technologies.  Google Maps and  
the follow-on announcements from Microsoft have brought a lot of  
attention to the fact that innovation and competition this area is  
heating up, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Speakers include the key open maps hackers who've built the various  
google maps mashups (google maps + craigslist, google maps + yahoo  
traffic etc.) as well as Paul Levine, head of Yahoo! Local, Steve  
Lawler of Microsoft MapPoint and MSN Virtual Earth, Brett Taylor, the  
product manager for Google Maps, Matt Gross of MapPoint Mobile,  Bob  
Denaro of MapQuest, Jack Dangermond of ESRI, Balaji Prasad, CTO for  
Telematics at GM, Perry Evans, founder of Local Matters, Udi Manber  
of A9, and David Rumsey, whose amazing work using new technologyt to  
bring historical maps to life got him a standing ovation when he  
keynoted at our Open Source Convention last year.  It's a unique mix  
of speakers and attendees, where the hackers pushing the edge meet  
the big players face to face.

As we've done for some previous conferences, we'll offer free passes  
to the first five IP list members who register using the code   
where05tim.

Why Where 2.0?

At O'Reilly, we view our mission as amplifying the weak signals of  
emerging trends.  We first started publishing books on free software  
in the mid-1980's, on Linux in the early 90's. In 1998, we organized  
the summit meeting where the name "open source" was formally adopted  
by the leaders of the most important open source projects. We  
organized the seminal P2P summit in 2000, held our first conference  
on web services in 2001. Now, in 2005, we're holding our first  
conference on mapping and location sensors.

Why? We've seen alpha geeks doing interesting work at the fringes:  
reverse engineering Google Maps to create the Google Maps-Craigslist  
mash-up; a flood of red-blue maps after the November 2004 U.S.  
presidential election;  visualizing digital photographs on a map. The  
presence of interesting people and interesting projects tells us that  
there's a demand for this technology, and that as the volume of these  
projects increase, we'll see the movement of mapping and location  
from the geospatial niche to the mainstream.

In each of the previous occasions we mentioned, hackers led the way,  
and the industry--entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and big  
companies--followed.  Now, we believe that location technology is at  
the same inflection point on an explosive growth curve.

We've gathered the hackers pushing the edge and brought them together  
with the best-in-breed applications and cutting edge technology  
vendors to show what's possible in the space.  Whether it's the war  
stories of the LBS startup uLocate, an overview of what's available  
in the way of open source geospatial tools, or announcements of new  
services from the major players, we know you'll have a great time.   
And  the Where Fair and exhibit hall reception on Wednesday night  
gives a chance to mingle with the people building the next wave of  
location- and mapping-enabled technology.

The location momentum is building and adding muscle not just to a  
"Where" meme, but to the whole philosophy of a "Web 2.0" world as  
well. Like you, we're curious about where this new technology will  
take us--it's bound to be a very different landscape in just a year  
or two. It may not be a well-defined path now, but it's exciting to  
be taking first steps into this new territory.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-----------
Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc.
1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com (company), http://tim.oreilly.com (personal)



-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/