WhereCampPDX is a free unconference focusing on all things geographical. This informal meeting of minds welcomes all geo-locative enthusiasts, anyone who asks “where am I” or feels the need to “know their place”.

WhereCamp is my #1 favorite Portland conference besides Open Source Bridge. In 2008, it was where I came up with an idea that would later become Geoloqi. Little did I know that Aaron Parecki was working on the exact same thing at the exact same time.

The great thing about WhereCamp is that is brings together a bunch of really intelligent people interested in GPS and geolocation. There’s so much data to absorb that the conference feels like an adrenaline rush to the brain.

What’s an Unconference?

An unconference is a conference planned by the participants, we all convene together, plan sessions, and have break-outs into sessions. This gives everybody an opportunity to bring to the table the things that interest them the most and lets us talk about new topics that are still new and exploratory. Part of what is important to hearing new voices and getting new ideas is lowering barriers to participation – this event is free and it is driven by the participants.

Schedule:

• Friday, September 24th: Evening kickoff party, location TBA
• Saturday, September 25th: Unconference from 10AM-6PM at Metro, followed by dinner and hacking, location TBA.
• Sunday, September 26th: Games and other fun activities, around downtown/Old Town, details TBA.

Where:

Metro
600 NE Grand
Portland, OR 97232
(Map)

RSVP on Eventbrite

Wherecamp is free, but we need to know that you’re planning to come! Please sign up on Eventbrite and put it on your calendar. This year’s event is going to be excellent.

Session Ideas?

We’re welcoming all session ideas. The best place to put them is on the WhereCamp wiki!

Sound Good?

Hope to see you there! If you’re interested in WhereCamp, you might want to also check out CyborgCamp, which will happen only a few weeks later on October 2nd at Webtrends.

—-

About

Amber Case, (@caseorganic) is a Cyborg Anthropologist studying the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way we think, act, and understand the world around us. She’s obsessed with compressing the space and time it takes to get data from one place to another, especially when the final destination is the mind.

GeoLoqi is a website and mobile app for securely sharing location data, with features such as Geonotes, proximal notification, and sharing real-time GPS maps with friends.

Augmented Reality and Geolocation have been hot topics this year, but there has often been a confusion between aesthetics vs. practicality, and fantasy vs. reality. This presentation will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of visual and non-visual augmented reality. Aaron Parecki and I will tell stories from our experiences building location-aware social networks with custom proximity notification.

Recently, Aaron and I decided to make what we’ve been doing with SMS and GPS available to a wider audience as open source iPhone and Android apps. We’ve named it GeoLoqi, and if you haven’t heard of it yet, then here’s a short presentation:

Non-Visual Augmented Reality with SMS and GPS (and cupcakes) at OSBridge – June 2nd, 2010 at 3:45 Pm

If you’re planning to go to OSBridge, you should come to the Non-Visual Augmented Reality with SMS and GPS session! It’s on Wednesday, June 2nd at 3:45 Pm in St. John’s, also known as the Trustee room. It’s on the top floor of the Portland Art Museum, in the same building OSBridge is being held in.

In the presentation, Aaron and I will cover alternate types of augmented reality techniques and how they have been saving us time in the past few months. We’ll demonstrate how we’ve been merging available technologies with custom programming to create location-aware social networks with custom proximity notification. Finally, we’ll describe other uses for location sharing, such as automatically turning off house lights when leaving the house, and wayfinding with piezoelectric buzzers. Privacy and data transparency will also be discussed.

We’ll also be handing out QR Code cupcakes. All of them will have a working QR code, but one QR code will be different. The person with the different QR code will be able to access a prize-winning URL.

That’s all I can say about it until the session. See the GeoLoqi session notes on the OSBridge wiki for more.

Reading QR Codes

QR Code Readers for Android

If you have an Android phone, you’ll have no problem reading QR codes. The iPhone is a little trickier.

For Android, Blake Robinson @blake and Jennifer Jones @jennifermjones recommend Barcode Scanner v3.31. @BigRedPimp also recommends Google Goggles or ScanLife.

Both Blake and @BigRedPimp said I should mention Microsoft Tag, which has some colorful 2D QR Code options available (I used Microsoft Tag at SXSW this year and it was a little slow but otherwise pretty good). Richard Kicklighter @rdkick said that ZXing works great for qr codes. ZXing is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java. Our focus is on using the built-in camera on mobile phones to photograph and decode barcodes on the device, without communicating with a server.

