GeoRabble 12 was an eye-opening extravaganza of topics we’d all love to get involved in and many being accessible and happening right here in Perth.

Volunteering a weekend to join a similarly willing and dedicated team in problem solving and programming was a timely showcase from Zane Prickett and an invitation to join Unearthed. Now in its second year, Unearthed was held in Perth in late March and is being expanded to 4 events across Australia in 2015. The Unearthed hackathon was set up to promote start-up companies and entrepreneurial ideas in the mining sector solving technical problems with innovative new ideas.

Dr Ori Gudes showed some incredible (sometimes frightening) tales of health stories told through maps. His journey in mapping diseases, nutrition, health tracking and getting all the health facts onto maps to help inform patients, planners and health professionals alike.

Erik Champion talked about the incredible 3D theatre HIVE at Curtin University and the work he and his students are doing by creating fully-immersive digital version of places around the world from long-ago. Virtual reality, open source tools and data including LIDAR, 360° photography and a little archaeological knowledge are used to share history as it’s never been taught before.

This type of interactive game play and learning is now allowing us to take part and interact with historical ritual in original settings and gain a better understanding of our heritage.

Mathieu Savard, all the way from Canada, demonstrated the wonderful world of motion capture for gaming with a live demo with a motion sensor input device  hooked up to a PC! His presentation showed us what can be done with a 3D model created in freely available software; and just what an engrossing and new experience we can create.

In the final presentation Steve Weiser showed us some of the drivers behind the Just Start IT program and how their 18 week high school program across some 30 schools in Perth is helping to instil business, life and technology skills in high school students. Steve demonstrated why it is so vitally important that we help to make this a generation of kids the new job creators in markets we haven’t seen or realised yet.

Big thanks to our Sponsors NGIS and all the speakers for the work they put in. Follow @georabble on twitter or use the hashtag #georabbleper to join the conversation.

Georabble 13 promises even more for hungry Perth audiences with tickets for the June event becoming available soon.