Blog, Events, Perth

GeoRabble #4 Perth – A Riot Wrap

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2012-12-06_18-20-25_189
Tom, praying to the Spatial Gods that someone will take the Microphone from him

rab·ble  /ˈrabəl/ (n) A mob, the masses, the common people

ri·ot  /ˈrīət/ (n) A disorderly crowd, a public disturbance, disorder, rebellion
We come to the final GeoRabble of 2012 or as we like to call it, the first Australian Rabble Riot. For the first time 3 GeoRabble events were held in the same week with Brisbane, Sydney and finally Perth leaving their best shows for the festive season.
In just over a year of rabbling, Western Australia has managed 4 successful rabbles with in excess of 300 attendees. More than 90 tickets were booked for GeoRabble 4 and those who attended were far from disappointed.
The Crowd warming up
The Crowd warming up

The upstairs bar at the Leederville Hotel was the home of GeoRabble for December 6th and an open floor brought the best out of the Rabble. Free flowing commentary on data, software, open-source, employment, data silos and hardware saw Santa’s wish-list grow ever longer. Chants of “Free the Data!” and “Open source is the only way!” could be heard in between support for an unnamed GIS software and a certain state government data initiative (oh, and lots of “Rabble, Rabble!”).

Nic, like a deer caught in the headlights
Nic, like a deer caught in the headlights

We’d like to thank this event’s sponsor Geoimage for the support, venue and pizza. The best organisers can’t predict where an unscripted open microphone event will head, but this one stayed interesting to the end. Beers finished, wine swilled, pizza demolished, GeoRabble 4 was a 5 star success.

Santa, I’d like more GeoRabble Perth in 2013 please, I’ve been really good boy/girl.

GeoRabble 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 and email with the title and a short description to perth@georabble.org.

Geoimage-Unique-Insight-log
This event’s sponsor – Geoimage
Blog, Brisbane, Events

GeoRabble Brisbane #2 Joins Xmas GeoRiot

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Brisbane is joining the GeoRabble Christmas fun happening across the country during the first week of December. After the announcement of events in Sydney and Perth, we felt Brisbane couldn’t miss out and will be holding our Christmas event at the Platform Bar of the Grand Central Hotel (beneath Central Station) on the 4th December.

Please register to attend bit.ly/Georabble_Xmas

The main aim of the evening is to get together and have some fun, make some new friends and reconnect with existing friends. We will have some 10 minute presentations with our first speaker being Mr Wil Waters!

Wil was lucky enough to spend the past year on secondment in Cambodia working with Engineers Without Borders helping improve the GIS capabilities supporting the urban poor settlements. With support of Open Street Map and projects such as Mango Map, Wil will talk about how his experience can help others wanting to give back to areas less fortunate.

We will be adding further speakers over the coming days, and hope to have a fun and enjoyable evening. Anyone who attended our first GeoRabble Brisbane can pass on what an enjoyable evening it was, and we hope that this Christmas event will live up to that evening. We hope to see many new faces.

See you there!

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GeoRabble Sydney: Xmas drinks & Open Mike

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“What Geo-Gift I want Santa to bring me this year”

Join us for GeoRabble Christmas Drinks on Thursday 6 December, at the Occidental Hotel in Sydney. (5:30 for a 6PM start, please RSVP so we can plan catering)

Co-hosts for the evening are the NSW Government 2.0 Community of Practice, and with them, we are proud to introduce our first ever international speaker Julian Carver from New Zealand, who will talk on: “A City to Rebuild – how spatial data sharing is supporting the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery”.

Julian is one of New Zealand’s most respected OpenGov and Opendata specialists. In 2011, Julian worked with the Data and Information Reuse Secretariat to design the Open and Transparent Government Declaration. He is a spokesperson to government for Open NZ (an organisation representing the open data community) and has chaired conferences including Open Government (June 2010), Smart Government (March 2011), and Web Oriented Government (October 2011).