QR Code Readers for iPhone

I only have one recommendation here, and that’s NeoReader. NeoReader used to be slow and clunky, requiring one to take a picture of the QR code for analysis before it was able to decode it. Their latest update has drastically improved the QR code detection process, allowing one to simply hold the iPhone up to the QR code for a second or two.

GeoLoqi Hack Sessions at OSBridge

Help us build GeoLoqi at OSBridge! In addition to the session, we’ll have two days of hack sessions on the apps, website and server. If you’d like to help, we’ll be in the Hacker Lounge for two hours on Wednesday and two hours on Thursday.

Session Times:

OSBridge Hack Session Goals:

• Get user data to send to server.
• Develop new map interface for creating Geonotes with Mapstraction
• SMS Integration
• Develop code for running background apps on iPhone OS4
• Start Building Android app from UI Mockups
• Start Building iPhone app from UI Mockups
• Develop live-updating map

If you’re interested in helping out, a better description of what we have and what we need is here is on the Needs page on the OSBridge wiki.

Who/What do we need?

• iPhone and Android developers
• Back-end developers
• PHP developers
• Usability/UI designers
• Web developers
• Graphic designers
• Beta Testers
• Beer
• Powerstrips

We need people to write documentation, bug test, and develop features. We need beta testers and beer and powerstrips.

It’s that time again! Webvisions (@WV2010) is back in Portland, and it’s in it’s tenth year!Don’t know what Webvisions is? You should. It’s an amazing and affordable conference that draws immense talent from all over the United States and beyond. It’s one of Portland’s best conferences, and it’s happening this week from May 19-21, 2010 at the Oregon Convention Center. It is also a nationally-recognized conference that explores the future of Web design, technology, user experience, business strategy and the future of the web.

Webvisions Promo Codes!

I have 5 promo codes to give away. The first five people to comment below get one!

Conference and Workshop Discount

With this code you can get a rate of $225 for a conference pass, $375 for one workshop or $525 for two workshops. Comment or @ reply on Twitter to get one!

Special Deal on Kris Krug’s Photography Workshop

Kris Krug is one of the world’s top photographers. He’s extremely well-known on Flickr, and has taken many of the avatar images of people in the tech community (including mine). His skills are legendary and his photographic advice is worth For a limited time, you can get a pass to both Kris Krug’s workshop and a Webvisions conference pass for only $350. Sound good? Comment below to get it!

Don’t Miss Out on These Great Webvisions Parties and Events (and they’re free)!

WebVisions is all about learning, networking and exploring the future – but it’s also the place for fun. Best of all, many of the after hours activities are free. Don’t have time for Webvisions during the day? Don’t worry. There are plenty of afternoon and evening activities to attend.

WebVisions 10th Anniversary Party

Wed., May 19th, 6:30 – 10:00pm
It’s the 10th anniversary for WebVisions and we’re throwing a party to celebrate. Co-hosted by the fine folks of ReadWriteWeb and Network Solutions, there’ll be free drinks, cake and maybe even some give-aways. It will be packed, so arrive early as space is limited. For extra fun, bike to the party with the MobileSocial crew – they’re meeting at the Oregon Convention Center at 6:00pm and riding up to the Lucky Lab. » RSVP today.
++ Location: Lucky Lab NW – 1945 NW Quimby, Portland.

Webvisionary Awards Show and Presentation Karaoke

Thurs., May 20th, 6:00 – 9:00pm
Each year, in conjunction with the WebVisions conference, the Webvisionary Awards honors the most visionary, daring, and curious talent on the web by awarding them with a miniature robot. The award show is different in every way, other than the winners receiving an award part – we have top talent for judges, a comedian for a host, a killer DJ to supply the beat, and Presentation Karaoke to kick it off. Sponsored by VTech, WebTrends, 52 Ltd and WebVisions. » RSVP today.
++ Location: Someday Lounge – 125 NW 5th Ave., Portland.

WebVisions Wrap Party

Fri., May 21st, 6:30pm – late
While we lament the demise of the Greek Cusina, we’re starting a new tradition. Nel Centro is one of Portland’s hippest restaurants and they have a great outdoor patio with fire pits and cool lighting. DJ Doc Adam will be spinning and they’ll be serving our special WebVisions Cocktail at their happy hour price of $5 each. DJ Doc Adam is sponsored by VTech. » RSVP today
++ Location: Nel Centro – 1408 SW 6th Ave., Portland.

—-

Still Need to Register For Webvisions?

Online Registration is Open Until May 14th

Three days, over fifty speakers. All for a fraction of the cost of other web conferences. What’s not to love? » Register today (and don’t forget to comment below for a discount!).

