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Hands-On Resources to Address Opportunities & Possibilities in Location Technology
Can you imagine today’s world without location-based technology? It’s everywhere—in augmented reality apps for smartphones, GPS systems in our cars, urban transportation systems, and with public participation (ie. Gov 2.0) and visualisation web portals. In the past year, EngagingCities alone has dedicated over twenty posts to the subject of GIS in planning, with a 2012 location-based article series in the works as we speak. This being said, getting a handle on the multitude of planning related geospacial platforms and tools out there isn't easy, especially considering the rapid rate at which this technology is evolving.
The O'Reilly Where Conference, held this coming April 2-4 in San Fransisco, Califorinia is a great resource for planners interested in using location technologies to learn more about best practices and emerging trends in GIS software development and tools being utilized to engage citizens around the world. Now in its eighth year, Where is loaded with sessions and workshops designed to bring together city officials, planners, developers, technologists, researchers, geographers, and other industry experts to share their experiences and address opportunities and possibilities in location technology.
This year, as in past years, the conference organizers have put together a robust program, focusing primarily on mobile and location development, business and strategy and marketing opportunities. We’ve scoured the program tracks and have put together a list of our favorites from the Mobile and Location development tracks, we believe are some of the most pertinent to public engagement:
Mobile Development
Which technologies are proving to be the most efficient and flexible for creating cutting-edge, location-aware mobile apps? Find out about new developments in HTML5, JQueryMobile, and other languages and tools along with tips from expert developers.
How Open is Open? Five Years Later …
Access to new streams of geographic data begs a number of important questions for government and business: how will we harness this data, organize it, and what is truly public versus private? Read full session description >>
Geo-Government: The New Information EcoSystem for Government
A panel from Three states and one city will discuss their efforts to create a new information eco-system for government to improve decision making and citizen engagement, using web services and geospatial technology. Read full session description >>
How Working With Geospatial Data Can Be A Joy and Not A Pain
This hands-on workshop teaches planners how to produce insightful, thought provoking maps of public activity, learn how to use data from open data repositories, perform powerful spatial analyses, and share online. Read full workshop description >>
Location Development
Location technologies provide data-rich information that can build a valuable user experience. Find out who's developing the tools that make collecting, storing, retrieving, and analyzing huge amounts of data possible.
Building The Augmented City
Location-based Augmented Reality can be more than points of interest floating somewhere on the horizon. Find out how AR technology will enable the overlaying of location data onto buildings themselves. Read full session description >>
Building a Data Narrative: Discovering Haight Street
Applying traditional data analysis tools, as well as more esoteric ones like computer vision, to multiple disparate data sets and data types can create a more complete and nuanced narrative of one of San Francisco’s most vibrant streets. Find out more >>
Uber: Connecting Geodata For and About Users
Uber’s data analytics have revitalized the user experience for on-demand transportation, dragging automobiles into the mobile century. Read full session description >>
Place & Participation
To find out more about using geo-spacial tools and move your project into a more advanced thinking about place and participation, visit Where Conference 2012. Early registration and significant discounts are being offered to EngagingCities readers by O’Reily conferences now through February 29. Enter discount code: CITY20 during registration to receive an additional 20% off early registration.
About the Author
Communications Manager
Nicole is a Communications Manager at Urban Interactive Studio and editor of EngagingCities.com, specializing in communication outreach in various forms ranging from speaker relations, social media strategy, project management and online engagement
