So… What’s WhereCampPDX?

WhereCampPDX is a free unconference focusing on all things geographical. The best way to describe it is as a geo-happening where all types of geo-locative enthusiasts come together and have informal discussions on what interests them. An unconference is a conference planned by the participants and created on the spot. It’s about having a low threshold for participation, bringing ideas into the open, and hearing all voices. It is like the 20% of a traditional conference where the best parts happen. You meet people, make relationships, and get down to what’s important to you. It all just happens.

What happened at the last one?

Last year we had people come from as far away as Africa and a good number of attendees from all over North America. Session topics included OpenStreetMap, Portland’s open data initiative, post digital mapping, using geolocation to survive the zombie apocalypse, and harnessing crowd sourced traffic data. Geoblogger James Fee gave a keynote on “Data Interoperability on the GeoWeb.” Sunday saw a rousing game of Pac-Manhattan in the streets of downtown Portland.

“Location games were a great followup to the hacking and sessions of the day before. WhereCampPDX was one of the best unconferences I’ve ever attended. It was well organized without being too controlled with a great a mix of people. Thanks everyone who organized as well as attended, it was an enjoyable time.” – Kate Chapman

The Main Ingredient is You

Sign up here and come to WhereCampPDX 2010! You made this a great event last year, and we want to see everyone again. If you are new to WhereCampPDX or have never attended an unconference, it’s time to make the jump.

There are so many ways to get involved and be part of creating WhereCampPDX. Help us get the word out on your blog or using Twitter. Tell your friends at the local hackathon. Come meet the organizers for happy hour and brainstorming every Thursday night at Produce Row. All are welcome!

Do you work for a company that could potentially be a sponsor? Tell them about the event. Check out the list of past sponsors on the blog and find out how your organization can get involved.

Remember, we need your help to make this another great event.

Writing credit goes to Justin Houk.

photo by russelldavies

Join us to talk about CivicApps, the City of Portland’s open data project, this Saturday at NedSpace Oldtown. We’ll start at 10AM with a little show-and-tell session, then attendees can split into groups to look through the data or work on projects that use it. This is an unofficial meetup, not sponsored by the city, but there will be an official CiviCode Day sometime in the near future as well.

What sort of data does CivicApps have available? You can browse for yourself, but it includes bike lanes, 911 calls, Trimet schedules, and liquor license changes, and participating agencies come from not just Portland but the whole metro area.

Please join fellow open data enthusiasts to find ways to help make our city better!

Event details: Unofficial CivicApps Meetup, Saturday, May 1st, 10am at NedSpace Old Town.

• April 22: A free talk at Refresh PDX about tools designers can use to customize their maps on the web. He’ll cover marker icons, image overlays, styling map tiles and providing better interactions. Details: http://refreshportland.org/
• May 19: Half-day workshop at the WebVisions conference in Portland that will walk attendees through the process of creating a mapping site. It will start with the basics and quickly work up to interacting with APIs and plotting data. WebVisions is offering a special price ($310) for the workshop, plus access to the full conference. Details: http://duv.ly/mapdeal
• Early June: Presentation at the Open Source Bridge conference in Portland will give an overview of the open source geo stack. It will cover the ways to display maps, create maps, exchange data and store data, all with open source software. Details: http://opensourcebridge.org/

Details below copied from: http://www.thedirt.org/node/4112

The Transition Initiative in Portland invites you to meet with us to begin planning and organizing an effort to build community resilience in the face of climate change, rising energy costs and economic decline. Building on work started by many organizations, we will put into action energy descent planning around a variety of aspects; neighborhood organizing; coalition building with partner groups; and a holistic vision of how we can cope with major changes in our lives. In the process we will create stronger communities and more satisfying lives based on sharing and cooperation.

You’re welcome to come whether you are already committed or just curious about the possibilities. If you’re working with a neighborhood or a group with a related mission, we invite you to come and explore how different groups and communities can network and link together in a shared effort to build a lower-carbon future. Also, we urge you to circulate this notice to your group and anyone else you think should be there.

