Wednesday 25 September 2013

It’s the GeoCommunity ’13 Post Mortem

The bulk of #Maptember is passed us following a week of geo madness in Nottingham. Having helped run both GeoCom ’13 and FOSS4G everything started to blur into a haze of delegate registrations, networking and partying until 3am however I will do my best to give a bit of an overview of GeoCom ’13. In an attempt to organise my slightly tired mind I will separate it into the serious stuff and the fun stuff.

Serious Stuff:
GeoCommunity ’13 proper kicked off on the morning of the 17th with registration and the opening speakers including new attendee Stuart Batey speaking on behalf of 135 Geographic Squadron providing a very real world look at the uses of GI. After spending the rest of the morning checking the sponsors were OK (they were) and registering delegates I was able to escape the desk and get along to the SMART cities stream.

I was treated to an exciting/terrifying vision of an integrated location based future in which we are bombarded with location specific marketing by UCL’s Andy Hudson-Smith. This was followed by a slightly more immediate report on Glasgow’s SMART cities initiative which is working to put the production of GI data in the hands of the citizen, with a focus on widening the demographic away from usual tech users. This was followed by a demonstration of how a very simple but practical application for GI can be used to both solve a problem (in this case optimising meeting locations and travel times) whilst also introducing the concept and usefulness of GI to other colleagues and departments, definitely useful for anyone in a large organisation.

Wednesday the 17th opened with a slightly sore head and a discussion of the challenge of open data given by Iain Sterland of Sainsbury’s. This was followed by an overview of BIM and changing government regulation, further cementing its importance and place within the GI sector. To prepare myself for FOSS4G I headed over to the open stream to see Chris Ewing talk about using Open Data and Open Software for catastrophe modelling which also provided an interesting insight on how insurers calculate risk and exposure using geo data. Of particular interest to someone who studied climatology was Mark Jackson’s report on an ambitious and extensive project to create an open source geoportal for climate science showing the potential of GI and open as a tool for scientific research and collaboration.

Hopefully this gives some idea of the breadth of topics on offer at GeoCom ’13, many of which I was sadly unable to attend due to a lot of running around trying to find things! For someone trying to get back up to speed with all things geo the variety of the industry is actually slightly intimidating.

The Fun Stuff:
Alongside the talks, workshops and exhibitions there is the essential social side of the conference; the parties and the networking they provide. This year was no exception with the conference kicking off on Monday with the Icebreaker complete with a fiendishly difficult quiz (the winning team only scored 50%) and karaoke (the less said about this the better). This was all taking place alongside the theme of a masquerade ball with masks ranging from the glamorous to the terrifying via the hilarious (a certain council member’s full head rubber map mask deserves an honourable mention).
Armed with a fried breakfast a vague hope that I would be able to put names and faces together I returned to the conference for the first day proper to find that most of our delegates had been surprisingly sensible (against previous form) and that the morning plenary was well attended and only a couple of people looking like they needed another days sleep. The same cannot however be said of the main conference party on Tuesday night. Accompanied by a mini casino and an excellent buffet (cheesecake and stilton is a valid combination) the socialising began and continued well into the small hours. I started with the good intentions of canvassing delegates’ opinions and kept this up for a surprising amount of time until the quality of my questions and the answers began to degrade until I suddenly found I was talking about football... oh well it was inevitable.

OK this is getting long

Overall the general feel of GeoCom was that it was a resounding success with a wide range of speakers, a good sponsor list and some moderately raucous parties. However not being ones to rest on our laurels we will be revamping the format extensively for 2014, possibly with a more hands on, workshop driven approach, more to follow (along with embarrassing photos on flickr).



Friday 13 September 2013

State of the Map Review

As promised here is the first of our #Maptember event reviews courtesy of AGI members Abigail and Angharad.

Abigail, reviewing the main conference said: Last week saw State of the Map (SOTM) come to Birmingham, an event that is part of this month’s #Maptember. A community led event based around Open Street Map (OSM), SOTM move location each year. This is the first time that it was back in the UK since the very first event in 2007 and OSM has come a long way since then.

Topics on offer varied from the business focused sessions on Friday (featuring presentations from Ordnance Survey, ITOWorld, the National Trust and many more) to local mapper perspectives and reflective sessions on diversity in the community. Technical sessions and workshops were also included throughout the programme, in addition to a number of lightening talks and informal sessions to allow everyone to have the opportunity to contribute.

The conference attracted a large number of delegates from outside of the UK and the opportunities to socialise and learn from each other’s regional experiences really helped to bring the worldwide OSM community together.

The GeoCommunity in the UK is thriving and the buzz and atmosphere at this event was fantastic to see. Huge congratulations are due to the organisers who managed a very smooth event.

Talks and videos from the event, along with further information, are available online at: http://2013.stateofthemap.org/

Angharad who also attended the event added: So the first of the 'Big Three' of #Maptember kicked off in Birmingham on Friday 6th Spetember.

