We are looking for interesting, entertaining, passionate and downright geogeeky speakers. If you have something you want to share, and can do it in 10 minutes, then please let us know at sydney@georabble.org!
Join us Thursday the 19th of September at the Occidental Hotel. Doors open 5:30 PM for a 6PM start. Registrations will open soon!
The first Cape Town GeoRabble event, sponsored by AAM Group, took place on Wednesday evening at the Mowbray Golf Club in Cape Town. Approximately 20 people from various industry spheres including government, academia, engineering, geo consulting, software development and internet start-ups attended the night.
We started at 18h00 with a short welcome and all round introductions, followed by the first presentation delivered by Chris Tanner, titled 3D Modelling. He provided the audience with an amazing bird’s eye view on the level of detail and accuracy that can be achieved in 3D models created by combining aerial photography and LiDAR data. This was followed by another 3D orientated topic titled, Low-cost 3D mapping of an urban environment using Structure from Motion , presented by Sebastien Wenger. Mike Steyn entertained the audience with a summarised view into the past, current and future development in GIS through a presentation topic titled; The Moore’s affect in GIS. This thought provoking presentation highlighted the rapid growth in technology in general and how the geo world is following this trend. The last formal presentation was delivered by Chlodwik Rossouw who asked the question, Is GIS a profession or a tool? He highlighted the different uses of geo tools, technologies & skills across a variety of industry sectors and how industry specific knowledge is affecting our industry. Both Mike and his topics urged people to keep an inclusive and not exclusive mind set and therefore stay aware of what is happening outside of their own geo realm and to keep moving with technological and industry advances.
The night was concluded with quite a few open discussions on how we can build on this first GeoRabble Cape Town event in order for it to appeal to the wider geo community. This successful first night was concluded by more general discussions, networking, food and drink.
Thank you greatly for all who attended, plus AAM Group for sponsoring the event! … until next time.
The inaugural African GeoRabble was hosted by the University of Pretoria and sponsored by AAM Africa. Over 30 GeoRabblers from industries spanning education, government, private and non-profit were treated to geoinspired talks from academic and private industry leaders.
First up was Peter Schmitz who shared on how GIS is being used to solve complex crime mysteries.
Peter was followed by Marius van der Merwe who unpacked “cloud computing in plain English”, how it affects the GIS community in a world that demands information at their fingertips. A truly inspiring look into the future of GIS applications and data storage, dissemination and analysis!
From the cloud to the sun, Samy Katumba exposed rabblers to Geoapplications in renewable energy mapping and how solar energy is being used to “em-power” African communities in remote locations.
Stuart Martin took GeoRabblers down a walk on memory lane using imagery. His interactive talk titled “looking beyond the picture” captured moment’s history and how through further thought one can extract more than meets the eye.
Before we knew it, Victoria Rautenbach was in the spotlight shedding insights into spatial cognition and perception. Victoria shed light on how GIS and gaming is demystifying gender stereotypes in spatial perception.
Thanks to the South African GeoRabble team for their commitment in making this first event a huge success. We look forward to many such events throughout South Africa in the years to come. Off to Cape Town we go. To register, visit http://georabble-capetown.eventbrite.com/
With a roll of the dice, the evening kicked off to an exciting start with speaker Kate Raynes-Goldie who brought the world of community game design to the GeoRabble stage. GeoRabblers got a glimpse into how location plays an important role in the construct of community games where play involves people gathering in locations or moving across them. Examples were given of “Gentrification” and Paparazzi; the latter of which was a GPS driven cat-and-mouse game of ambushes, paranoia and scandalous photos; drawing a link with the (perhaps) more familiar ‘game’ of geocaching. A “Community Games” workshop will be held at SpaceCubed in July, for those interested in learning about game design.
Next up on the GeoRabble mic was Erwin Vos, who delighted GeoRabble crowd with pretty pictures and anecdotes of jobs gone-past (including a stint as a sous-chef at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics); with, of course, more onus on the pretty pictures! Passionate about imagery, Erwin describe the multitude of opportunities that exist for interpreting, analysing and using imagery; from detecting houses with poor insulation through to detecting land use change. The possibilities are limited only by the imagination (and knowledge of imagery components and techniques)!
