The morning session of Where 2.0 was very interesting. I had a great speaking slot right after Nokia and right before Google. We launched GeoCommons Finder! and made it through the demo even with a bit of a slow connection. You can join the demo at http://finder.geocommons.com and if you would like a entry key drop me an email at sean@fortiusone.com and I’ll pass one along.

We spent a good bit of time talking about making big geodata sets available in the web browser and having the content available for GIS and GeoWeb users – even spreadsheet jockeys. This is a horn we’ve been blowing for a while, and the great thing about the morning session was the Google presentation following us. Their presentation had a small surprise with Jack Dangermond joining them on stage talking about the interconnection of Google Earth/Maps and ESRI. John Hanke had a nice set up talking about the dark web of GIS data that needs to be exposed to the GeoWeb and how they are working with ESRI to do it.

It’s great to see the big guys on the GeoWeb and GIS respectively working together to bring more data to the masses. While there was a nice canned demo showing ArcGIS 9.3 interacting with Google Earth, it will be interesting to see how it works in the wild and how it scales. My one concern is that is seemed from the demo that the model is still based around the public being passive viewers of GIS professionals work. We can see the output but can we access the data and add our own nuances and perspective to it. Have to wait and see it actually rolls out, but I think democratizing both the data and ability to answer questions with it are still necessary steps for great progress to reach its potential.

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We are all set up here in cosmopolitan Burlingame for the fun of Where 2.0. Thus far we’ve sat in on Advanced GIS Hacks in Rails and are currently enjoying the GeoServer tutorial. There is a bit of a lull in the action, so I thought I would talk about something completely different.

Specifically, I got an email with a link saying Google was going to be launching “Friend Connect” at Where 2.0. Problem is I’ve not read anything on the blogs or else where that has talked about Friend Connect having a geospatial component.

It would be awesome if they’ve enabled something to embed your location into a social profile, but seems like that would be more ambitious than what has been outlined in the press releases and speculation. Google does have a talk tomorrow on the “State of the GeoWeb”, maybe we’ll find out there. Has anyone heard rumors one way or the other?

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The recent Myanmar disaster proves that visualizing data has found a new important place in mapping capabilities, links to data and pictures from Frank at Google Earth blog.

All Points Blog points to CNN as an example of why static data just doesn’t cut it, especially when it comes to demographic information and election coverage.

Sue at Very Spatial shows us IBM’s latest project called Many Eyes. Many Eyes is a set of visualization tools and web services that allow users to create and share visualization projects, with the goal of creating a collaborative social networking space for exploring and analyzing visualizations.

James notes that users love to play with maps of their data, and just find it easier to visualize maps than charts.

The GIS data interchange file is discussed by James Fee at Spatially Adjusted, and he asks users how people share data.

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As we’ve been gearing up to Launch the GeoCommons’ Finder! at Where 2.0 there has been a chance to talk to several of the other folks presenting. Many are exciting concepts and I’m looking forward to seeing the presentations. A few we are particularly eager for:

Monday will have some solid tutorial and look forward to sitting in on Steve, Mikel and Andrew’s presentation on how to “Geo-ify Your Web Site”. All three have been very successful and clever with democratizing geospatial technology to the masses, and it will be fun to see what is next for bringing more geo to more web pages. For the second session I’m looking forward to seeing the Open Geo-Stack and seeing the latest from Chris Holmes and company.

Tuesday will be an interesting mix of big players, start ups and academics. On the big player tip seeing the differentiation between the Google and Microsoft presentations will be fun. Both are going to be talking about where the GeoWeb is going and look forward to looking for the similarities and differences.

In the start up category Adrien Holovaty’s presentation on Everyblock should be top notch. The implementation for Everyblock definitely pushes the limits of data aggregation and what can be done with an opengeo stack. His thoughts on where it goes next will be a great starting point for the conference. Also the afternoon pairing of Everyscape and Earthmine, a presentation apart, will make for an interesting contrast on how the two immersive 3D streetscape companies compare.

From the titles it looks like Everyscape will differentiate based on their ability to provide 3D navigable interiors of building while Earthmine looks to be focusing on indexing data in these 3D environments. Both are very cool, but the bigger question is will Google and Microsoft duplicate or acquire. Could be a great opportunity or a quickly crowded space.

In the academic category I’m very up for seeing Paul Torrens’ latest. We were both geography grad students at the same time in related fields and it has been great seeing his work evolve. It is definitely cutting edge and illustrative of where the potential of geospatial technologies is headed. Encourage all to make sure they are in the room for this one.

Wednesday has a little less glitz but still many interesting presentations on tap. Specifically I’ll be all ears for Jonathan Lowe’s presentation on his work with the geo aspects of Freebase and David Troy’s ideas for OpenLocation.org. Both are approaching the open data issue but from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Jonathan will be looking at how to enable geo aspects of the massive amount of structured data in Freebase, while David will be looking at how to effectively harness small ephemeral location data leveraging mobile technologies. I had a chance to talk with both in the last few days and each is looking at leveraging open data to more effectively share it with the community, but from opposite tails of the data distribution.

Continuing the data theme there is another interesting pairing of talks with Lior Ron of Google and Juan Gonzalez of PlanetEye, both talking about the indexing of geo-content. Lior gave a great presentation on Google’s approach at Location Intelligence and look forward to seeing what PlanetEye’s new approach is to indexing KML and more.

From a very selfish perspective I’m hoping to see a trend emerging at the conference driving more open data and more sharing of that open data. Hopefully this will enable the need for data federation/sharing and consensus among the community on how best to go about it.

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