Saturday night at WhereCampPDX, we’re having a pizza dinner before we move onto late night hacking activities, all hosted by the Portland Incubator Experiment. We’ll have Old Town Pizza, salad, chips, and beverages to fuel your brain for coding. Like last year, we’re asking dinner attendees to prepay, $10 to cover the cost. Use the button below to RSVP and pay.
To help you get what you want we’ve set up a democratic menu.
At the Westergasfacriek (or “gas works park”) as a part of PICNIC2009, there was a demonstration of 3D objects in the Layar Reality Browser. In one demo, a Boeing 747 flew over the grounds. In another (pictured), PacMan ran by, chased by ghosts.A video demonstration is available on the Layar3D site.
Last year at WhereCampPDX, we had lots of fun running our own version of live-action PanMan and we’ll be playing again this year. Refinements to the tracking code might mean that Android phones play in the field without need of a control room. Then again, we’ll probably run at least one game like last year, with an open phone call to manually update the game screen.
And, as it turns out, the PacMan@Lyon kids will be running the final game of their summer season on Saturday. (The only thing that could be improved about that helmet is onboard video.)
WhereCampers will be interested in another upcoming event:
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.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
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.
WhereCampPDX kicks off Friday October 2nd with an opening night party at Gallery Homeland (2505 SE 11th Ave, Portland OR). This is a great opportunity to meet your fellow WhereCampers, discuss session ideas before the Saturday schedule planning rush, and try a round of our Arrivals game (shown above).
The party starts at 6pm, and will wind down around 9, after which we can mosey along to a nearby pub. If you’re planning to attend, please RSVP on Upcoming to help us finalize our plans.
600 NE Grand, Portland, OR
We’re pleased to announce we have a venue and a date! WhereCampPDX will be happening October 2nd through the 4th, with the main unconference session portion happening on Oct. 3rd at the Metro Regional Center. If you’re planning to attend, please let us know by adding your name to the attendees list on the wiki. You can also suggest a session that you’d like to host or participate in.
We’re still working out the details of a Friday night opening party, and the Sunday game sessions, so stay tuned for further details. You can help in the planning by joining the discussion on our mailing list, or attending a planning meeting, 7pm Thursday evening at Produce Row, every week from now until the event.
We also need more sponsors to support the event. Your contribution helps us feed attendees and cover other costs. Sponsors get their name and logo in the sidebar on this website, and the opportunity to introduce themselves to WhereCamp participants, by making a donation.
You can import the WhereCampPDX 2009 events to your calendar from Calagator.
You’ve watched Midnight Madness, perhaps even on videocassette. You might fondly recall (and miss) The Oregonian’s Rose Festival Medallion Hunt. Maybe you used to subscribe to Games Magazine. And you feel a twinge of jealousy whenever you happen across a report on the MIT Puzzle Hunt, the Microsoft Intern Game, BATH, or BANG.
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.
WhereCamp PDX is an unconference, meaning that we define the sessions and schedule together at the conference rather than ahead of time. For this year’s event, we invited a keynote speaker to help kick off the conference, and connect the many topics and people that WhereCamp brings together.
We’re pleased to announce that James Fee will be joining us to speak about data sharing and standards! Here’s a little bit about James:
James Fee, GISP, is an Evangelist at WeoGeo, Inc. Fee has extensive experience in GIS development (ESRI, Autodesk®, OSGeo), as well as development of GIS implementation plans. He was instrumental in enabling the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center to track the recovery of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina and previous clients span the Department of Defense (Navy, USMC, Army and Air Force), Department of Interior, State and Local Governments, Private Sector and Non-profits.
Fee is responsible for developing the developer community around WeoGeo and help users of WeoGeo Library and Market succeed at sharing and monetizing their data. Fee blogs about geospatial technology at www.spatiallyadjusted.com and has helped develop an online community culminating in Planet Geospatial. He is a frequent presenter at GIS conferences around the world and has recently keynoted the 2009 FME User Conference. He is also a regular columnist for GeoInformatics magazine.
If you haven’t already, take a moment to let us know you’ll be attending or add a topic suggestion to our sessions wiki page!
WhereCampPDX 2009 is coming this fall and we’d like you to be a part of it. Last year’s event was a big success and we’re working to finalize the date, venue and details for the next one.
WhereCampPDX is a 100% volunteer-run unconference in Portland, Oregon focusing on all things geographical. It’ll be a great event to discuss geography in forms as diverse as open source GIS software, neocartography, disaster relief logistics mapping, locative gaming, etc.
As we prepare, you can get started:
ARG Fest-o-Con, the premiere English-language convention for players and designers of Alternate Reality Games, will be held in Portland on July 17-19.
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:
They are relaxed events and you’re supposed to have fun. Often we grab a beer after the event, and this is no exception.