The night’s mystery speaker was then (in dramatic drum rolling excitement) unveiled: Andy Waddington! Well, perhaps not in such dramatic fashion, but you get the idea. An experienced FIG/IHO Cat A Hydrographer (not sure what all those letters mean, but I’m sure they’re awe-inspiring!), Andy spoke about the charting of marine areas and sailed us through the methodologies carried out in the past (“There be dragons” was, once upon a time, a sufficient enough map indicator), those at present and those potentially used in the future. Andy also spoke about how charting now involves less dangerous voyages into areas to be charted (thanks to the power of spatial technologies such as lidar) but that in turn curtailing decisions had to made on aspects such how much area to survey or how much detail to capture. In the context of this, Andy stressed the importance of being able to know when to reuse data and gather as much information as possible from what was available.
Back on dry land, Liz Marjot was the next speaker of the night and spoke about a WA program called Spatial Technology in Schools (STIS). Liz described how the program came into being and the importance of spatial education for youth today. In particular, Liz spoke about how the interaction with spatial technology can spark interest and passion in geography and mapping, which oftentimes is lacking in a traditional classroom setting. Giving examples of some student projects, Liz described how powerful GIS can be in an applied setting in engaging students and encouraged us all to participate in bringing geospatial technology to the youth of today.
Leading on, Shane French spoke to GeoRabblers about the transition of a corporate GIS from a commercial software environment to an open source one; and gave an insightful and honest comparison of the similarities and differences, and the ups and downs encountered along the way (and did a great job of sticking to GeoRabble manifesto by not mentioning any product names!). It was a great overview for those pondering the change and implications it could have.
Last, but not, least GeoRabblers were treated to unique presentation by Hai Tran who spoke about drones and use of them to capture spatial data in a variety of contexts; from constructing aerial panoramic views of landmarks, to monitoring agricultural land, to capturing imagery to assist in the search for a missing Canadian bushwalker. Hai also spoke about the benefits of using drones: the low cost, the ease of deployment and processing; but also the diversity of use – how the drone’s payload can accommodate all sorts of devices for data capture. Though, for those enthusiasts out there, Hai did mention that being able to fly drones of this calibre did require a license (and permission from airport(s) to fly in certain areas).
Many thanks to GeoRabble team for organising the event, to the speakers of the night, to the great MC David Brady and to the event sponsors: AAM.
GeoRabble http://www.georabble.org happens in various locations around Australia, is free and open to anyone, but frequently sells out. If you would like to talk at a future Perth GeoRabble event, please send an email with the title and a short description to perth@georabble.org.
GeoRabble Brisbane #4 is sponsored by Mipela GeoSolutions
CALL FOR SPEAKERS and additional ORGANISERS
GeoRabble Brisbane is holding its next (and fourth) GeoEvent at the Pig N Whistle (Riverside) and it will (as always) take the form of 5-6 x ten minute short and sharp presentations by speakers that could include YOU!
As an all-inclusive assemblage, and with us being at the stage where we are working out the speakers and other logistics, please consider this to be a CALL FOR SPEAKERS and additional ORGANISERS.
However, if you have confidence that whoever speaks will be great (like we do) then you should feel free to book your ticket NOW!
If you’d like to speak at this (or a future) 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 that outline your talk idea so just make contact with your GeoRabble organiser of choice.
If you are someone who would like to help organise please contact your GeoRabble organiser of choice to let that be known too.
The next occurrence of Australia’s favourite casual geo-event, Georabble, will occur on 20 June at the Leederville Hotel in Leederville, Perth.
Speakers so far include:
In addition to this line up, the night will feature a mystery speaker, who will remain shrouded in secrecy, wrapped in a riddle, and enclosed in an enigma until a grand revelation on the night. Or something like that.