—-

Conference Packages

Package A: two-day conference pass for all sessions, panels and keynotes; Package B: conference pass plus one half-day workshop; Package C: conference pass plus two half-day workshops; Package D: conference pass plus one full-day workshop.

Special Deal

WebVisions is excited to offer another special 2-for-1 deal to the Northwest’s top Web conferences. For only $400, you’ll get two-day conference passes to both WebVisions and Open Source Bridge, a conference dedicated to open source technologies and for people interested in learning the open source way. Save over $175 if purchased separately!

Open Source Bridge takes place from June 1-4 at the Portland Art Museum.

Register at http://www.webvisionsevent.com/promo/osbridge/.

Association Partners

AIGA | Portland,   AIGA | San Francisco,   AIGA | Seattle,   AIGA | Chicago,   AIGA | New York,   American Marketing Assn | Oregon,   Art Institute of Portland,   CHIFOO,   DevGroup NW,   IXda,   OMPA,   Internet Strategy Forum,   Portland Web Innovators,   SEMpdx,   World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Media Partners

Silicon Florist
ReadWriteWeb

It’s time for another Portland Data Visualization Meetup. The last one occurred on November 3rd, 2009. We’ll have five main presentations and networking time. Webtrends will again graciously host us on their top floor. Unfortunately, there will not be beer. If you want to, you can bring your own. Or if you know a company who could bring some, let me know.

Schedule

1. StreamGraphs for Visualizing Twitter searches

Amber Case @caseorganic
Background of streamgraphs for visualizing Twitter searches

• Use case
• Limitations

Aaron Parecki @aaronpk

Data collection from Twitter

• Twitter whitelisting
• Storing in MSQL
• Preparing data (removing words) for Python library

Nathan Bergey @natronics

• Implementing the streamgraph algorithm in Python
• Open Source, Python
• How it works
• SVG library

Conclusions, analysis and highlights
Amber, Nathan Aaron

>>Break<<

2. Ben Stabler

• Flex/Flash data visualization platform
• R visualization

3. Nathan Bergey

• Gource (video)
  • Program for visualizing commit history in a git-based code project.

4. Aaron Parecki

• Subversion Commit Logs
  • Showing work habits through visualizing the two years of source code logs.
• GPS Map of Portland
  • Showing where Aaron has been in Portland from October 2009-April 2010.

5. Data Viz of Cyborg Reconstruction Fund

Data Visualization for PayPal donations to @caseorganic’s ankle surgery fundraiser.

• PayPal Data
• MySQL table
• Google Maps/Chart code
• Final Images

Who Should Go?

The event is open to everyone interested in or working in the field of data visualization. This means designers, programmers, information architects, data miners, anthropologists, ect. We’re expecting a similar amount of people to last time (probably around 20-30 people).

Location and Time

Webtrends

851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland OR 97204
(map)

RSVP on Upcoming or view the event on Calagator.

Note to newcomers: If you haven’t been to Webtrends before, you might have a difficult time gaining access to the building. Please E-mail me for detailed instructions on how to enter the building, and a phone number you can reach to gain access once inside.

Google Group:

Ed Borasky started a Google group called pdx-visualization. As the name implies, it is a group for Portland-area people interested in languages and techniques for visualization of data. http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-visualization.

Innovation in Data Visualization Group on Flickr:

I’ve been collecting interesting data viz photos for a while now and posting them to Flickr. They’re all accessible on my Flickr account in this set. Most pictures contain descriptions and links to the viz sources. If you have any Flickr photos of data viz work you’ve done, or work your find innovative, be sure to add them to the group!

Also check out Aaron Parecki’s GPS Logs and Data Visualizations on Flickr.

Hope to see you all there!

——

About

Amber Case, (@caseorganic) is a Cyborg Anthropologist studying the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way we think, act, and understand the world around us. She’s obsessed with compressing the space and time it takes to get data from one place to another, especially when the final destination is the mind.

If you don’t know Aaron Parecki (@aaronpk) yet, you should. You have an excuse if you don’t yet. He moved to Portland in October 2009.

The reason you should know him is because he created a system for automatic location check-in two years ago. He’s been taking GPS data every day for those past two years, and he’s got major data visualization skills. And Aaron innovates. The system he built keeps getting built.

I first met Aaron at Beer and Blog when he had just moved to Portland from Eugene. I forgot who introduced him to me, but I was very excited. I’d been talking about so many of the systems that Aaron was actually building. I promptly told him to present at the second Portland data visualization group, which he did.