From April 2011 – June 2012 Julian led the establishment of information services at the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), as acting Chief Information Officer. He then went on to lead GIS, data, and digital communications for the Christchurch Central Development Unit, for the launch of the Christchurch Central Recovery Plan.

Other than Julian’s, there will be no formal presentations this time. Instead we will have an open mike, and invite Rabblers to talk for 2 minutes about what Geo-Gift they’d like Santa to bring them this year. Other than that, it will be the usual mix of celebrating all things geo, networking and having a good time!

And in another GeoRabble first, we have a parallel event run the same evening by our friends from GeoRabble Perth

As usual, this is a free event, including free pizza (courtesy of OMNILINK). Places are limited, so do register here, or join our MeetUp Group to avoid missing out!

Sponsored by Omnilink
Blog, Events, Perth, Sydney

GeoRabble Perth & Sydney! – Have we started a GeoRiot or is it just GeoAwesomeness?

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December 6 is the date you need to keep free, make sure the kids have a babysitter and be sure you have your Geo-wish list ready as it marks the 4th installment of GeoRabble in Perth. Why is this such an important event, well firstly:

1. It is Christmas time and I’m sure everyone wants to celebrate a little; and

2. GeoRabble goes national with consecutive GeoRabble Events to be held in Sydney (with Melbourne and Brisbane in the wings?).

The 4th installment is a celebration of all things spatial and what we want to achieve is to open the conversation to all participants (yep…an open mike night) to really get under the covers of what makes this industry tick. With consecutive Georabble events to be held around the country the tweet walls will be up so everyone can join in the conversation, link up with interesting ideas and sharing stories.

So, start thinking about what drives you to do what you do, how the world can embrace spatial better an importantly, what special Geo-present you want Father Christmas you bring you this year.

So, save the date, 6th of December 2012 as the GeoRabble is coming for you.

Blog, Melbourne

Speakers Confirmed for GeoRabble Melbourne #3

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We are proud to announce the first speakers for the next GeoRabble event in Melbourne on Wed 12 September,in the Lanai Function room at CQ Melbourne. Doors open 5:30pm talks from 6:30pm.

  • Bill Cartwright – “NEOCartography: Prospects and Issues”. Bill takes a look at what is NeoCartography and what are the opportunities, issues and challenges for the cartography and geoscience community.
  • Yvonne Thompson – “Spatio Retro”. One of the original founders of GeoRabble Melbourne and self professed old lady of spatial in Australia, Yvonne takes an introspective look about how she originally found her passion for spatial.
  • Charlie Hawkins – “Flood Modelling a failure at Geheyan dam in China”. Flooding has been a very topical event in Australia but were you ever curious to know how a place like China would compare?
  • Monica Stephens – “Guns, Germans and Stripclubs the Fates of OpenStreetMap with No Respect to Jared Diamond“. A humorous and eye opening look at the who decides the feature types in OpenStreetMap and the need to focus on the gender gap in our industry.

We still have room for 1-2 more speakers so let us know if you have a geo-story that you would like share with everyone at the next GeoRabble!!

Join our Meet-up group, or register here!

A very special thanks to our GeoAwesome Rabble-esque Sponsor without whom we couldn’t run this event and provide food to everyone …

Sponsored by Digital Mapping Solutions
Sponsored by Digital Mapping Solutions
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Free Pizza & Speakers Confirmed for GeoRabble Sydney #5

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We have a great line up for our next Sydney GeoRabble, on Thursday 23 August, at the Occidental Hotel. Doors open 5:30 -talks start 6PM.

Sponsored by EBR

In a GeoRabble first, Tim Leigh will let the audience choose the topic for his talk. Democracy at its best! Choose anything from Web GIS to Mobile App development or Dog Sledding, and Tim will improvise!