If you’ve not attended a Georabble before, it’s a fantastic casual night, filled with short, pithy presentations from like-minded geo-types that are free from sales pitches. With 85 tickets snapped up the remaining 65 FREE tickets have 6 days until the event to find owners. Click Here to get your ticket!
We’re pleased that AAMGroup have come on board to sponsor the next Perth Georabble, and expect this event with its pizza, beer and awesome will be just as great as all the others.
The Perth committee have been busy, and the next Rabble will be occurring on Thursday June 20, 2013. If you’d like to be involved in organising, sponsoring or speaking at a future rabble, please contact them via the details on the Perth page. Early tickets are now available at http://georabble-per7.eventbrite.com/
Leaving yesteryear to the yesteryears, this byte of GeoRabble was synced with the worldwide event that was Big Data Week – a “global community and festival of data”. Yes, the puns were international(ly bad)!
The MC of the night, Nicholas Flett kicked off the sold-out event by introducing us to Ian McCleod, who led us on a colourful subsea tour of the how’s and what’s of data collection from wreckages, artefacts and other curiosities resting on the seabed; including what to do when you encounter a Japanese tank at 38m below surface when you’re only licensed to dive 30m (you go the extra 8m to capture that data!). Emphasised was the importance of keeping pace with ever evolving technology to capture data – and that despite the challenges it might present, data capture is always worth the effort.
Catapulting us from an underwater world to the twittersphere, Nicholas introduced the next speaker, Tim Highfield, who gave us an insight into the how the thoughts and voices of people around world become Big Data through Twitter. Using a combination of open-source and in-house tools and methods, Tim described how Twitter data is captured and some of the analyses that can be done by examining hashtags. GeoRabblers were walked through fascinating examples, including on Australian politics (eg #auspol, #ausvotes), the Queensland Floods, Arab Spring, Eurovision, Tour De France and Occupy Oakland. It would seem that that the very nature of Big Data coming out of Twitter lends itself to a plethora of analytical dimensions, limited only by creativity of the researcher. Tim left the audience with a sobering question of how to determine whether we have too much data or not enough, and a poignant statement – that while media represents the first draft of history, Twitter is the first draft of the present. Tim’s slides and presentation are available online here.
Next up, blasting from the twittersphere to outer reaches of space and time, we were introduced to Kevin Vinsen who gave us a thrilling insight into the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project. After a short and sweet introduction to space, light-years, the Big Bang and telescopes, GeoRabblers were presented with the enormity of the project data itself: enough raw data to fill 15million 64GB iPods every day! That’s almost 1 exabyte a day! The processing power required is estimated at 100 petaflops per second, about 50 times more powerful than the most powerful computer in 2010 (about equivalent to the processing power of 100 million PCs). If that’s not Big Data, I’m not sure what is! Based on development trends it is expected that a supercomputer with processing power required will exist by 2018. The aim of the radio telescope is to address fundamental questions about the Universe (how did stars and galaxies form after the Big Bang? Is there life beyond Earth?). To help out with processing all this data, Kevin made mention of SkyNet (vaguely ominous name!), an initiative to pool together the processing power of personal computers connected to the internet to mimic the abilities of a supercomputer. What a wonderful opportunity for everyday citizens to contribute to a scientific endeavour of this calibre!
Onwards with the next speaker, Bryan Boruff, who delved into the semantic nature of this new buzz word that is ‘Big Data’, addressing the elephantine question of “What exactly is ‘Big Data’?”. Bryan suggests that Big Data is data that is beyond the conventional or current methods of storing and handling. He went on to describe the dimensions in which Big Data increasingly presents itself – ‘four ‘V’s’: volume, variety, velocity and veracity. So how does one manage this situation? Bryan presented the paradigms of the familiar sequential ‘capture, store, analyse’ method of data handling and that of ‘automated epistemologies’, where data streams are analysed on the fly and not stored. But this presents a troublesome conundrum by contravening a basic scientific principle – that analyses/experiments must be able to be replicated, so therefore the data must be available. Tricky situation – will technology and people keep pace with data? Or will scientific method be challenged?