Since then, we’ve been working on micro projects together. I started carrying around a GPS with me starting on 12/28/2009. With the exception of Japan, I’ve been logging pretty much everywhere I’ve been.

Having two GPS devices in play makes for some interesting opportunities, which is the subject of this post. This will all make sense in a minute.

Automatic Location Check-ins

A while ago, Aaron set up an automated check in system based on GPS coordinates. The system allows one to check into locations without having to load an interface. This was about 2 years before any of the geosocial systems were readily available. Parecki was not living in Portland, and his audience was small.

Now, social sharing platforms are hot, but they still require user action. This means that one still has to pause social flow to look down at a device, poke a few buttons, and check in. This is normal when one is around a tech-focused crowd, but should one still do this on a date? Or in the presence of a non-geek?

Checking in and Social Punctuation

Checking in can punctuate social flow. I ate lunch one afternoon with and experienced this. A group of five was sitting at the table next to me. One of the guys in the group got excited when he sat down. “Oh! I have to check in on Foursquare!” he said. His tablemates looked at him with blank faces as he tapped away at his mobile device. When he realized this, he started trying to describe Foursquare in order to explain why he had stopped to check in on his mobile device. It didn’t work. There is a way to avoid this.

Quadrant-Based SMS Alerts

Early on, Parecki’s system was able to SMS messages depending on quadrants of Portland, or pre-defined locations. Every time I go home, I get a text message on my phone telling me that I’ve arrived at home. Instead of actively checking in, I can simply dismiss the message. This reduces the time and space it takes to check in because I don’t have to load an app, wait for the location, and then check in. When I leave SE Portland and enter Downtown Portland, I get a SMS message telling me that I’ve changed locations.

Co-Location Negotiation

But there’s a lot more to the social equation than just automatically checking in. GPS is useful for a number of things. For instance, co-location negotiation, or “meeting up”, is one of the most text heavy social protocols currently in existence. It gets worse when one party hops from place to place, because one can’t constantly text their location or forward motion. Two people who haven’t met before must also negotiate by multiple texts. One might sit in a coffeeshop and wait for quite a bit of time without knowing when the other person should arrive. New visitors to buildings need specific directions in order to enter the location.

Instead of receiving a text message like “I’m late!” or “stuck in traffic”, I’ve been able to simply look at Aaron’s GPS. The picture is worth a thousand text messages. I can see if he’s left the office or if he’s crossing the Burnside bridge. If the GPS lines are squiggly and slow, I know he’s having trouble finding a parking spot.

In this situation, there is no need for text messages. Looking at a GPS map still takes user effort and load time. This punctuates task completion and social flow if one must always be checking and refreshing a GPS map 15 minutes before someone arrives.

In an effort to reduce the need to look at the GPS map, Parecki set up what has proven to be my favorite part of the entire system: proximity notification.

Proximity Notification

Instead of having to look at Parecki’s GPS map, the system detects when Aaron and I are in a certain distance of one another. I know when Parecki is near when I get a text message that says “you are 0.4 miles from aaronpk”.When I get a message that says “you are 0.1 miles from aaronpk”, I know that he’s arrived.

I can wrap up client work or finish what I am doing right up until the moment he gets there. I don’t have to waste time waiting. I get a warning “0.4 miles!” and then a confirmation “0.1 miles!”. It’s the equivalent of “on my way” and “here”, the two most common co-location ‘drags’. I call them drags because they are redundant and repetitive communication protocols. They’re actions that can be costly, especially when struggling to split concentration between driving and texting, or the sheer inability to text while on bike.

Bridge Notifications

A few nights ago, Aaron created bridges as locations, so that one could be checked into them as well. I got the text message you see here on my iPhone when I crossed the Burnside bridge.

Aaron wants to take the two years of GPS data he’s gathered and use it to visualize how many times he’s crossed the many bridges in Portland. It’s kind of amusing to get an SMS when crossing a bridge.

Why is any of this stuff important?

I’ll tell you why it’s important. Computers are evaporating. Interfaces are dissolving. Innovation in technology comes from reducing the time and space it takes to preform an action, or compressing redundant actions in order to free up time. Computers used to be the size of gymnasiums. Now we have computers in our pockets, begging for attention. We’re constantly planning for our future selves. We look at Yelp! reviews to prepare our next culinary adventure. We want to guarantee that our future selves will have a good experience. We’re connecting to tons of people to do this, connecting to the collective wisdom of a data set that consists of many samples. The more samples, the more accurate the data set. Why ask one person when you can ask many?

