This weekend I’m off to San Diego for WhereCampSoCal. WhereCamps are a version of barcamps or unconferences specifically around geospatial topics. An unconference is an event where the agenda is determined in an ad-hoc fashion by the attendees. This is usually done the day of the event utilizing a grid scheduling system sometimes referred to as “the board.” There are slight variations on how the board is created, but usually people write ideas on a piece of paper and then announce them to the group and place the topic on the grid. Sometimes similar topics are combined but that is up to the proposers of each topic. Usually people are fairly agreeable to joining forcing to run sessions.

The one thing that is atypical of this WhereCamp is that it is not entirely an unconference. The first day there are scheduled sessions and keynotes. Friend of FortiusOne, Todd Huffman is keynoting as well as Eric Frost from San Diego State University Viz Center. I’ll be giving two workshops, the first on using GeoCommons to share data and make custom maps. The second workshop is on how to edit in OpenStreetMap. There are also going to be workshops from SimpleGeo, ESRI and Urban Mapping. While the structured portion of the event is going on during the day Saturday there will also be unconference sessions. Sunday sessions are all ad-hoc and will be proposed the day of the event. I hope to participate in a session on geolocative games, which is one of my favorite topics at most WhereCamps. Some people from Grassroots Mapping will be around, so I hope to help fly some kites and balloons to take aerial photography as well.

Since WhereCamps are usually free to the attendees I was excited that FortiusOne was able to sponsor the event. Without sponsors it would be impossible to keep these events free. The cost of running an ad-hoc event is relatively cheap, but there are still expenses for food and office materials to make the grid for example.

Registration is still open for WhereCampSoCal up until almost the start of the event. So if this sounds fun to you sign-up and I’ll see you there!

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Today I was on a panel at the InterAction Forum, which is a conference for member organizations within InterAction.  InterAction is an coalition of NGOs with over 180 member organizations.   In the past few months at FortiusOne we’ve been assisting them in tracking their projects and sharing their geographic data. The panel I participated in was titled “Mapping the Haiti Earthquake: Open Geospatial Data and Transnational Social Collaboration.”  It was moderated by Andrew Schroeder of Direct Relief International with the other participants being Christiann Adams from Google, Kimberly Konkel from the Department of Health and Human Services, Nathan Heard of the State Department and Salim Sawaya from ESRI.

One of the points the panel wanted to highlight was the collaboration after the Haiti earthquake between corporations, government institutions and newer participants such as Ushahidi and OpenStreetMap.  As someone who participated early on in the collaboration it was interesting to finally meet people who previous I only knew through phone calls and emails.  One of the questions coming out was is Haiti special or will this happen again?  Was there something about the particular incident or has something fundamentally changed?

I think there are multiple sides to this question.  There is the technology, the people side, the geographic side and the sheer magnitude of the disaster.  I think as far as technology goes things have changed, people can find collaborators in a way that wasn’t possible before.  By finding collaborators individuals were able to make a difference far away from the scene of the actual crisis.  I think the people side is more complex, there was something compelling in the United States with Haiti being so close.  Though now people have formed powerful networks and know that when others need help there is often something they can do.  As far a geography the proximity of Haiti to the United States I believe made the government and its citizens respond in a way they haven’t before.  Then there was the size of the disaster which compelled many people to help.

I think all these factors have changed how people will respond in to a crisis in the future.  Now when an earthquake or flood hits I immediately see the various networks activate, seeing if they can do anything to help.  In some cases such as with the oil spill there is something the technology community can do.  In others there are other factors that either prevent people from helping or the help is unneeded.

Response also will change as groups continue to plan better for the future.  One example of this is the CrisisCamp and the Random Hack of Kindness this weekend.   Another was the Understanding Risk Conference at the World Bank earlier in the week.  I’m still participating in capacity building for OpenStreetMap in Haiti with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.  Data will continue to be available on GeoCommons when other events occur such as the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  And technology will continue to improve making collaboration easier.

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The Understanding Risk Forum is this week in Washington D.C. at the World Bank. The intent of the event is to increase understanding of risk, make it more measurable and work on managing it better. FortiusOne is there in full force with myself and Bill Greer manning a booth in Innovation Fair and Andrew Turner participating in a panel on Open Source Spatial Web and Open Data on Thursday.

GeoCommons can be a valuable tool in understanding and managing risk.  One important aspect of understanding and mitigating risk is having the data to make decisions.  There is a variety of datasets available in GeoCommons that could contribute to risk assessments.  There are population grids for eight countries as well as flood risk information.  Along with providing public datasets Maker! can be used to disseminate risk assessments.  Someone cannot only view your assessment but also create their own map with other data or even download the raw information to be used in another system.  One example of such a risk map is this Flooding Model for White Plains, New York.

The booth as the Understanding Risk Forum was not all serious though.  Bill and I took a break to try out the hurricane wind simulator as well.  To find the simulator you just had to follow the hurricane tracks from outside the World Bank to the bright red “hurricane simulator.”

We took videos of the one minute simulation that created winds of up to 70mph, here is Bill’s reaction and my reaction.  The simulation was that of a category 1 hurricane.

In conjunction with the forum this week at the World Bank there is a Random Hacks of Kindness and CrisisCamp this weekend.  Look for some of the FortiusOne team there.

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This week some of the other engineers are off to Google I/O, look for plenty of GeoIQ and Geocommons goodness in the Developer Sandbox there.  FortiusOne is a Google Enterprise Partner and we’ve performed integration with Google applications on both the Geocommons and GeoIQ side.  On Geocommons we’ve integrated with both the Google Earth Plugin and the Google Maps API.  Geocommons and GeoIQ both support KML for upload and download of Finder overlays as well as download of maps as KML.  Specifically On the enterprise side GeoIQ allows you to hook into your organization’s Google Earth Fusion Server.  This enables you to use tiles from the Fusion Server as well as globes with the Google Earth Plugin.

Also in the Sandbox we’ll be demonstrating our REST API and JavaScript API.  Our documentation and some sample code is available on Github. For questions about either API join our API Google Group.   As a company that believes in eating our own dog food Map of the News is built utilizing these APIs.  To see the most current dashboard in action checkout maps of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

If you stop by look for Matt Dew or Andrew Semprebon, tell them “wonderchook” sent you!

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