Wrapping up the presentations of the evening, Paul Farrell introduced GeoRabblers to “Big D”, the cool way to refer to Big Data, and kicked off with the interesting factoid that Big Data is apparently now the number one buzzword since ‘Y2K’, back when everyone thought the world would grind to a halt when the calendar ticked over to 2000. Paul went on to describe that the word ‘data’ is related to the Latin word for ‘fact’, and that it is not necessarily equivalent to information (DIKW Pyramid, anyone?), and that part of the phenomenon that is Big D, is the increasing ‘datafying’ of world – the metrication of more and more aspects of life into data, trying to address the ‘unknown knowns’. Adding to this is the increasing ability of science to not just acquire a sample of data, but the entire ‘population’ of it. Paul goes on to describe that increasingly, Big Data is more about distribution rather than analytical products – and that, in some respect, people’s own minds are the supercomputers. Returning to the seas, Paul left GeoRabblers of the night with an delightful anecdote of life of the sailor Matthew (Fontaine) Maury, “Pathfinder of the Seas” in the 1800s; under whose direction hundreds of ships’ logs were turned into data and locations charted (at least 1.2 million points!) to create Wind and Current Charts, which became an indispensable tool to mariners of all kinds. And that apparently, coincidently, the job title of those people going through the logs to capture the points was….. ‘Computer’.
Many thanks to Darren Mottolini for his time and efforts in organising the event, especially coinciding it with the birth of his 2nd child – Congrats!, to the speakers of the night, to the talented MC Nicholas Flett and to the event sponsor Landgate.
And in the words of Ian McLeod, “keep logging, keep mapping and good luck to you”.
GeoRabble http://www.georabble.org happens in various locations around Australia, is free and open to anyone, but frequently sells out. If you would like to talk at a future Perth GeoRabble event, please send an email with the title and a short description to perth@georabble.org.
The next GeoRabble in Perth is June 20 and free tickets are available here
We are less then a week away from the next GeoRabble Melbourne. Thanks to our sponsor AAM Group we are pleased to announce the following GeoRabblers who have volunteered their time to share their fantastic GeoStories.
Georgina Race – Coronelli’s Globes: A view of the world
In the 17th century Vicenzo Coronelli’s made globes depicting the earth for Louis XIV and other royalty of the day. Georgina will take a look at the history of these famous globes and what they represented. She will review how effective were they for geographic representation and perspective and whether there are similar questions which can be asked of spatial information today.
Georgina is a spatial analyst specialising in water, coastal and environmental studies. She attended the International Cartography Conference in Paris in 2011 where her interest in the globes was sparked during a cocktail party in their presence.
Chris Scott – Free your GIS: A journey in open source
There are many myths around Open Source GIS and their usefulness to business. Chris will explain the fallacy of these many myths while also showing us the how Open Source can be of value within the GIS environment.
Chris has been involved with GIS for 10 years, with interests in Spatial databases, Open Source technology & Web Mapping.
Lynnette Terrett – Destination Spatial, Skilling a Spatial Industry Workforce for the future
What is Destination Spatial and why does it exist. Lynn will provide a background of this initiative why it is important to the ongoing health and future of our industry.
Lynn is a strategic spatial technology consultant working across many Asset, Environmental, Disease, Weeds, Pest & Disaster Recovery Management projects for government and public sector. Her current passion is promoting Destination Spatial to ensure Australia grows the educational pathways to train and skill up the Geospatial workforce of tomorrow
David Parkinson – Identifying a mosquito in a crowd – a challenge.
The Eliminate Dengue research program is an international not-for-profit collaboration led from Monash University. The program is developing a natural approach to control the spread of dengue based on. The challenge is to introduce the Wolbachia bacteria into wild populations of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in dengue transmission areas.
David, like all geography graduates, has managed to be employed in many roles – but in 17 years has never been “just a Geographer”.