Tablet GPS

Xerox PARC had little tablets in the 80’s that allowed everyone to see where everyone was. There were little local GPS maps in the offices, so people could co-locate more easily. One of the guys working there was very excited about the tablets. “This is the future,” he said, “in maybe 20 or 30 years, everyone will have one of these. What works within these walls will work everywhere on Earth”.

Good interfaces disappear. Good work is invisible. Good technology dissolves. A book is a good piece of technology. If the writing in it is good enough, one’s consciousness dissolves into the pages and one has a consensual hallucination of an alternate reality.

All that is Solid Melts Into Air

The mouse is melting. The button is evaporating. Why check in physically when you can do so automatically? “Buttons are losing their shape,” says Interaction Designer Bill DeRouchey in a recent speech on the History of the Button at SXSW, (Bill’s slides on SlideShare) “Before [the computer monitor], buttons always had a sort of tangible border around them, whether physical or visual”. Automatically checking into a location means that the button does not even have a center. It is just a state that one physically walks into, or something that occurs after a certain amount of time has passed. An environmental button.

This is very similar to a video game, in which pieces of the environment closer to the avatar are loaded more fully than far away variables. Our lives are turning into video games, with plus one follower, and plus one friend. Our phones are our friends, giving us statistics about who we are and what we can do. They are our remote controls for reality.

Button Evolution

“Steve jobs hates buttons”, DeRouchey continues, “He sort of has this mandate to not have buttons. This is evidence if you consider how long they resisted having a two button mouse. It’s a all about hiding the buttons, hiding the barrier between us and technology”. Good design is reducing buttons.

A vehicle is a physical transportation device. There are limits to how small it can be made. But a computer is a mental transportation device. It need not be limited by tangibility.

Geonotes – Attaching Notes to Place

Location sharing platform Gowalla has items that one can collect when they check in, but they have to physically check in on the interface in order to retrieve the item.

This Sunday, Parecki developed the ability for users to send geonotes. That is, an outsider can open up a Google map and drag a circle over an area.

You can leave a Geonote for @aaronpk. Just drag your cursor, choose a geo size, and leave your message!

If you leave your E-mail address, you’ll get an E-mail when @aaronpk gets your note. Also, the bar will let you know @aaronpk’s likelihood of receiving your message, based on 30 days of GPS history. You can also leave a Geonote for me as well.

Geolocal Autosubscribing RSS Feeds and Augmented Reality

When one takes automatic check-ins further, one can add streaming data, allowing one’s device to collect SMS messages for hyperlocal areas without the need for QR codes or any visuals. This could be called non-visual augmented reality.

At WhereCamp 2008 in Portland, I wrote about the possibilities and opportunity of Geolocal Autosubscribing RSS Feeds.

I began the session by drawing a big grid of Portland’s on the white board. I drew 5 circles representing Portland’s 5 quadrants on the white board, and labeled them NW, NE, SW, SE and N. The circles represented ranges of ‘hearing’ that a mobile device might have to RSS feeds. I pointed out that as one progresses from street to street, quadrant to quadrant, one’s phone should understand this and automatically subscribe the user to the geolocal RSS feed for that area. That way, data could be very relevant and contextual to the area.

Aaron Parecki has developed a framework that does just this. Locations are defined by circles on a map, and SMS messages are triggered to send when one enters into the area defined by that circle. One can set neighborhoods, areas, and blocks.

Privacy, GPS, SMS and Check-in Exhaustion

Privacy is an enormous issue with systems like this. One does not always want SMS updates, open GPS map data, or text notifications of another’s proximity. In our case, it works well because we work together frequently. If, on the other hand, we were to get proximity notification texts all the time because our commutes were similar, the data fuzz would be annoying and unvaluable. We’re the only two people using the system right now. Anyone with more than 10 active friends on Foursquare or Gowalla and has probably experienced a Push Notification nightmare of endless texts.

Relative Location Value

Here’s a definition: One’s location is valuable to another if and only if that location or person is socially relevant during that time period. The basic case here is the meeting. Person A and Person B need to meet each other, but GPS data is only shared between them when they have a scheduled meeting. When the meeting ends, the data wall closes off, giving them back their privacy, kind of like a wormhole of temporary transparency between two people. This solves the problem of extreme bouts of “checkin-ism”., as well as the issue of remaining privy to one’s whereabouts all the time.

If more people were on the network, this sort of action would have to be taken. Negotiations of privacy and messages would have to be structured so as to prevent push and SMS notification exhaustion. When done correctly, the system is a valuable time saver that decreases anxiety, showing that technology is not inherently good or bad. It is design that is important.

