That's great Nat. I guess it's up to me (and other geowankers) to come up with some really cutting edge stuff now and make proposals for speeches.
Cheers, Tom Longson (nym) http://igargoyle.com/ On 1/25/06, Nathan Torkington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > For a non-technologist conference, there was a lot of technologist > > companies making big technologist announcements. I had a great time > > despite having people saying to me before I left, "You're going > > where?". I think a bunch of the geowankers got free tickets at the > > last minute, so gnat may have reversed his "I don't want wank" > > statements. How can anyone not want wank? I hope I get invited again > > next year, and more geowankers get to speak. > > I did indeed change my tune. We were chasing a rapidly developing > mashup world and trying to figure out how to do a Big Budget > Conference with business people and the technologists we know and > love. We started off thinking "business people want business wank", > but there are dozens of conference offering business wank and > everyone's sick of it. Business people turned out to really like > meeting the people who were turning things upside down. I think Where > 2.0 ended up as a pretty good mix of technology and business, and I > want to do it like that again this year. > > Don't be put off by the marketing copy on the web site. I'm working > on a version that better represents the mixture of technology and > business, and the reason for putting things on stage. We're trying to > showcase the projects that are shaking up the > geolocation/mapping/local scenes. These projects are almost always > from one or more of these worlds: > * civic action work > * hackers / geowankers / alpha geeks (hi!) > * open source > * startup > > They're never from big fat companies with "respect" and "names". ESRI > is like Microsoft, like any big company, slave to its businss model. > It can't do new things, because new things threaten old things, and it > makes all its money off old things. (I realize you know this, I'm > stating it so you know that I know it :-) Putting ESRI on stage to > talk about disruptive innovation would be like putting the MPAA up to > talk about disruptive music distribution models. There may be other > reasons to put ESRI on stage, but it's highly unlikely to be because > they're genuinely turning the GIS world on its head. > > So I want to show the projects that are hurting the old way of doing > things, have some people talk about how things are changing (just to > spell it out), and then leave it to the audience to figure out where > to make the money, or even whether there is money to be made. I was > talking with Chris Holmes tonight and in conversation came upon that > formulation: we'll show you how the world's changing, you figure out > for yourself where the money is. > > So I am definitely open to geowankers. Ignore what ur-Nat said. Nat > in early 2006 is saying "bring me your geowankers, your open source > toolkit creators, your huddled Google Maps hackers". If anyone > reading this is interested in presenting at Where 2.0, getting your > project out to the press (we had NYT, Economist, Wired, and others), > getting in front of business people who are making decisions about > what to use, or even getting in front of VCs and angel investors if > you think that money could help what you're doing. > > Nat > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking > _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