Chris Pettit – The Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN)
AURIN is a $20 Million initiative funded by the Australian Government’s Super Science scheme. It is tasked with providing built environment and urban researchers, designers and planners with e-infrastructure to facilitate access to a distributed network of aggregated datasets and information services. Chris will provide a background on the initiative and where it is up to.
Chris is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne who has a passion for all things spatial. In his free time he is also the Chair of the Victorian Region SSSI and of the IPRS working group on Geographical Visualization and Virtual Reality.
Steve Bennett – Open Street Map Cycle Hack
Steve is a software engineer, project manager, business analyst, technical writer, system administrator, technical analyst, project administrator and opinionateur in the Australian e-Research sector. He currently works at the Victorian e-Research Strategic Initiative, implementing data management systems for researchers.
If you haven’t registered yet to listen to these fantastic speakers and the opportunity to network with your fellow GeoRabblers then do so now at http://georabble-melb.eventbrite.com
Thanks to our sponsor Omnilink, following are the speakers for the next Sydney GeoRabble.
Llew Cain – Are we 2D living in a 6D Future? A shed perspective.
Micromine, Surpac, Datamine, 3D Geomodeller, Vulcan, GoCAD, VRML, X3D, GIS, Vertical Mapper, Discover 3D, Target, Revit, BIM, ProjectWise, iModels, 3D PDF, Infrastructure Designer, CityEngine, WebGL, HTML5. Is it topology, clash detection or geodesign? Multi dimensional design has always been around in the mining industry, and more recently growing in engineering and architecture, what are the implications for GIS people? Is there is a paradigm shift just around the corner. Will the average GIS operator still be relevant in a future where analysis, understanding and communication are done in true 3D, 4D, 5D, 6D space? While taking a moment in the shed to ponder the big questions a comforting realisation is achieved. Or is it?
Matthew Smith – Fires near Me mobile app
Fires near Me was an experiment. An experiment first in whether the public had a taste for this type of information delivered through a mobile device. The information was short and to the point — much like a focused sound bite in modern mainstream media. Indentifying the audience correctly allows content, app and map interaction, and information presentation to be tailored more precisely, giving greater user satisfaction.
Mobile app interaction with available networks, back-end data servers, and onboard functions (e.g. GPS) needs careful design in order to develop a useable architecture. Architecture for a non-finite — and mostly uncontrollable — user base must be fundamental to the app design.
Developers of mobile apps — certainly in 2010 — were less experienced in application development than is the case for other, enterprise application development. This requires more involvement in the design phase and closer management of the development and support phases.
Executive support tends to come after success with a launched product, rather than before a research and development project, and also needs careful management.
Jody Garnett – Business Intelligence and Mapping (with cartoons and demo)
A quick look at business intelligence industry: who they are, their perspective on life, and why they are investing in mapping technologies. Illustrated (cartoons) with a demo of smashing maps into the open source BIRT project.
Stephen Lead – Esri’s 100-lines-or-less competition
In our industry we’re used to overblown and over-complicated mapping portals, which aim to solve every possible problem which could apply to every possible user.
In a refreshing twist, Esri launched a contest to design the exact opposite – a focussed mapping application built using a maximum of 100 lines of JavaScript code. Some of the entries were very simple, while some were extremely clever.
This talk will cover the best entries in the competition, plus some brief behind-the-scenes of the data scraping exercise in my own entry, which was a visualisation of the climate of Australia, using data obtained from 1,500 BOM weather stations.
Mark Warton – Mobile apps for the Easter Show
Building an geospatial type App for one of Australia’s largest Events should not be too hard? Right? Let me take you on a quick journey of the challenges of building an App in a short time frame, for a large event where spatial content is only being confirmed just days before the event.
Narelle Irvine – Mapping Kosciuszko Huts
Narelle has been involved for many years with the Kosciuszko Huts Association – a group that maintains the old cattlemen’s huts scattered throughout the park. When a webmap showing the huts became desirable, Narelle volunteered. She embarked on a self-education program to understand and use open source mapping tools.
Chris Broadfoot – Tracking with the Google Maps Android API
GeoRabble 