State of the Map (SotM) is the annual international conference for the Open Street Map community, and this year it was held in Aston University.

The first day covered topics focused on business uses of OSM, which included a keynote speech from Peter ter Harr, Head of Products at Ordnance Survay, giving an overview of OS's history and important crowd sourced information is becoming for authoritative.

Christian Quest, OSM France, delivered an entertaining brief of how the one of the oldest road map makers, Michelin used OSM to make their first OSM derived map.  

Day two focused on community engagement and inclusion, Aylssa Wright, Director of Solutions at OpenGeo, kicks off the day with her "Change the ratio" - a thought provoking look at how the Open community is still, not as diverse as its open participation ethos might suggest.

Day three continued the community theme with several talks covering the growing 'Gamification' of map contribution - which highlights an interesting change of focused seen at this year’s SotM, from mapping the empty spaces to improving the quality of what is there.



Most of the talks are now available to watch online at: http://citizen.civico.net/openstreetmapfoundation/stateofthemap

Big thanks and congratulations to Brian Prangle, Mappa Merica OSM group and all the SotM13 conference organisers - now on to GeoCommunity and FOSS4G!


The State of the Map Crowd, Complete With Our Two Reviewers Right at the Front

Wednesday 11 September 2013

Cloud technologies: The silver lining for GIS?

As a Gold sponsor at this year’s GeoCommunity, my company Atkins gets not only a platform to engage with existing and new clients, but an opportunity to support the AGI and the work it does. One of the other benefits of Gold sponsorship is the opportunity to give a presentation, and this year that duty has fallen to me.

The big question for me was what to talk about? Sure, I could talk about the various products and services Atkins can provide to help clients make better informed decisions, or the latest 3D mapping technology, earthmine™, which has the potential to change how street level data is collected and analysed. But what I really want to do is invoke some debate and discussion around Cloud technologies and their relevance, or not(!), within the geospatial world – does this “technological” Cloud have a silver lining if you will...

It seems these days you can’t venture near a computer without having “the Cloud” thrust in your face! It is a minefield of terminology – are you looking at PaaS, SaaS, IaaS, NaaS? Is it a Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Community Cloud, Distributed Cloud, or even a Hybrid Cloud? The choices and combinations are seemingly endless, and to the vast majority of us - meaningless. My Dad certainly has no idea what any of this means, yet his online activity is powered by it. For me that is the fundamental principle of the Cloud - it enables people (including my Dad) to get stuff done!


This leaves me pondering the question; are Cloud technologies disruptive enough that they will fundamentally change the way we work with spatial information, or is it simply the same old thing wrapped up in new terminology? I certainly have a view that I will share on Tuesday at 12:15 so if you are at GeoCommunity please come along and engage in the debate or leave a comment here.

By: Colin Henderson, Principal GIS Consultant, Atkins 

Tuesday 10 September 2013

#Maptember is under way and GeoCom is next! (But we’re not neglecting 2014)

Well Maptember is well and truly under way now with SoTM and the British Cartographical Society conference already successfully been and gone and GeoCom ’13 and FOSS4G fast approaching. To get more involved with Maptember beyond our own GeoCommunity event some of our members have kindly offered to review Maptember events that they have attended.

First up will be a review of SoTM coming this Thursday. SoTM was attended by a motley crew of AGI members (some of whom we’ve captured in the obligatory embarrassing photo). This will be followed up by with a review of the BCS conference although next week’s blog articles will be about GeoCom and FOSS4G as I will be at both of them!

AGI Members Past, Present (Future?) Invade SoTM


GeoCom ’13 is the next of the ‘big three’ Maptember events and we are entering the final phase of preparations. The event guide has been printed (I sent of the .pdf literally 20 minutes before leaving for my holiday), the final details about accommodation are about to go out to delegates and the AGI office is a scene of organised chaos. Stationary is being stockpiled, fliers printed and shiny things to decorate masques for the GeoCom party have arrived.
Booking is still open and delegates are still joining so it is not too late to come! More surprisingly we are still securing additional sponsorship this close to the event with Consulting Where the most recent company to take Bronze sponsorship.

Not to be wholly distracted by the final sprint to GeoCom ’13 we also had our Council meeting yesterday. Lots of plans and ideas are afoot for taking GeoCommunity and the AGI into 2014 (our 25th Anniversary) and ensuring we are as relevant as ever to the UK GI sector. We are keen to capitalise on the momentum of #Maptember and ensure that 2014 is just as dynamic and exciting for the GI community, picking up where FOSS4G and SoTM will be leaving off as they head back to the USA.


Of course after a hard day of debating and planning it seemed only reasonable to head out and undertake another key aspect of GeoCom planning, training for the Icebreaker...

The Pre-Icebreaker