Want to Learn More?

There’s a lot more. Hours and hours worth. But if you’d like 45 minutes of it, come to our talk at Open Source Bridge session: Non-visual location-based augmented reality using GPS data.

The presentation will cover the topics discussed above. It will also highlight the advantages and disadvantages of visual and non-visual augmented reality. We’ll cover alternate types of augmented reality techniques and how they have been saving us time in the past few months.

We’ll demonstrate how we’ve been merging available technologies with custom programming to create location-aware social networks with custom proximity notification. Finally, we’ll describe other uses for location sharing, such as automatically turning off house lights when leaving for work, and wayfinding with piezoelectric buzzers. Privacy and data transparency will also be discussed.

How is the GPS data taken?

Aaron Parecki uses trackr.eu. They have windows mobile, java, and blackberry versions of their software. Parecki says that, “when the GPS device has a lock it is very accurate, you can tell what side of the street I am on”. The program logs data about every 6 seconds, so it ends up being a very smooth line when drawn on a map.

iPhone Software

iPhone users can use a program called InstaMapper. However since it’s an iPhone you will be limited to running the application in the foreground, which means you’ll stop tracking if you get a phone call or want to check twitter or something. But as long as the program is open you’ll be tracking. IIRC it doesn’t end up with as high resolution data as the program on my phone.

Since I have an iPhone, I can’t run a GPS apps continuously unless the device is jailbroken, so Aaron set me up with with a pre-paid Boost Mobile phone, which the InstaMapper program runs on as well.

One downside is that I have to carry and charge another device. This isn’t bad at all, because I can carry 8 hours of GPS tracking, and it feels kind of awesome to have a physical GPS tracker instead of some claustrophobic invisible mobile app within a device. Not to say that the Boost Mobile interface isn’t archaic. In a way, it’s the age of the interface that makes it nice. Switching between the two makes one constantly appreciate and consider the extremely fast evolution of interface design.

Boost Mobile Phone as GPS Device

You can pick up a Boost Moble phone for $50 at Target, and get a $10 prepaid card. You wouldn’t be using any voice minutes on it, but the credits expire after some time. It would only cost $10/month to run it all the time. Over the summer I loaned a friend my Boost phone and she took it on a bike ride from NY to LA logging most of the way.

Instamapper has an API which provides a CSV file of the last 100 points logged. Aaron then imports them into a MySQL database.

More about Aaron Parecki

You can follow @aaronpk on Twitter, or you can go to aaronparecki.com or visit aaron.pk, the mobile version.
Leave Aaron a Geonote if you’d like. If that’s not your thing, enjoy some Data Visualization that Aaron’s done with his GPS data.

And if you liked what you read, I suppose you can follow me on Twitter as well, or see if I’m in town.

In 2009, a twitter conversation at SXSW among three data geeks accidentally turned into a 30+ person data meetup — with no planning, nowhere near enough chairs, and yet a total success. Clearly, the web’s largest yearly convention needed a gathering of data geeks.

The idea is simple: get a whole bunch of really smart data geeks together, set up group discussions and a round of lightning talks, but leave the majority of time for people who admire each other’s work to meet and exchange ideas.

Five Panels:

• Operations (managing data) — led byHarper Reed of Rackspace and ex-Threadless
• Analytics (exploring data) — led by Toby Jungen, NLP + Hadoop expert and chief architect at Swingly
• Web Apps (humanizing data) — led by Joe West of knowmore
• Visualization (seeing data) – led by Cyborg Anthropologist and Dataviz Curator Amber Case
• Open Data (freeing data) — led by Gil Elbaz, Founder/CEO of Factual and CommonCrawl founder and Dhruv Bansal, rockstar physicist and cofounder of Infochimps
• Infochimps’s own Flip Kromer, together with Factual’s Gil Elbaz will lead a discussion on building a cross-domain data commons.

When?

March 14, 2010 (Pi day!)
6PM – 9Pm
Opal Divine’s, 700 W 6th St 78701
RSVP here (limited space left).

Note: Panels start at 8Pm. At 6Pm, there will be aRelational Database Smackdown, featuring Stu Hood of the Cassandra project. He’ll lead a discussion that will debate the merits of various non-relational databases.

FACING OFF:

• Cassandra core team committer Stu Hood (Rackspace)
• CouchDB core team committer Jan Lehnardt (Apache)
• MongoDB evangelist Wynn Netherland (Orrka, TweetCongress)
• … expert in another scalable DB tech? If you’re brave enough to step up, email us.

