Tag Archives: networking

Blog

Georabble Brisbane #4 is almost here

12/08/2013 GeoRabble Leave a comment

Don ‘t forget to put Tuesday the 27th of August into your calendar. GeoRabble Brisbane will be holding its next event at the Pig N Whistle, click the link to check out the fantastic line-up of speakers…

Peter Scarth – Open Source, Open Data, Mapping Beer?
Rob Bischof – Leveraging Your Worth
Stewart Hay – Are your online maps really reaching everyone?
Phil Punter – There’s been an incident at Roma Street
Nathan Woodrow — Contributing to an open source project
Graeme Browning – Story Mapping for Family History

You still have to time to book your tickets and join in the GeoRabble.

Blog, Events, Perth

GeoRabble Perth #7 Event Wrap

03/07/2013 GeoRabble Leave a comment

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.

Perth

GeoRabble Perth #6 – Big Ideas for Big Data

03/05/2013 GeoRabble Leave a comment

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”.

The next GeoRabble in Perth is June 20 and free tickets are available here

Events, Perth

GeoRabble Perth 5 – Event Review

26/03/2013 GeoRabble Leave a comment

A Return to Yesteryear – Thunder and Lightning and Storms, Oh My!
14th March 2013, Leederville Hotel

The evening kicked off to the tune of a slightly tempestuous weather machination and some sixty-odd slightly damp GeoRabblers bunked down to listen, drinks in hand, as the yarns of geospatial speakers unravelled to the sound of rain against the Leedy’s tin roof.

Or something akin to that!

The master of ceremonies Damian Shepherd led the keen GeoRabblers through the dark and stormy night, and kicked off the presentations by introducing Mike Bradford, CEO of Landgate. Onwards on a journey through time and space, Mike explored the evolutionary steps of spatial technology and glimpsed at the possibilities and trends for the future of the industry. From quasi prehistoric GPS receivers approaching the size of the MARS Curiosity Rover, to preparing for the influence of a predicted 1200 satellites going up in the next 10 years, the emphasis was on the fact that the future of GIS is coming at us harder and faster than ever before – and adaptation is the key to surviving and thriving in this (r)evolutionary world of all things spatial.

Next up, Roman Trubka and Cole from Curtin University flew us through some 3D urban planning scenario models, illustrating the inherent potential of spatial tools to explore, analyse and communicate the viability of development proposals and plans. Emphasis was on the intrinsic spatial nature of planning and how spatial tools of today can better inform and progress location-appropriate development.

Leading us into the fray of what it means to be a professional in the geospatial industry, Jen Hogan of Spatial Solutions started with the question that bubbles up at so many a social gathering and yet so frequently stumps many a geospatial professional: “So, what do you do?”. Between the blank look you get on saying something like ‘GIS’ to mumbling the ‘yes, something like Google Maps’ answer, the truth more often than not gets stuck in translation. Cue ‘Captain GIS’ to the rescue! Jen encouraged us speak out about all the things we love about spatial and not to hide away behind answers that make the awkward question go away. And, that when it comes down to it, emphasise that what we do is solve problems in a way that no one else can.

Tom Gardiner from ESRI took to the stage from there and further searched, queried and unravelled the meaning of what geospatial means in the context of world today. Leading us through an analysis done by high-school students at Hale School on finding the best location(s) for a sustainable community in Western Australia (as part of Spatial Technology in Schools Competition), on to consuming BoM data of cyclonic pathways in the context of the student’s analysis, Tom highlighted the ever expanding kaleidoscopic nature of spatial questions, data, technology and analytical approaches that sit at our fingertips.

