Between the Poles

GeoTec 2008

GeoTec 2008 will be happening in Ottawa Jun 2-5.  This is always an interesting event with very forward looking sessions.  A few highlights involving some of my colleagues include

Mon June 2 9-12 Doug Eberhard Workshop on Building Digital Cities entitled Convergence: Implications for eGovernment

Mon Jun 2 9-12 Mike Schlosser GIS Skills for the Engineering and CAD Professional

Tue Jun 3 1-2:30 Jonathan Knowles Using Collaboration Technology to Create Efficiencies and Maximize the Value of Geospatial Data

Tue June 3 1-2:30 Mike Schlosser Engineering GIS, Interoperability and PSAB 3150

Wed Jun 4 10:30-12 PANEL—Open Source in Government: The Canadian Experience
Panelists: Tyler Mitchell, executive director of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation, Geoff Zeiss, director of Technology, Autodesk, Dave McIlhagga, president & CEO, DM Solutions Group

 Thurs Jun 5 9-10:30 Mike Schlosser Open Source Geospatial

I mnetioned earleir that this is a unique opportunity to also attend  OSBOOTCamp 6 Jun 2-3 a two day event focusing on open source geospatial software, hosted at Careton University, in Ottawa, Canada.

ADN Geospaptial Developer Camp June 25-27

June 25-27 the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) will be hosting a Geospatial Devcamp at the Embassy Suites in San Rafael, California.  If you are interested in learning how to develop solutions with MapGuide, FDO, AutoCAD Map3D, and Topobase, you are invited to attend the devcamp to work directly with Autodesk developers to learn more about the APIs and other development tools that are available to application developers.  The legendary Bob Bray and other Autodesk developers will be there, so I would recommend that if you have developed or are interested in developing geospatially-enabled applications involving MapGuide, FDO, and MapGuide, you should consider attending.  The Geospatial Devcamp includes

• Classes on developing and integrating applications with Autodesk MapGuide, Feature Data Objects (FDO), AutoCAD Map 3D, and Autodesk Topobase.
• Lisa Campbell and other Autodesk Geospatial Solutions Division senior management will be on hand to outline the future of geospatial application development tools, technologies, and technologies like FDO and MapGuide Open Source.
• Autodesk’s geospatial product management and engineering teams will also be there, so you can put faces to the email addresses.
• There will be a "meet the expert" program so you can have a one-on-one meeting with an Autodesk developer or product manager.
• And you'll be able to share information with other application developers.

I plan to be there and am looking forward to seeing many of you in San Rafael.

Where 2.0

The Where 2.0 Conference , which is organized by Brady Forrest, is  unique, primarily because the focus is on innovation in the geospatial sector.  This year we had speakers explaining how to build a DIY Drone (unmanned aerial vehicle), a fantastic view of the universe called Celestica, building a programmable GPS device using open source hardware, digital cities, and modelling crowd behaviour, to name just a few.  The other unique thing about Where 2.0 is that there are no parallel sessions.  This is achieved is by having many short sessions, 10-14 minutes each.  This means that it is physically feasible to literally hear every presentation.  Another unique thing about Where 2.0 is a relatively high proportion of presentations addressing how humanitarian causes can be assisted by web-based technology. For example, we had sessions talking about sustainability, green maps with the freeways removed, disaster technology, a talk about InSTEDD , which is an open source platform for responding more rapidly to humanitatian crises, and a talk about Ushahidi , a web site monitoring election violence in Kenya.  There were also more mainstream presentations by John Hanke of Google, and Vincent Tao of Microsoft.  John had a surprise guest, Jack Dangermond of ESRI, and Vincent showed something really fascinating that looked like Photosynth integrated into Virtual Earth.  Video recordings of all the sessions are available on the Where 2.0 web site and I would encourage you to look at as many as you can.

Folks who come to Where 2.0 are serious about what they are doing and are prepared for hard work.  Several of us, Jeremiah McKnelly, Chris Claydon, and myself, gave a three and a half hour lab on creating web 2.0 applications on an open source platform.  I was surprised at how well attended it was, over 70 people showed up, about half of whom were not developers. I was even more surprised by everyone's perseverance, because we took everyone through installing Oracle, Apache, MapGuide, MapGuide Studio, FDO, and the open source FDO Oracle provider developed by Haris Kurtagic of SL-KIng.  But it is a tribute to Jeremiah and Chris that just about everyone,  including the non developers, left with a real live running web mapping application.  We have held this type of open source web mapping lab at several conferences beginning with GeoWeb when 40 people showed up for a 6 hour lab in Vancouver, and 39 people left with a running open source web application.   So there is clearly a lot of interest among both developers and non-developers.

Where 2.0

Where 2.0 will be taking place May 12-14 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott.  This is a major geospatial event of the year.  There are sessions by many of the important folks in the geospatial industry including many open source geospatial sessions. I would encourage you to try to make it.

Autodesk  and Google are diamond sponsors this year.  Several of us from Autodesk will be presenting at the event.

Monday, 05/12/2008
1:30pm - 5:00pm Creating Web 2.0 Applications on an Open Source Geospatial Platform
 Location: Salon F
Jeremiah Mcknelly, Chris Claydon, Geoff Zeiss
The tutorial is aimed at developers and others who are interested in the business and technical aspects of developing software on a Web 2.0 open source geospatial platform. No background in web development is required. The workshop will include both business and hands-on technical aspects of developing web mapping applications.