See you there! If you can’t make it, but you like Data Viz, be sure to check out my Flickr Data Visualization group – Innovation in Data Visualization and my Data Viz set on Flickr.

Augmented Reality has become more than a buzzword. It represents the next step in human/computer interaction. Interfaces that were once solid have become liquid. With the iPhone, we have the ability to download software from the air. With augmented reality, the interface evaporates from the liquid state into the air as well. Bruce Sterling’s keynote at Layar is a helpful introduction to this field.

There have been a number of applications developed by various companies and individuals, but what’s being done in Portland? As it turns out, quite a lot. I’ve been running an unadvertised Augmented Reality meetup for the past few months (if you’re a developer or Interaction Designer interested in attending this group, comment below), and have found the Portland tech community to be a fertile ground or AR development.

Mobile Portland brings Augmented Reality to you

Starting Monday, you can learn more about what’s going on in Portland AR as well. There will be a meetup at AboutUs.org with two of Portland top AR developers. They’re great people and I highly recommend meeting them. The meeting starts at 6pm at AboutUs.org.

Event Overview

Imagine being able to use your phone to see what that IKEA couch you’ve been considering will look like in your living room. A far-fetched science fiction scenario? No, IKEA has already released an application like that in Europe.

Augmented reality is an exciting and emerging technology. Augmented reality take real life information–typically the video display of a phone–and overlays it with computer information. Augmented reality is something that is completely unique to mobile.

This month at Mobile Portland, we’re lucky to have two speakers who are early innovators in augmented reality. P. Mark Anderson is platform architect for Spot Metrix which provides an augmented reality library for iPhone called 3DAR. Tim Sears created Robotvision, one of the first augmented reality applications for iPhone.

Mark and Tim will share how people are using augmented reality, their experiences using augmented reality, and what the future holds for this new technology.

About the Speakers

P. Mark Anderson

P. Mark Anderson has 13 years experience developing interactive applications. After receiving a degree in Computer Science from University of Colorado in 1999 he started his career as a developer for Sun Microsystems.

In addition to creating several iPhone applications, Mr. Anderson moderates the Helpful iPhone Utilities open source project, as well as My Maps, an augmented reality iPhone app built on top of Google’s personalized mapping system.

Mr. Anderson is platform architect for the 3DAR augmented reality SDK. He enjoys working with both artists and developers, and occupies his spare time with watercolor painting, mountain biking, disc golf and mentoring.

Tim Sears

Tim Sears is a software engineer who works for PR firm Waggener Edstrom by day building web applications, by night creating location-based augmented reality experiences for the iPhone. He created Robotvision, a popular augmented reality browser, for the iPhone in 2009 and currently works with clients to build out mobile geolocation experiences in augmented reality.

His work in augmented reality and social media analytics has been featured in major publications such as ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch and CNET, and has won several awards, including the International Business Awards Best New Product/Service of 2009 for twendz, a real-time Twitter sentiment analysis application.

Date

Monday, January 25, 2010 at 6:00pm

Location

AboutUs Offices
107 SE Washington St., Suite 520,
Portland, Oregon 97214

RSVP on Upcoming.org

Mobile Portland: Augmented Reality on Upcoming.org

Website:

MobilePortland.com

The last Portland Data Visualization Meetup occurred way back in March 2009. That’s way too long to go without a good data viz meetup, so there’s going to be another one. We’ll have five 10 minute presentations and a bunch of networking time. Webtrends will again graciously host us on their top floor.

The event is open to everyone interested in or working in the field of data visualization. This means designers, programmers, information architects, data miners, anthropologists, ect. We’re expecting a similar amount of people to last time, but the presentations will be limited to 10 minutes each or less.

Bring business cards and an excitement to connect with others in this field.

The second Portland Data Visualization Group will be held on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 from 7:30Pm-9:00Pm at Webtrends.

851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland OR 97204
(map)

RSVP on Upcoming or view this event on Calagator.

Agenda:

The second meeeting of the Portland Data Visualization Group will serve as an introduction to what’s going on in the world of data viz. There will be five presentations of 10 minutes each. There are three openings left, so if you would like to demonstrate something you’re working on, please E-mail me or comment below.

If you’re interested in Data Visualization, please come to this event.

Google Group:

Ed Borasky started a Google group called pdx-visualization. As the name implies, it is a group for Portland-area people interested in languages and techniques for visualization of data. http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-visualization

Flickr Photos:

I’ve been collecting interesting data viz photos for a while now and posting them to Flickr. They’re all accessible on my Flickr account in this set. Most pictures contain descriptions and links to the viz sources.