With the tantalizing smell of hot pizza starting to waft through the air, the last speaker of the evening Charlie Gunningham from REIWA took to the stage and enraptured GeoRabblers with a tale of success, entrepreneurship and geospatial history. From mad Saturday morning rushes navigating the cityscape streets with nothing more than a street map-book and a handwritten trajectory in hand, was born the idea of placing real-estate sale advertisements onto an online map. It was an idea that then set the stage for real-estate websites across the world today. For some GeoRabblers the tale was a fond trip down memory lane, for others a unique chance to hear the history first-hand of the technology that is standard of the day. (Charlie reviews his first GeoRabble here)

DemocracySausage — The #democracysausage dataset made it into a GeoRabble side. Data collected on Twitter 9 March, 2013. Image/Data courtesy of @bogurk, @davecorgillous and @kevin_rudds_cat

And onwards into the stormy night did the GeoRabblers talk, eat and enjoy many a conversation.

Many thanks to the speakers of the night, to WaterCorp for supplying the projector and to the sponsors SSSI WA Region.

GeoRabble 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.

Blog, Events, Perth

GeoRabble Perth #6 – Big Data, Big Ideas

14/03/2013 GeoRabble 1 Comment

“Imagine if the whole human race had been looking through one eye for all of our existence and, all of a sudden, scientists gave us the ability to open up a second eye. You’re not just getting more information, more data; you’re literally getting a whole new dimension. You’re getting depth and perspective, 3D vision. That’s what Big Data is, not simply more information but a new way to see or extract meaning from a sea of information. Simply put, Big Data is giving us a brand new way to see things.”

Rick Smolan via http://bigdataweek.com/2013/01/04/our-planet-is-growing-a-nervous-system/

A Very Big Data Rabble

Coinciding with Big Data Week we’ve arranged a line up of speakers like never before. Big Data Week is one of the most unique global platforms of interconnected community events focusing on the social, political, technological and commercial impacts of Big Data. It brings together a global community of data scientists, data technologies, data visualisers and data businesses spanning six major commercial, financial, social and technological sectors.

Speakers:

Gary Casham – Microsoft
Ian McCleod – WA Museum
Tim Heighfield – Researcher
Kevin Vinsen – SKA Project
Bryan Boruff – UWA
Paul Farrell – NGIS

Date: 23 April, 2013
Time: Doors open 5:30pm, Presentations from 6:00 pm
Location:

Rubix Bar & Cafe
334 Murray Street
Perth

Format: A handful speakers, 10 mins each, usual rules.

Registration: Attendance is free, but for catering purposes we need you to register!

We can’t hold these events without the help of the greater Geocommunity, so if you want to get involved let us know! This event brought to you by the Perth GeoRabble team and Landgate

Blog, Events, Perth

GeoRabble Perth #5, A new year, A new Rabble.

14/02/2013 GeoRabble Leave a comment

Rabble - South Park — GeoRabble 5 – We hope there aren’t any pitchforks or burning torches

Exciting news! The Perth GeoRabble crew are busy preparing to host two GeoRabble events in the next two months. “WHAT?? They’re Crazy!” I hear you exclaim…. Challenge Accepted.

The first GeoRabble for 2013 kicks off on the 14th of March and the second is organised to coincide with Big Data Week (www.bigdataweek.com) on the 23rd of April. The formats for these GeoRabble events takes us back to a more traditional base with interesting speakers talking about what they find passionate in the Geo / Data world.

Announcing GeoRabble Perth #5 – Return to Yesteryear –

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Venue: Upstairs at the Leederville Hotel
Time: Door @ 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start of presentations

Speakers:

Mike Bradford
Tom Gardner
Charlie Gunningham
Jen Hogan
Someone from the Curtin University’s Sustainable Policy Unit

We’ve been holding back some excellent speakers from previous rabbles, as we’ve had a sojourn through a Panel, and an Open Mic night, but GeoRabble #5 is returning to the Rabble Roots of yesteryear. A handful speakers, 10 mins each, usual rules. If you’d like to speak (or sponsor at future events), and you’ll be in Perth for that evening, please contact perth@georabble.org or one of the organisers (See the Perth contact page) and we’d love to hear from you.

If you’d like tickets, click through to the Eventbrite Ticket Page.

