Conference Overview
About the Where 2.0 Conference
Location technology is booming across the Web and into people's homes. Now in its third year, the Where 2.0 Conference is where the grassroots and leading edge developers building location aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. In the O'Reilly conference tradition, Where 2.0 presents leading trends rather than chasing them.
At Where 2.0, you'll find source mapping tools, open standards for data and location web services, and sensors for obtaining location data. We'll learn how the established geo industry is reacting to the first businesses making money from their grassroots geospatial projects. There's no better place to meet the people behind the mash-ups, the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to the future of geospatial. Join us at Where 2.0 to debate and discuss what's viable now, and what's lurking just below the radar.
Where 2.0 is a two-day, single-track conference featuring a unique combination of high profile keynotes with big players, lightning talks, panel discussions, demos, high order bits, Q&A time and much more. The most innovative and interesting people in this space are featured on stage, and stay around to debate and discuss with other conference-goers off stage. The conference also features ample time for networking, informal events, and the famed Where Fair (think geospatial science fair on steroids).
Who Should Attend Where 2.0
- GIS industry people looking to learn more about the latest developments in the mash-up world
- CTOs, technology evanglists, and technology scouts within companies looking to learn about viable technology
- CIOs, products managers, and technologists curious about how to incorporate location technology into existing products
- 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 non-profit location groups
- Neographers and traditional geographers working deep in the trenches of geospace
- Venture capitalists looking for the next investment opportunity
Conference Program
The thrust of the program for the 2007 conference will answer the question "where's the value"? Every lasting fantastic technical innovation has built value around it, and the new world of networked geographic tools follows the same rule. We'll be looking at the latest Where 2.0 technology, businesses, and content with an emphasis on these questions: How can developers make money at this? What applications have legs? How can enterprises make money using this?
For an overview of this space, read The State of Where 2.0 (PDF) co-written by program chair Brady Forrest.
Sample topics and themes to be discussed:
- Online local advertisement systems like Google, Yahoo!, MSN
- Demographics information
- New geo map hacking world
- Money-making mash-ups
- Mobile applications, like ZoneTag
- Hot start-ups
- Open source tools such as GRASS, PostGIS; MapBender
- Security applications (fraud detection, tracking, surveillance): geospam, privacy
- Enterprise integration of Google Maps, Virtual Earth, open source tools, etc.
- Adding mash-ups into small business internal purposes to help efficiency, increase revenue
- Location-based services moving up on the stack
- Map visualization techniques
- Sensors
- Gathering data by any means necessary
Third Annual Where Fair
For the third year in a row, Where 2.0 will bring forward the location aware tools, apps and hardware being created in garages and university labs for the Where Fair. The Where Fair is a hands-on, science fair style event where the creators of these location based projects can share their emerging location technology with others. Where Fair projects will be selected from research, academia, and yet-to-be-discovered entrepreneurs.
Program Committee
Program Chair
Brady Forrest is Chair for O'Reilly's Where 2.0 and Emerging Technology conferences. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Berlin and NYC. Brady writes for O'Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.