Tuesday, 05/13/2008
Convergence of Architectural and Engineering Design and Location Technology: Implications for eGovernment
11:40am Location: Salon A-F
Geoff Zeiss
The convergence of architectural and engineering design, location, and 3D simulation technologies is being driven by productivity and efficiency in the construction industry. But convergence will also enable governments to create a simulated urban environment that will have important implications for citizen involvement, urban planning, emergency planning, and first response.

Wednesday, 05/14/2008
Digital Cities
2:30pm Location: Salon A-F
Doug Eberhard
Where the world will conceptualize and realize more sustainable cities through the convergence of digital modeling, simulation, visualization, web services and human collaboration.  In our local cities and global economies today, we continue to see increased demand and democratization for richer visual information and communication moving from analog to digital, 2D to 3D, to 4D and beyond.  For people and organizations involved in the planning, design, construction and operations lifecycle of our cities, there is an even greater demand for interoperable “digital city” models with the right levels of detail and accuracy needed to make collective, trusted and timely decisions about existing and proposed conditions. 

Intermap Seminar on Geospatial Data in Engineering

Intermap Technologies will host a free webinar on Geospatial Data in Engineering Thurs and Fri of this week.

When engineers and architects design buildings and infrastructure, they can no longer do this in isolation.  They need to take into account location.  Sustainability initiatives such as LEED certification is one of the major drivers for this, but in different countries other drivers often government legislation are the primary motivators. For example, in the UK right to light is an important driver, in Germany noise abatement, and in many jurisdictions 3D zoning regulations such as view protection are important drivers.  Intermap Technologies is a primary provider of high precision DSMs and DTMs captured via aerial overflights and radar.  In this webinar we will discuss the implications of technology advances in software together with high precision geospatial data is enabling the modeling of urban environments.

North American Webinar
Date: Thursday, May 8
Time: 8:00 a.m. PDT; 9:00 a.m. MDT; 10:00 a.m. CDT; 11:00 a.m. EDT

European Webinar
Date: Friday, May 9
Time: 14:00 CEST

Moderator - Kevin Thomas
Primary speaker - John Weeber / Larry Starling
Subject matter experts - Geoff Zeiss, Neal Niemiec

To sign up go to Terrainscapes .

OSBOOTCamp 6 June 2-3 in Ottawa, Canada

The OSBOOTCamp 6 will be a two day event focusing on open source geospatial software, hosted at Careton University, in Ottawa, Canada.  Come and hear industry experts present talks on web mapping, GIS analysis, OSGeo projects and more.

This year OSBOOTCamp coincides with GeoTec 2008 Jun 2-5 in Ottawa, so you can catch both while you're in Ottawa.
 

GIS Development: Interview with Lisa Campbell

In GIS Development April 2008  there is an interview with Lisa Campbell, who is responsible for Geospatial Solutions at Autodesk.  It is worthwhile taking a close look at this interview because Lisa gives her perspective on some of the important things that Autodesk is doing in the geospatial/infrastructure management domain. 

• Geospatial is no longer an isolated domain, it is showing up everywhere including in design and 3D visualization.
• CAD and GIS are tightly coupled. The workflow at utilities, telecommunications companies, and local governments means that CAD users need geospatial capabilities.
• Autodesk has integrated CAD and GIS so that CAD users can do the geospatial things they need to do with their CAD desktop, including managing data with a spatially-enabled database management system.
• Autodesk is the first public geospatial software company to bring an open source product to market.
• Autodesk's strategy for interoperability is based on FDO, which means that you only need one copy of your data no matter what format it is in.

These are important perceptions, that are having important implications for CAD users in the utility, telecommunications, and local government sectors.

Autodesk University 2008

Autodesk University is occurring Dec 2-5 in Las Vegas, and I would encourage you to attend if you can especially if you like the technical side of things.  Last year we had over 9 000 people at Autodesk University, if I remember correctly.

Also we're doing something new this year, we are asking you to help us select the sessions for AU.  All of the session abstracts that were submitted by the deadline have been uploaded to the AU 2008 Session site. Topics are organized under 19 tracks, which are either an industry or a product.  If you are thinking about attending AU, take a look at the session abstracts, and then Vote for AU Sessions that you would really like  to see.  The deadline for voting is Saturday, May 3, 2008.

Over the next few weeks, we will review your input and whittle the sessions down to the number we can actually physically accommodate in the Venetian Conference Center in Las Vegas.

Registration for AU will start on August 15th, and one week earlier for AU members.  Class schedules will be available for review by August 1st.

Open Source Geospatial Event of the Year: FOSS4G in Capetown

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO is hosting FOSS4G in Capetown, South Africa, Sep  29 - Oct 3.  In February of this year South Africa adopted a national policy on open source, National Open Source Policy in Government , so this is an opportune time to increase awareness of open source gesopatial in Africa.

According to the head of government communications in South Africa "All new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS."  It is intended by April that CSIR and the State Information Technology Agency will setup a project office by to assist in implementing FOSS throughout South Africa.

Autodesk and Google have already signed up to be sponsors of the 2008 event.  In 2007 about 700 developers and users of open source geospatial software got together in Victoria, Canada. 

North American Pioneer: British Columbia Introduces Cap and Trade for Large Emitters

Under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Cap and Trade) Act announced yesterday, large emitters will face caps on their emissions.  In what may become a continental carbon market, large emitters will be able to buy and sell emissions allowances or buy offset units.  The concept is to make it financially beneficial to cut greenhouse gases.  British Columbia is the first province in Canada and the first jurisdiction in North America to implement a cap and trade system.  This follows British Columbia's pioneering carbon tax that was passed earlier this year.