Thanks to SSSI WA Region for sponsoring this event

HOLD THE DATE
GeoRabble Perth #6 – Big Data Big Ideas –
Tuesday April 23, 2013
Venue: To be confirmed
Speakers: To be confirmed

Sponsor: To be confirmed

Blog, Events, Perth

GeoRabble #4 Perth – A Riot Wrap

12/12/2012 GeoRabble Leave a comment

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 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

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

Launching GeoRabble Canberra!

05/08/2012 GeoRabble Leave a comment

GeoRabble Sydney #4 – Final Speaker List

21/03/2012 GeoRabble Leave a comment

The speaker list for GeoRabble Sydney #4 has been finalised!

In keeping with the GeoRabble tradition – we’re once again presenting a great variety of excellent geo-related topics.

We are very proud to present the following awesome lineup:

Jack Zhao (Small Multiples) : Are casino operators targeting vulnerable community groups?

Gambling problems are more prevalent in Asians than other Australians. Are casino operators targeting these vulnerable community groups by offering shuttle bus services? Inspired by the SMH article “Casino buses in migrants who hope ‘to live beyond their means” (Heath Aston; December 11, 2011), we created a series of maps to show the influence of The Star casino on migrant communities in Sydney.

Bio: Jack is an interaction designer who specialises in data visualisation with keen interests in tactile interfaces and networked urbanism. He loves tinkering and brainstorming ideas. Jack graduated from the University of New South Wales as a Bioinformatician and completed a Masters degree in Interaction Design and Electronic Arts at the University of Sydney.

Andrew Cook : 10 Good Reasons to Share Data

We all need data, without data there would be nothing. Is there a utopia where data is born, lives and dies? If there is a data utopia, where is it? How will we get there? By sharing data! Because sharing drives innovation. If we all share data more, then the principles (and importance) of Good Data Management will proliferate and data can be perceived as an asset (or a tradable commodity).

Bio: Andrew is a Chartered Geographer and Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society (so not a boffin). Andrew started from the bottom, in a field with a stick and a notepad. 14 years later and having contributed to Spatial Analysis and Spatial Application Development teams for Desktop, Mobile and Web (including implementing Spatial Data Infrastructure) Andrew now works as Asia Pacific GIS Coordinator for ERM (environmental consultancy) – and it is all back to first principles of data management as he works across the Asia Pacific region.

Kathryn Howard (Bookcrossing) : Books Just Wanna Be Free!

What if the whole world was a library where books were free and travelled the world over? Bookcrossing is a smart social networking site. It’s a celebration of literature and a place where books take on a life of their own. They assume a unique identity and their progress tracked as they pass from reader to reader. The bookcrossing community is changing the world, engaging and connecting people – touching lives one book at a time.

Bio: Kathryn’s day job is as an IT Service management consultant, improving the IT service support and delivery experience one step at a time. In this fast paced social media networking world, work/life integration brings global conversations to a device near you. Collaborative consumption and networking are the new norm and she believes it’s the way to engage people by sharing and building both knowledge and experiences to make the world a better place.

Paul Wither : Set your data free from the typing pool

Standards in any form are an inherently stale topic, arguably more so when applied to GIS. However, the future growth and mainstream use of geodata depends heavily on their wide spread adoption. This presentation looks at what are standards? And explores why they are important and how they can help free you from the typing pool. Also my in-laws are in town and giving this presentation gets me out of the house for a night.

Bio: Paul is widely regarded by friends and colleagues as an insufferable geo-geek. Having only recently returned from the UK, Paul has a very Euro-centric view and a strange hybrid accent but please don’t hold that against him. Paul has spent the last 13 years designing spatial applications and GIS implementations for organisations around the world covering industries such as Government, Insurance, Military, Financial Services, Transport/Logistics and Emergency Services and will babble on about them unless plied with lots of free beer…

Natasha Rawlings, David Jones (Street Hawk) : Retail – The next tech roadkill or benefactor?

How SmartPhones are changing the way we shop in the real-world.

