The Paradigm Shifts of Neo-Geography

Attending the world-wide Surveying and Spatial Information Conference FIG2010 this week in Sydney, I can't help but notice a growing divide between the traditional GIS and Surveying community and the rapidly evolving world of 'neo-geography', represented at the Where 2.0 conference just before Easter.

What sets these two apart, other than the average age of the delegates (about 60 and 30 respectively), is the way they approach the paradigm of computerised mapping.

"Ignite Where" Rocks!

One of the many highlights of the Where 2.0 conference was definitely the "Ignite Where" evening.

If you have not heard about ignite before, check out this previous post.

Having attended a few Ignite events in Sydney and Perth, I thought it would be nice to try my hand at presenting here. It provided a comfortable and relatively neutral, opportunity to try out one of my favourite soap box topics: is the surveying industry stimulating or instead holding back innovation in spatial information in Australia? Judge for yourself here.

Reverse Geocoding the Twitter Geo-Stream

I'm at O' Reilly's Where 2.0 2010 Conference in San Jose, California. It's a great event: absolute geo-geek heaven. There's a multitude of technologists around, and all the big players in online and social media(Google, Bing, Twitter, Foursquare etc.) have their 'Directors of Geo' present.

Spatial Information is the key to Smart Infrastructure

Last Friday (12/3/2010) I had the pleasure of attending the "Smart Infrastructure Conference" in Canberra, hosted by the House Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. The conference was part of the parliamentary inquiry into Smart Infrastructure, which (in short) tells the government how best to implement and maximise the benefits from Smart Infrastructure, such as dynamic train management, smart utility grids or hydrological sensor networks.

Image Source: www.lbxjournal.com/node/260011  

Awesome Ignite Sydney 4, and why is Spatial so un-cool?

Yesterday I was delighted, inspired and awed at Ignite Sydney 4 - Sydney's opening of Global Ignite Week.

 Photo: Jean-Jacques Halans

For those of you who are not yet familiar with Ignite: it's like geek-speed-dating with PowerPoint.