A very successful event attended by 80 people, of which half had not attended before. Several of the usual faces commented that they did not know quite a few people, so perhaps GeoRabble is succeeding in reaching out beyond the spatial nucleus. Tom Brownlie was the Master of Ceremony and reminded people of the rules of GeoRabble – including to celebrate all things spatial. Bringing the rabble together to quiet down and listen to the two speakers was easier than thought with the amount of chattering. David Brady gave us a interesting talk about fact and fiction using maps as the examples. Apparently there are lies/inconsistencies within the Asterix maps! Continue reading GeoRabble Perth #3→
With two short talks, speakers David Brady (Fiction and Fact); and Lance Martin (WA Police Concept Car) are set to plumb the depths of the abyss that is the geospatial mind and see what pearls they can find.
Our expert panel of Phil Beach, Chelsea Samuel, Sonny Tham, Bernard O’Sullivan and Richard Brown have not been allowed in the same room together in the hopes of some rabble fireworks.
If you would like to talk at a future GeoRabble event, please send and email with the title and a short description to perth@georabble.org. Talks are limited to 10 minutes.
Having had a strong showing at the last Perth Georabble, the middle of the year calls another night out for GeoBeer, GeoTalks, GeoDiscussion and GeoRabble.
With a good shortlist of speakers, and a discussion panel on the use of data warming up in the wings, the venue organised, now is the time to get your tickets.
This time in a very special GeoRabble first, we’re going to use half the night in an open panel discussion. What are we talking about? The amount of effort versus return? Poor quality data in, can only result in bad decisions? Or can we create silk purses from hogs ears? Perfection in information is a matter of definition as rubbish data can still be perfect for specific situations, depending how it is used and what it is used for.
Help us and the panel put fact before fiction – perhaps!
Dots on maps don’t always tell you the full story behind the numbers. In cases where you’ve got postcode, suburb or council based data – you’ll want to be able to map those boundaries to tell a richer story than text, numbers or dots can do.
Here’s a quick and dirty guide to getting up and running with boundary data just in time for GovHack:
2 – Install PostGIS 2.0 : http://www.postgis.org/download/ (there are now 64bit binaries for those who want serious spatial power)
3 – Download some Shapefile (SHP) formatted boundary data and load it into PostGIS (there’s a GUI – PostGIS Shapefile and DBF Loader 2.0 – inside the PostgreSQL Admin Console). If you’ve got another format there are OS tools you can use – try OGR2OGR (handy guide here)
4 – Download some data to go with those lovely boundaries – e.g. some juicy hot off the press ATO Tax data
FYI – the ABS has a rich collection of boundaries for you to use under Creative Commons licensing. This links directly to their own stats as well as the stats of many other agencies and organisation, such as the ATO (who recently released a tonne of tax data!). This data is ripe for rich visualisation:
GeoRabble Brisbane #1 rocked! We had 107 registrations and although the numbers on the night are uncertain it was BIG. As the hordes arrived the organizers gave up on checkins, threw the pages of sticky name labels into the crowd and joined the party. Rain threatened and Lord of the Rabble Rob Clout was stressing, but on the night it was perfection and the outdoor venue (PigNWhistle) overlooking the river was sublime . The show went on and many people stayed on to rabble on late into the night. If you were there, or if you took any photos, we’d love to hear from you! If you weren’t there but wish you were, well, we’d love to hear from you also. Add a comment or send a tweet to @georabble !
GeoRabble is excited to be associated with this year’s NASA International Space Apps Challenge, a perfect opportunity for geo-geeks to meet, and work with like-minded developers, scientists and other space experts from all over the world.
The NASA International Space Apps Challenge is an international codeathon-style event that will take place over a 48 hour period in cities on all seven continents – and in space – on the weekend of 21-22 April, 2012. The event embraces collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing solutions to global challenges.
With under a month to go, the hype of the event is gaining momentum around the world. The Space Apps Challenge in Australia now welcomes two new satellite events to the programme, one being in Adelaide at the Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century at Flinders University. The other will be hosted at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. This will now open up the opportunity for more participants from other cities in Australia to get involved.
You can be part of this great event as a participant, subject expert or volunteer. If you’re interested, there’s more information on the website, you can register as participant or volunteer, or follow the challenge on Twitter.
A very successful event attended by 80 people, of which half had not attended before. Several of the usual faces commented that they did not know quite a few people, so perhaps GeoRabble is succeeding in reaching out beyond the spatial nucleus. Tom Brownlie was the Master of Ceremony and reminded people of the rules of GeoRabble – including to celebrate all things spatial. Bringing the rabble together to quiet down and listen to the two speakers was easier than thought with the amount of chattering. David Brady gave us a interesting talk about fact and fiction using maps as the examples. Apparently there are lies/inconsistencies within the Asterix maps!
Join us for the fifth Sydney GeoRabble, with great (short!) talks, cool people and a few drinks. And: we’re bringing back the free pizza!
GeoRabble is excited to be associated with this year’s NASA International 
GeoRabble 