Other talks are no less eclectic:

  • Andrew Harvey – “Open StreetMap, My Story”. Andrew’s short but sweet narrative about his experience with OSM, why he’s contributed, what he’s learnt from it and what he gained from it.
  • Mark Greenway and Kelvin Nicholson – “Happy Mapping”. How their GovHack team created a map of ‘Gross National Happiness’ combining mapping and statistical skills.
  • Stephen Lead – “Mapping the Anzac Diaries”. How the State Library of NSW displays diaries written in the trenches of WW1 in a modern and enticing manner, including placing the diary entries on a map.
  • Jose Diacono  – “CrossCountry: A Sydney GeoApp in the London Olympics”. This app assists competitive horse riders during their preparatory walk round a 2-5 km competition course. It was used at the London Olympics Three Day Event.

  • Andrew Cook – “The Globalisation of Data”. Drawing on the presenter’s experience using data from Socotra, Antarctica, Mongolia, Australia, Wales, PNG and West Africa this presentation illustrates some of the opportunities and issues that have arisen from the globalisation of data.
  • Allison Hornery – “Places in common”. An update on the NSW Location Intelligence Strategy, and how government and industry are starting to collaborate in new ways around place-based data, culture, policy and infrastructure.
Sponsored by Mercury Project Solutions

For this GeoRabble, we are bringing back the free Pizza (thanks to EBR and Mercury Project Solutions), so don’t miss out! Spaces are limited. Join our Meet-up group, or register here!

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Launching GeoRabble Canberra!

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Sponsored by Geoplex

Come and see what the fuss is all about Canberra!  We have Master of Ceremony (and Govhack organiser) Pia Waugh introduce some excellent and innovative speakers who worked on entries into Govhack 2012 utilising geospatial data in their hacks…  This will be followed by an invigorating discussion when you can have your say on topical issues.  Join in the dialogue, enjoy the tapas, and join the Rabble.

Proudly sponsored by: Geoplex
Where: Digress Restaurant in Akuna Street, Canberra City..
When: 16th August 2012, 6pm
Cost: Free (drinks are available for purchase from the Digress Lounge Bar)
Places are limited so book now!!
AmbleMate is a web-based tool to help pick best walking/cycling paths in Australia but prototyping just on ACT. The tool can include most gentle walk or most challenging ride or pram/wheelchair accessible depending on personal preference. It works like Google Maps; just say where From and where To and it works out the optimum path.
The complete speaker line-up:
  1. Slava Barouline 6:15pm – 6:30pm
  2. Alex Sadlier 6:30pm-6:45pm
  3. James O’Brien: 6:45pm-7:00pm: “Social Landscape – A Case Study in Mobile GIS App Development”
  4. Discussion Forum – MC  (Geoplex)
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First Speakers Announced for GeoRabble Sydney #5

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We have some great talks lined up for our next Sydney GeoRabble, on Thursday 23 August.

Sponsored by EBR

In a GeoRabble first, Tim Leigh will let the audience choose the topic for his talk. Democracy at its best! Choose anything from Web GIS to Mobile App development or Dog Sledding, and Tim will improvise!

Other Rabblers include:

  • Andrew Harvey – “Open StreetMap, My Story”. Andrew’s short but sweet narrative about his experience with OSM, why he’s contributed, what he’s learnt from it and what he gained from it.
  • Mark Greenway and Kelvin Nicholson – “Happy Mapping”. How their GovHack team created a map of ‘Gross National Happiness’ combining mapping and statistical skills.
  • Stephen Lead – “Mapping the Anzac Diaries”. How the State Library of NSW displays diaries written in the trenches of WW1 in a modern and enticing manner, including placing the diary entries on a map.

There are still speaking slots open. Have something interesting, passionate of fun to share? let us know by emailing sydney@georabble.org.

For this GeoRabble, we are bringing back the free Pizza (thanks to EBR), so don’t miss out! Spaces are limited. Join our Meet-up group, or register here!

Blog, Perth

GeoRabble Perth #3

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GeoRabble #3 Perth, 25 July, Belgian Beer Cafe

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 →

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