Bios: Natasha is a Direct Marketing specialist who has spent her career acquiring and keeping customers using data for a number of the world’s largest direct marketing companies including Harlequin Mills & Boon, International Masters Publishers, Guthy-Renker and News Corporation. Natasha’s role at StreetHawk is to juggle the multiple hats of CEO including shopper and retailer recruitment, and provide thought leadership in mobile marketing. Mother of one and wife to a gadget loving Lego geek, she is thrilled she can now combine one of her biggest passions – shopping – with work. Natasha aims to revolutionise the shopping world by providing easy tools to retailers to acquire and keep customers, profitably, in the real world, in real time.

David is a serial internet company founder who previously started SurfControl Email Filter (now WebSENSE), SpamMATTERS and ThreatMetrix – now a Gartner “Visionary” company for Web Fraud Protection. Each of these companies are distinguished by filtering large amounts of “big-data” as automated analytics engines. The results provided significant revenue generation and cost reduction value to customers. David’s role as co-founder at StreetHawk is in driving the product development of the StreetHawk’s ‘RRR Engine’ and initial iPhone and Android StreetHawk apps. In his copious spare time (not) David can be found freezing in Freshwater ocean pool, mangling mandarin and aiding the Australian Startup scene via initiatives like StartMate.

Sarah Pulis, Stewart Hay : Are your online maps really reaching everyone?

We’ll be taking a look at how online mapping solutions fail to consider people with accessibility difficulties, and what can be done about it.

Bios: Sarah is a web accessibility expert working for Media Access Australia, Australia’s only independent not-for-profit organisation devoted to increasing access to media for people with disabilities. Sarah is an active member of the accessibility community and representing Media Access Australia on a number of W3C accessibility working groups. She is also the organiser of OZeWAI, Australia’s only web accessibility conference. Sarah has a Bachelor of Computer Science/Bachelor of Cognitive Science and has also completed a Master of Science entitled Interpreting the DCMI Abstract Model to support software development for Dublin Core Metadata. Her Master’s thesis was completed as part of an ARC-funded project to develop a semantic web application for cultural heritage management, during which she also worked as a developer on that project.

Stewart is the Principal Consultant for OneSphere and is an expert at designing, developing and implementing GIS solutions for organisations both large and small. His experience encompasses a range of industries from Environmental Management and Utilities to Emergency Services and all tiers of Government. He has held key roles within the spatial industry including General Manager of the Spatial Sciences Institute/Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute and Manager GIS for the NSW Rural Fire Services. Stewart has a BSc (Curtin) and MBA (UNSW) and sits on the Advisory board of the UNSW School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems and the SIBA NSW Region Management Group.

Many thanks to our speakers, who are graciously offering their free time to share their passion, their experience, their stories with you!

Come and hear their great talks next Thursday March 29 at the Shelbourne Hotel (doors open 5.30pm, talks from 6.30pm).

Get your free tickets at GeoRabbleSydney4.eventbrite.com.au

Events, Sydney

GeoRabble Sydney #4 – Tickets now Available!

04/03/2012 GeoRabble Leave a comment

GeoRabble returns to Sydney on Thursday March 29 at the Shelbourne Hotel (doors open 5.30pm, talks from 6.30pm).

If you’re suffering the post-GeoNext blues and need another serve of geospatial goodness, free of agendas and sales pitches, amongst your friends and colleagues; or if you just want to find out about some of the great unsung work being done by passionate people working with location: then grab yourself a free ticket!

We’ll let you know more about some of the great speakers we’ve got lined up shortly, but in the meantime we’ve still got a few speaking slots available – if you’ve got something new and exciting from the world of geo, please email us at sydney@georabble.org

Jack Zhao (Small Multiples) : Are casino operators targeting vulnerable community groups?

Andrew Cook : 10 Good Reasons to Share Data

Kathryn Howard (Bookcrossing) : Books Just Wanna Be Free!

Paul Wither : Set your data free from the typing pool

Natasha Rawlings, David Jones (Street Hawk) : Retail – The next tech roadkill or benefactor?

Sarah Pulis, Stewart Hay : Are your online maps really reaching everyone?

An open and inclusive forum for GeoGeeks to share, inspire and have fun.