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[IP] Where 2.0 conference free passes for IP, focuses on mapping/location innovation





Begin forwarded message:

From: Tim O'Reilly <tim@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 15, 2005 11:32:16 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Where 2.0 conference free passes for IP, focuses on mapping/ location innovation


Dave, seeing Jeff Pulver's special offer for VON made me realize quite belatedly that I should send a special offer to IP for our Where 2.0 Conference, to be held in San Francisco June 29-30. (See http://conferences.oreilly.com/where for details.) The conference focuses on the new breed of location technologies. Google Maps and the follow-on announcements from Microsoft have brought a lot of attention to the fact that innovation and competition this area is heating up, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Speakers include the key open maps hackers who've built the various google maps mashups (google maps + craigslist, google maps + yahoo traffic etc.) as well as Paul Levine, head of Yahoo! Local, Steve Lawler of Microsoft MapPoint and MSN Virtual Earth, Brett Taylor, the product manager for Google Maps, Matt Gross of MapPoint Mobile, Bob Denaro of MapQuest, Jack Dangermond of ESRI, Balaji Prasad, CTO for Telematics at GM, Perry Evans, founder of Local Matters, Udi Manber of A9, and David Rumsey, whose amazing work using new technologyt to bring historical maps to life got him a standing ovation when he keynoted at our Open Source Convention last year. It's a unique mix of speakers and attendees, where the hackers pushing the edge meet the big players face to face.

As we've done for some previous conferences, we'll offer free passes to the first five IP list members who register using the code where05tim.

Why Where 2.0?

At O'Reilly, we view our mission as amplifying the weak signals of emerging trends. We first started publishing books on free software in the mid-1980's, on Linux in the early 90's. In 1998, we organized the summit meeting where the name "open source" was formally adopted by the leaders of the most important open source projects. We organized the seminal P2P summit in 2000, held our first conference on web services in 2001. Now, in 2005, we're holding our first conference on mapping and location sensors.

Why? We've seen alpha geeks doing interesting work at the fringes: reverse engineering Google Maps to create the Google Maps-Craigslist mash-up; a flood of red-blue maps after the November 2004 U.S. presidential election; visualizing digital photographs on a map. The presence of interesting people and interesting projects tells us that there's a demand for this technology, and that as the volume of these projects increase, we'll see the movement of mapping and location from the geospatial niche to the mainstream.

In each of the previous occasions we mentioned, hackers led the way, and the industry--entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and big companies--followed. Now, we believe that location technology is at the same inflection point on an explosive growth curve.

We've gathered the hackers pushing the edge and brought them together with the best-in-breed applications and cutting edge technology vendors to show what's possible in the space. Whether it's the war stories of the LBS startup uLocate, an overview of what's available in the way of open source geospatial tools, or announcements of new services from the major players, we know you'll have a great time. And the Where Fair and exhibit hall reception on Wednesday night gives a chance to mingle with the people building the next wave of location- and mapping-enabled technology.

The location momentum is building and adding muscle not just to a "Where" meme, but to the whole philosophy of a "Web 2.0" world as well. Like you, we're curious about where this new technology will take us--it's bound to be a very different landscape in just a year or two. It may not be a well-defined path now, but it's exciting to be taking first steps into this new territory.

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Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc.
1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com (company), http://tim.oreilly.com (personal)



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