I hope to see you all there!
——

About

Amber Case, (@caseorganic is a Cyborg Anthropologist studying the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way we think, act, and understand the world around us.

I’ve been interested in data visualization for a very long time — it intersects with a lot of very interesting things that are going on in the world, and thus is definitely worth studying. Happily enough, we now have whole boatloads of data — because the Internet has given this to us.

We have free tools and programming skills to mess with the data so that we can relatively easily turn it into something useful or interesting without puling teeth or renting computer time from 3-6 in the morning an hour’s drive away at the nearest State University.

It is because of all of these things, and what I feel is becoming an essential next step in the development of trend prediction and the very useful implementation of data and information, that we’ve decided to start having some meetings around this sort of thing.

The first Portland Data Visualization Group will be held on Monday, March 23, 2009 from 6–8pm at Webtrends.

851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland OR 97204
(map)

View the event on Calagator, Portland’s Tech Event Calendar.

Event Description

Researchers have long said that the material published on the Web amounts to a form of “collective intelligence” that can be used to spot trends and make predictions.

Using his 20% time, a Google employee discovered that during flu season, many ailing Americans enter phrases like “flu symptoms” into Google and other search engines before they call their doctors. When he mapped this data, he was able to discover where flu outbreaks would strike up to two weeks before traditional news sources were able to report them.

This is an example of a time when merging a specific type of data to its geographical coordinates resulted in a unique insight. However, there is much more to do with data and visualization. What was found at Google is only the tip of a very large iceberg. Now that we have access to so much data on the web, we’re going to see an increasing need to understand and present that data.

Agenda:

The first meeeting of the Portland Data Visualization Group will serve as an introduction to what’s going on in the world of data viz. It will be freeform, so if you would like to demonstrate something you’re working on, please be prepared to do so. Micah Elliott will be showing uGraph and Ed Borasky will do a GGobi demo. I’ll be covering what already exists in the ecosystem and what might become useful in the future. We’re dealing with a rapid communication method here. Something that, if done well, compresses the time and space it takes for us to understand something.

If you’re interested in Data Visualization, please come to this event. It will be the first Portland Tech Event at WebTrends besides Web Analytics Wednesday. It’s our chance to try out the space and see if it is a good fit for this group or potentially for other groups in the future.

Google Group:

Ed Borasky recently started a Google group called pdx-visualization. As the name implies, it is a group for Portland-area people interested in languages and techniques for visualization of data. http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-visualization

Flickr Photos:

I’ve been collecting interesting data viz photos for a while now and posting them to Flickr. They’re all accessible on my Flickr account in this set. Most pictures contain descriptions and links to the viz sources.

I hope to see you all there!
——

About

Amber Case, (@caseorganic is a Cyborg Anthropologist studying the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way we think, act, and understand the world around us.

Originally posted on Calagator, Portland’s Tech Event Calendar.

In the analog state of PR, people would have to manually check out how many times a brand was mentioned in newspapers by hiring a bunch of people to clip out the actual articles from the newspapers. If one’s clippings were really great that week, they’d have a big stack of paper.

Clipping New Media:

Some of the first industries to capture digital data real-time were hedge funds and other financial firms. They used something that resembled an intelligence dashboard — where different streams of data were needed to make complex decisions. The dashboard allowed users to see many different stocks at once, and companies were able to create a sort of proto-feed that showed many different ecosystems of data at once.

Intelligence Feeds Today:

Now, services like Netvibes and Yahoo! pipes can be mixed together to offer companies real-time intelligence feeds that show what their competitors are posting on their blogs, what people are saying about them on Twitter, and their overall online presence — all in one place.

Making these intelligence dashboards takes time and research, but the value added (not to mention the time saved) by the implementation of a centralized data source is immense. Also, it’s powerful enough for agencies that manage multiple clients, because the entire system fits into one browser window with a series of custom, labeled tabs.

Currently:

All brands have an analog version of this, and some have a digital one — but all brands need it. Google Alerts is a temporary solution that is gritty and granular. It does not have the customization capabilities that Yahoo! Pipes and Dapper have. Intelligence dashboards are capable of handling the data generated by global and local brands as well. They can monitor Flickr photos, news items, blog posts, ect. Basically, any piece of dynamic content that moves online.

—-

Resources

One of the best brand managers out there is Portland’s Dawn Foster. She has a collection of excellent resources (like Yahoo Pipes and RSS Hacks) on her blog, Fast Wonder. She’s actually the first person who introduced me to Yahoo! Pipes.