The Where 2.0 conference program is almost complete. The focus is on the tech industry’s advances in Mapping, Mobile and Local. Each of these areas are being treated equally and each will have its own afternoon track. Coming back this year we have great speakers such as John Hanke (Google), Jack Dangermond (ESRI), Ryan Sarver (Twitter), Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) and Dennis Crowley (Foursquare).
Maps have moved from flat and static creations to rich representations of the world. And now maps are moving to realtime. The idea of constantly-updated community maps are now the norm and the modifications are constant. The base data of the map you are looking at could have been updated in the past couple of days in time those updates will be instantaneous. The data layered on maps has also changed. No longer is it expected that data will be siloed or have restricted access. In addition to being realtime data is increasingly open and available for all to use. This is especially true when a community has been called on to create a dataset for an application. The combination of almost-realtime maps and open data have enabled mobile applications
Some mind-blowing talks in Mapping include Blaise (the creator of Photosynth and Chief Architect of Bing Maps) talk on The Map As An Information Ecology, Digital Globe’s CEO Walter Scott talk on satellite imagery, and a collaborative talk on Haiti: Crisismapping the Earthquake. We’re also going to have conversations with Google Earth’s John Hanke (about PlaceRank, the move to mobile and Google Place among other things) and Tim O’Reilly will talk with San Francisco’s CTO Chris Vein (about DataSF and other geo initiatives of the city).
Mobile
In two short years location-awareness has become an expected feature of a mobile device. This is entirely due to the increasingly open development available on smart phones today. The App Store and other mobile market places are filled with location-aware apps. Gone are the days when one could easily slip away, or get lost. Advanced consumers now expect their todo list to know where are they are (even if their (i)phone can’t use a background process to take advantage of these apps). Location-awareness has brought increased attention to new mapping data (and a big push towards 3D), new interfaces (such as augmented reality) and the occasional awkward social situation.
Some choice sessions in this area include Ryan Sarver, the Director of Twitter’s Platform, talk on Geostreams, GDGT’s Ryan Block’s Locative Devices panel, Josh Williams of Gowalla’s talk on Moving People with Pixels, Dennis Crowley of Foursquare’s talk on using g Jason Grigsby’s talk on hybrid mobile apps, and of course, several talks on Augmented Reality. In mobile we’ll also look at mobile intersects with machine learning and how computer vision and apps like Google Goggles will change the mobile experience.
Local
When I stand on a corner I can now know more about it than ever before. I can immediately look up what businesses are nearby and where my friends prefer to go. Businesses are increasingly realizing that their online reputation (via local search and sites like Yelp) will affect foot traffic as well. A consumer can quickly and easily evaluate a store moments before stepping in.
People talking in this area are Yelp’s CEO Jeremy Stoppleman, Danny Sullivan is going to talk with Local Search Engines, and MG Siegler will be examining how social mobile services affect the local space.
We’ll be discussing these Mapping, Mobile and Local trends with Google and Yahoo! (and others) at Where 2.0. The three day conference runs March 30- April 1 in San Jose. Radar readers can register with this discount code for 25% whr10pcb.