Where 2.0 2009 Call for Participation

Call closed 11:59pm 12/08/2008 PST.

Where 2.0—Accepting Proposals—Submit Yours Today!

O’Reilly Media invites technologists and strategists, CTOs and CIOs, technology evangelists and scouts, researchers, programmers, geographers, researchers and academics, artists and activists, business developers, and entrepreneurs to lead conference sessions and tutorials at the next Where 2.0 Conference, taking place May 19-21, 2009 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California, U.S.

If you are one or more of the following:

• CIOs, products managers, and technologists curious about how to incorporate location technology into existing products
• City planners, government planners
• Officials from USGS, DOD, and other agencies
• Open source mapping and location tool developers
• Grassroots developers building important mash-ups and systems
• Researchers and academics studying the field and building prototypes
• Artists creating collaborative experiences with a spatial focus
• Activists and community organizers building tools for managing nonprofit location groups
• Neographers and traditional geographers working deep in the trenches of geospace
• Venture capitalists looking for the next investment opportunity

Proposals will be considered for the following types of presentations:

• 15 minute session
• 30 minute session
• 1 Hour 15 minute workshop
• Panel discussion
• Where Fair project/demo
• Product launch
• Ignite Where
• Game

You’ll be asked to include the following information for your proposal:

• Proposed title
• Overview and extended descriptions of the presentation: main idea, sub topics, conclusion
• Suggested track
• Speaker(s): expertise and summary biography

Some of the topics on the radar for Where 2.0 are:

Local Search and Advertising: Mappam and Lat49 are competing with Google to be the ad platform of choice for the over 100,000 mash-ups out there. Are companies ready to advertise on maps? Will consumers notice? Is this the business model that will support the huge cost of data acquisition?

Location-Aware: We will be exploring the implications of our new location-enabled lives, particularly around mobile phones and transponders. What feature is worth sharing your location?

Reality Mining: With the increase in location data come more macro views of our lives. If you want to know where to go in San Francisco, for example, City Sense will show you which parts of the city are hopping. What does this type of information mean for consumers and the enterprise?

Augmented Reality: The location-enabled phone will become a viewfinder for our world. Your phone will be able to tell you what you are looking at. It will also let you leave notes for the next person. What are other cool projects in the works?

Immersive and 3D Imagery: There’s an imagery battle happening and consumers are winning. Our world is being documented to an unprecedented degree. While two device manufacturers acquired the mapping data companies, the internet giants have invested in cameras, planes, and satellites. Where will this take the location industry?

Mapping Tables: It’s difficult to collaborate in person with an online slippy map; a paper spread out on a table or tacked to a wall is still better. Digital mapping tables are attempting to beat back paper once and for all. By providing everyone the same view and editing capabilities plus the ability to turn on and off layers, will they be able to do it?

Government 2.0: Governments are treasure troves of data. Increasingly they are releasing it online for free. ESRI’s release of ArcGIS has also aided the battle by providing municipalities with this ability. This data is aiding both the citizen and Government agencies. How is this critical information being put to use?

Crowdsourcing: Pioneered by OSM, the rest of the mapping industry is catching up. Let’s examine where they’re taking it.

Disease Awareness: Our increasingly connected world allows diseases to spread in record time. These same networks alert us to outbreaks. We’re going to examine new geocentric approaches to epidemiology.

Cartography: Each map has a distinctive look and feel. What are the trends in design and user experience?

Workshops

Back by popular demand, Where 2.0 will have a full day of workshops where participants can dig deep into a range of issues and leave the conference armed with new tools and skills. Workshops are one hour and fifteen minutes in length and will be held on Tuesday, May 19. Topics we’d like to explore include, but are not exclusive to:

Geo Support in Web Application Frameworks: As people design their own mapping applications, there has been a need for built-in geo support. We’re looking for workshops that teach about Mapstraction, Modest Maps, Open Layers, GeoDjango, GeoRuby, MapCruncher, and other tools.

GeoStack: As locations apps are brought in-house, companies need their own geostack. What are the best tools?

Mapping APIs: The location space would not have gotten as far as it has today without all of the innovation in the mapping API space. How can you test the limits of these free resources?

GeoTargeting: Knowing users’ locations has never been more important. Identifying it accurately can be difficult and expensive. What are the best methods?

Privacy Implications: As you are collecting user data, keeping track of your users, or collecting geodata, are you aware of the relevant laws? What would you teach others?

GeoBrowsers: Google Earth and NASA WorldWind are both amazing geobrowsers. How can you get the most out of them?

Data Management: Geo applications work with massive amounts of data. What are the tools, tips, and tricks that can be used to manage it?

Protocols and Formats: GeoRSS, GML, KML, EXIF, Microformats, Geo OpenSearch. Which formats are on the way in and which ones are on the way out?

These are just some of the technologies and transformations we’ve noticed and represent just the starting point for the program. While we’d like you to tap into the theme as your inspiration in writing your proposal, feel free to wander. What are you working on that will change the world, or at least the world you’re in? What project is bringing you pleasure, or teasing your brain? Surprise and delight us; shake us out of our assumptions. We’re angling for shorter talks with longer breaks so you’ll have more time for one-on-one interactions.

Limited speaking opportunities are also available through conference sponsorship. Contact Yvonne Romaine at (707) 827-7198 or yromaine@oreilly.com for more information.

Tips for Submitting a Proposal

Help us understand why your presentation is the right one for Where 2.0.

• Be authentic! Your peers need real-world scenarios they can use. Please submit original presentation ideas that focus on knowledge transfer, and engaging and relevant examples.
• Include as much detail about the planned presentation as possible. The more we know about what you plan to present and why it matters, the better.
• Be thorough! If you are proposing a panel tell us who else would be on it. If you are going to have a release let us know. If you feel this is something that hasn’t been covered at Where 2.0 before let us know.
• Keep it free of marketing.
• Keep the audience in mind: they’re technical, professional, and already pretty smart
• Clearly identify the level of the talk: is it for beginners to the topic, or for gurus? What knowledge should people have when they come to the presentation?
• Give it a simple and straightforward title or name: Fancy and clever titles or descriptions make it harder for people (committee and attendees) to figure out what you’re really talking about.
• Limit the scope of the talk: in 45 minutes, you won’t be able to cover Everything about Widget Framework X. Instead, pick a useful aspect, or a particular technique, or walk through a simple program.
• Explain why people will want to attend: is the framework gaining traction? Is the app critical to modern systems? Will they learn how to deploy it, program it, or just what it is?
• Let us know in your proposal notes whether you can give all the talks for which you submitted proposals.

Looking for advice before submitting your proposal? Read these tips from program committee members from some of our other conferences:

• Giuseppe’s thoughts (MySQL Conference & Expo)
• Baron’s thoughts (MySQL Conference & Expo)
• Colin’s thoughts (MySQL Conference & Expo)

Important Dates

The submission deadline for all proposals is December 8.
Early registration opens in January 2009.
Standard registration begins in March 2009.

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