21stMarch
Day two at Mashup Camp yesterday proved to be a great day! In addition to meeting many innovative thinkers and participating in some great discussions about mashups, mapdango won first place in the mashup competition! Extremely excited to say the least…and my wife is really even more excited about the MacBook Pro I brought home last night.
There were some great mashups in the contest, including several location-based product availability mashups, some mobile mashups (very cool to think about the emerging possibilities of mashing stuff around for devices), iMovie mashups, a Flickr history mashup, and more. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to see all of the mashups that were competing. Nice to think the little mashup from Portland gave those Silicon Valley mashups a run for the bling bling.
Got some great feedback on some new functionality that may be added to mapdango, including *some* integration with social networks (via OpenSocial).
I kept hoping throughout the camp that there had been more geo folks attending…oh well, maybe next time. I had several discussions with non-geo techies that are very interested in geospatial ’stuff’ and it seemed like a great opportunity to pass on knowledge, wisdom, and advocacy to folks that are eager to contribute/participate in an area that is not part of their core. Even though there is WhereCamp, I’m thinking it would be pretty sweet to have a GIS unconference…GISCamp? Anyone interested in seeing if we could make that happen? Bueller…Bueller…Bueller?
Finally, I did manage to make it up to Yahoo!’s office in San Fran to sit in on a small meetup about FireEagle. That’s a good crew of folks down there. I am looking forward to seeing the plethora of apps that interact with FireEagle that are sure to be developed as the year progresses. Have some ideas of my own that may just get developed/released.
Will try to get another post out before the day ends, but either way have a great weekened!
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Andres says 23rd March @ 10:11
Hey Andrew,
Thanks for the question–a very good one. I think that the basic idea behind GISCamp (if it were to come together) is for it to be a subset, or perhaps better stated, a more specific (concentrated?) unconference than WhereCamp. The WhereCamp wiki states that “WhereCamp is the unconference for geohackers.”
GISCamp would be more about, well, about GIS, and I think that the byline would be more like: “GISCamp is the unconference for GIS users.” It would be an uber-exclusive event just for the elite cadre of hard-core geo-experts…mwoa-ha-ha! Just kidding of course!
But I do think that it would attract a different crowd…meetups would enable more targeted discussions, Q/A sessions, debates, and brainstorming about GIS topics (e.g., ‘watershed modeling using XYZ data’ or ‘how I developed a GIS-based tool for tracking stormwater infrastructure’ or ‘Ten Common Mistakes to Avoid in the GIS Needs Analysis process’ or ‘Advocating GIS: What You Can Do’) that would be open to all…ideally, it could serve as a bridge between ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ GIS users (all skill levels and what not).
GISCamp would be complementary to WhereCamp…I would like to see if anyone has any other thoughts…worthwhile endeavor?
Glad to get feedback…
Cheers,
-a
Mark Palmer says 24th March @ 7:18
Congratulations on MapDango it dang rocks!
– gruvr — spelt with no e 
Andres says 24th March @ 9:20
Thanks, Mark. The ‘e’ has been purged…
Dave Kohler says 25th March @ 14:40
Congrats!!! The news is awesome.
Interesting idea on GISCamp. While I did not go to WhereCamp last year, a colleague did. He loved it, and definitely gravitated towards the more GISy demos.
However, are there enough folks like him (and me) in the GIS world to hold a successful unconference?
One thing that I think that makes WhereCamp sucessful is that it benefits by being associated (not officially, I think) with Where2.0. What “GIS” conference would you envision GISCamp piggybacking on to get the users needed to have a successful unconference? ESRI’s?
Andres says 25th March @ 16:15
Hey Dave,
Thanks for the comment and the questions.
Are there enough folks in the GIS world to hold a successful unconference?
———————–
I am not sure. I think it is worth exploring over the coming weeks/month. As with all things, it may initially start up as a small affair that builds up. I was surprised by how many folks from OR and WA went to the OR URISA ‘Hot Apps on a Cold Winter’s Day’ gig earlier this month…so at least on a regional basis it may be viable. Guess it also depends on advocacy/awareness 
What “GIS” conference would you envision GISCamp piggybacking?
———————–
I’ve thought about that, and unfortunately timing wise, I am not sure that there are other ‘agnostic’ (read: non vendor-centric) GIS conferences occurring towards the latter part of the year (i.e., that would give enough lead time to organize/coordinate). URISA’s Annual Conference is occurring in New Orleans in early October, so perhaps that is one piggy-backable conference. Would need some help organizing the event outside of my hometown though!
Perhaps I should get a survey going to see what interest is, and then go from there…yeah, I’ll do that. As with other polls/surveys, will have to take it with a big ole grain of salt though…so many more people express interest in attending than actually attend. Guilty of that myself (gulp).
Thoughts?
Dave Kohler says 26th March @ 8:55
I think the regional idea is the way to go. Unconferences may be accepted in the web community, but I suspect that employees in a traditional GIS shop would have a hard time convincing their employer to pay the cost (time and money) for them to attend such an unstructured event - especially if it involved air travel.
I missed the “Hott Apps” early this month. I found out about it too late and was already scheduled to go to Safe’s FME conference. Not having gone, I do not know what I missed. But it sounded great and I am sorry I missed it. I suspect that working with these guys on a regional level would be more productive than on hitting the national level first.
Side note: I have recently moved from FL to OR. And judging solely from my experience with the both the regional ASPRS chapters, OR has the people, organization, and enthusiasm to pull something like this off.
Andres says 26th March @ 9:34
Hey Dave,
Thanks for the continuing feedback. Going to do some very preliminary polling to see whether GISCamp, in general, is worth pursuing.
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Andrew Turner says 23rd March @ 6:45
Congrats on the new MBP.
Regarding “GISCamp”, how would it actually differ from WhereCamp? The more generic term “Where” aims to be more inclusive of non-geo experts that want to learn about geospatial technologies and philosophies. GIS implies hard-core geo-experts.