• Keynote speaker Friday evening, September 25, 7:30 pm. Karen Lanphear’s a co-founder of the Sandpoint Transition Initiative in Idaho. She believes that within each community there lies an enormous pool of power that can be unleashed when people start working together on a common vision, and that education and building strong community coalitions can change the world. Her presentation will include what is unique about the Transition model, Sandpoint’s experience in developing it, and their main challenges and how they came up with solutions. Karen’s talk will be followed by a social in the church dining hall downstairs. $10 donation, no one turned away.
• An Open Space Day, Saturday, September 26, 9:00am-5:00pm. How Can We Build a Resilient Portland? Bring your ideas, passions and enthusiasm and participate in designing the movement – suggesting what is needed and discussing how to make it happen. This powerful process will enable us to walk out at the end of the day with a road map for creating our future. Coffee, tea and snacks will be available. Lunch will be brown bag or at nearby cafes. No charge for the day but donations appreciated.
• Location: St. Francis Church, 1182 S.E. Pine Street, Portland (map)

What we choose to focus on is up to you. The Open Space format enables the people who come to create the agenda. Anyone can suggest a topic to discuss on Saturday based on the theme of creating resilience. If people choose to show up and discuss that topic, and to create an action team, it will become a part of the overall project. Some examples of projects that have emerged in other Transition Towns are

• Food
• Transportation
• Housing
• Health and wellbeing
• Arts and Music
• ReSkilling – (re)learning the low tech skills of our forebears
• Neighborhood organizing and support
• Outreach and publicity
• Heart and soul – learning and helping others to cope with the psychological, spiritual and social sides of change
• Local currency
• Working with local government
• Administrative tasks such as Training and Finances

Later Saturday you will have a chance to sign on for any projects you have energy for and begin work toward crafting and implementing Energy Descent Action Plans. There will also be an opportunity to connect with others from your neighborhood.

We are very excited about moving toward a more cooperative and joyful future. The knowledge of what to do already exists; it’s just scattered throughout the community. This is the beginning of our tapping and integrating that knowledge, making it available to everyone, and putting it to work in a plan for resilient communities.

In recent years, coupled with the rise of The Amazing Race television reality-competition show, we have noticed an increase in puzzle hunt activities at the local-casual level. Organizations like Shinteki market the activity to corporations as team-building activities. Running clubs and tour group companies are putting on small scale city-based puzzle hunts, like the Stumptown Challenge.

Coming up on the second Sunday in September is a multi-city, near-simultaneous puzzle hunt. Called D*A*S*H* (Different Areas, Same Hunt), this is a single-day event that will run in the cities of Portland, Seattle, Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Washington DC. Puzzle designers in each city have contributed one clue to the event, and each city’s hunt will use each of the clues to point to locations in that city. This is a foot- and public-transportation race for teams of 2-5 people. The deadline for registration is September 10th.

I’ll be there with a team of three people smarter than I. I encourage you to join us!

Ouroboros was one of the designers of the 2009 ARGFest-o-Con FestQuest, which happened in Portland last July. He and Ben Foote ran in the 2008 Stumptown Challenge, with a competitive finish against a field of serious runners.

Alternate Reality Games are an interactive narrative that plays out across multiple communications media and (often) in real locations, sometimes with actors (c.f. article “Serious Fun” from The Economist). The most compelling ARGs solicit player involvement that effects the storyline of the narrative. Many ARGs have incorporated locative features, mostly geo-caching (answering payphones in I Love Bees, hunting for a buried BMW in The Art of the Heist) and treasure hunting (the quest for the Receda Cube in Perplex City). As handheld GPS becomes more ubiquitous, location will be incorporated to a greater degree in ARGs.

The conference weekend consists of an opening cocktail reception, a day of sessions and presentations, and a casual day for touring, catching-up, and scheming. Highlights of the conference include:

• James Kane, creator of the iPhone app The Hidden Park, which delivers a children’s story through the iPhone and allows players to snapshot pictures that include creatures from the story.
• Nonchalance, a Bay Area based immersive media studio that works on urban exploration activities, including the Bay Area Aerosol Heritage Society, a graffiti catalogue and tour.
• The keynote presentation by Jordan Weissman, on Saturday evening as a part fo the conference banquet. Jordan Weissman was part of the team that produced The Beast, considered the seminal Alternate Reality Game.

ARG Fest-o-Con will be a single-track of sessions and presentations, but it won’t be staid or dull. There will be robots looking for friends-with-benefits! Something unexpected may happen! The Unfiction internet community will operate a backchannel over IRC, which will be available from the conference and monitored from the podium. Updates from the conference will be sent out via Twitter (follow Twitter@ARGFest for updates). And there will be a Grand Inquisitor charged to ask the questions the audience is afraid to ask.

Disclosure: Ouroboros is a member of the organizing committee for this year’s ARG Fest-o-Con.