The Christmas season is fast approaching and GeoRabble Brisbane is having its next event on Tuesday the 8th of December. We’d like to invite you all to celebrate the Christmas season the spatial way at the Pig N Whistle (Riverside).

We have confirmed four speakers …

• Brett Leavey – is bringing his Aboriginal cultural heritage app on an Oculus Rift device
• Jonathan Corcoran – Jonathan is an Associate Professor at UQ School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management. He’ll be discussing some analysis he’s been doing on smart cards (GoCards) – visualising the effect of weather on bus transit in Brisbane.
• Matthew Fry – Constantly evolving societal expectations of technology have pushed the use of spatial applications into areas not traditionally seen as being part of the spatial fabric.  Matthew will present on one of these new areas, tagged GeoDesign, where urban developers and landscape architects meet head on with spatial technologies to deliver interactive models for public use.
• Tim Foresman – Tim is a world leader in the spatial industry and is currently the SIBA Chair in Spatial Information at QUT.  Having previously worked with organisations such as NASA, the U.S. EPA and the UN, Tim will be coming along to GeoRabble to share his knowledge and insights into innovation and the creation of a spatial industry cluster for Brisbane.

So if you feel like a bit of Spatial Christmas Cheer CLICK georabblebrisbane7.eventbrite.com.au/ AND BOOK YOUR TICKET NOW!

If you are new to the format then this is what you can expect:

• Official event time is 6:00-8:00pm
• People tend to arrive anytime from about 5:00
• Some food platters courtesy of our sponsor (SSSI) at about 6:15
• Two 10-minute talks 6:30-6:50
• More food platters courtesy of our sponsor (SSSI) at about 6:50
• Prize draws at 7:10
• Final Speaker at 7:20

Don’t forget, we are always interested in hearing about what is new and exciting in spatial! If you’d like to speak at an event, let the organisers know what you think the GeoRabble could learn from you.  We are keen to receive any and all “abstracts” or draft slides for you talk idea, so just make contact with your nearest GeoRabble organiser of choice.

Call for Prizes

To help spread the Xmas cheer if there are any organisations and individuals who would like to donate a prize for some random draws during the night then please let us know what you would like to bring.  Bottles of wine are always popular, but we like to have a variety, and do not like to place a cap your generosity.  Donors are announced as their prizes are about to be drawn, and are encouraged to present them, and be photographed with the winners (who must be present to collect).

The Christmas Brisbane GeoRabble is sponsored by …

GeoRabble Tas #4 was another success, though it was pretty cold and in the middle of winter. The crowd was down a little, but there were a nice group of around fifty there, enjoying the presentations that had been extricated from the bowels of the federal agencies (CSIRO, ACE CRC and UTAS). ACE CRC sponsored, which was awesome.

I enjoyed Guy’s talk about Robots in the air and sea. Certainly some good info there, and another light update about the very real issue of climate change, as well as the near impossibility of inferring sea ice thickness from the surface! Brett Muir then introduced us to the fancy big ship. The problem of working out a relationship between a moving boat, some GNSS antennas and a bit of sensor sticking out the bottom of the ship, or being towed 2 km under the sea is a good one. Iain spoke of wine, while waving wine around and talking about the difficulty of calibrating an infra-red sensor. And finally, Bec spoke about the Argo program, and the fancy autonomous floats journeying around the ocean.

There’s not much more to say. The reports coming back indicate it was a roiling success, so there will be another, I just don’t know when.

Cheerio,

Alex