After sessions on Saturday, the 18th, we’ll be heading over to Old Town Pizza for dinner and hacking. We’re asking attendees to RSVP and pre-pay for dinner with the form below. Join us to continue talking about ideas from the day’s sessions, and collaborate on projects.
Cost: $10
TechCrunch had an interesting article last week on the state of the art of the iPhone’s several location-based social neworking apps. Among other things, the article pointed out several features and capabilities that location-based social networking technologies really need to have, in order to add value to the users’ lives. I think the most interesting point is that the apps really need to be able to actively inform you when someone of interest is nearby.
Obviously you could set this up manually, but that would be limited. As the article points out, it’s much more interesting if the system can integrate different sources of data, learning from all of your social interactions, and identify those people that would be good matches for you, even if you don’t know them. Wouldn’t that be cool?
I think it can be done. All you location-based services people, and all you social-networking people, let’s get together and see if we can make it work!
Irene
Time is running out! WhereCampPDX is only sixteen days away, so we’re coming into the homestretch now. I can’t tell you how excited we are about this. The ideas, the technologies, and the confluence of people that are coming together for this event runs the gamut from health care to gaming, and we are anticipating some truly innovative consequences.
Aside from the ‘meat’ of the event, though, we’re also getting into the homestretch on the logistical details, and that’s where we’d sure like to hear from our loyal fans. We need to know how many people are coming, so we can be certain to have enough meeting space, food, t-shirts, etc., etc. So, it would help us out if all you locative-services devotees could let us know you’re coming.
Also, we want to hear from you. What do you think about t-shirts, food, other conference swag? Should we have them? Would you pay for them? The comments section of this blog is your chance to let us know your opinions. So drop us a line, and we will see what we can do to accomodate you.
Looking forward to seeing you WHERE!
Irene
Skillfully combining two blog posts in one I figured I’d post about the submission I put together for the Google 10^100 contest [ http://www.project10tothe100.com/ ]. Hopefully that isn’t too self laudatory. But I strongly encourage everybody else to do so as well - perhaps we can get one of our proposals into the top 100 at least! As well it’s a good exercise in formalizing ones thoughts.
One of the interesting possibilities about the digital era we live in is that we can start to bring computation to bear on every day problems. There’s probably a good chance that we’re going to see some real changes in how we make decisions in our communities. For example voting is likely to become more granular and more common - as the cost of voting becomes lower. We’re likely to have better ways of sharing knowledge - even more so than we have now - as filtering improves. And in particular Systems Science, such as the work being done at PSU, promises to give us some tools for understanding the complex interactions between land use policy, environment, economy and social welfare.
The proposal I submitted was very much in line with this last point. Here it is with parody inserted:
What one sentence best describes your idea?
(At this point I was thinking - wait a second - who is saying that? This is kind of freaking me out. Is that Larry Brilliant? Who wants to know? )
Um, ok, to create digitally augmented decision making tools for citizens by combining ideas from SimCity and Google Earth.
Describe your idea in more depth.
(I figured I could get into this and the boldface font is pretty cool. )
The core of the work is to build a web appliance that computationally simulates forward in time simple models of watersheds and human activity based on human land use. Outcomes can’t be coerced, they simply fall out of the initial conditions.
These kinds of models do exist in the Earth Sciences and System Sciences academia and the game “SimCity” as noted is pertinent. The real difference is that this would be free, public and durable.
Typical usage is that a participant would sign on, and either start a new simulation or clone an existing one, or join in to collaboratively edit a shared one. Participants would have access to available public map data but could also visually drag and drop in rivers, streams, estuaries, green space, urban space. Specific animal habitat, observed salmon populations, known bird sanctuaries and the like could be specified. Zoning such as urban, or farming, organic or industrial could be specified. Superfund sites could be indicated.
Participants could wire up relationships between things such as pesticide / sediment run off into streams, stream clarity or blockages and salmon populations, industry and carbon emissions, even speculative relationships such as between crime and green space, or airplane noise impact on animals, traffic between work and suburb, relationships between available bicycle routes and car traffic.
Then outcomes could be tested. The simulation could be fast-forwarded to a specific time. Questions could be answered according to various metrics. Is the cost of a new civic park worth it? Is there an economic benefit to a Liquid Natural Gas Plant? Is a field better used for light industry or a park or suburban housing? Are urban boundaries effective? Should Light Rail Transit be introduced? Is traffic going to be congested?
What problem or issue does your idea address?
(Problem, not problems? Hmmm, uh, wasn’t it obvious, can’t anybody READ!? Ok, clearly they want more - can’t they just google the issue? )
This tool initially would be used to model very specific problems between a set of stakeholders - and later it would become a tool that could be used by entire communities to model entire watersheds or regions.
In the former it could be used to share and examine very specific issues. For example Astoria, Oregon has had an ongoing resistance to a liquefied natural gas import terminal on the Columbia River. There are significant risks, but as well of course it does promise to create jobs and bolster the economy. What are the measurable benefits? How will river traffic be affected by these shipments? How will road traffic be affected? What is the danger zone? This would be a typical use case.
In the latter, more general case, it first helps provide a common foundation for debate in civic society about pressing issues, secondly it provides an educational tool for people to even learn about an issue, thirdly it provides a way for people to develop an intuition about the balancing points of the complex systems that we live within, and fourthly it levels the playing field between different stakeholders. Overall it helps provide a new kind of decision making in civic society as an alternative to and qualitatively different than making donations to a campaign, running for office, voting occasionally, protesting in a parade or writing letters to the editor.
If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
(you mean aside from lil ol me? i’m an ecosystem too you know - i mean 80% of me isn’t even me but a kind of fauna ecology that is colonizing the scaffolding of my body… think about that! next time you kiss your girlfriend/boyfriend/dog )
There are literally thousands and thousands of small grass roots humanitarian and environmental organizations with the will, the time and the power to effect change, all they need is better information so that they can work in concert with other organizations.
There are ordinary citizens with day jobs who can only pay partial attention to issues of economy, environment or policy.
There are corporate interests that develop resources and that have to work within what we permit them to do.
There are civic planners and legislators, hired to make good decisions for us, and to raise some decisions for vote.
These subscribers would also be the primary beneficiaries. A predictive modeling tool that brought to bear the resolving power of hundreds of human minds would make many formerly intractable problems quite shallow.
At the end of the day even in most kind hearted decisions we make, we just don’t have the understanding we need to end up at the right conclusion. Issues in civic planning, land use, human and natural impacts are simply too complex right now. In some cases the side-effects of new bylaws even dominate over the intended consequences. What we need is a collaborative predictive modeling tool with buy-in from all participants that gives us all a better gauge of the right direction to go in.
What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
(money money money support hacking hacking hacking more money more hacking more support more more more )
I see a staged set of deliverables. First simulate only a single watershed in coarse detail. Take SRTM elevation data for Oregon and or California and model water flow including the water evaporation/rain-fall cycle, turbidity, temperature, gravity, aquifers. This is implemented as a cellular automata and each of the ‘agents’ in the simulation will be having an effect on the fabric of the space defined by the automata. After this simulate salmon, a key indicator species that brings protein to inland forests and that bridges two very different ecosystems - land and ocean. With water and salmon we have the beginning of a cross domain model.
At this point we want to make the service public. A problem with many academic environmental models is that they are used to support a thesis or paper but are not persistent and not public. We want to provide a durable, persistent, open website where any user can come in and instance a new simulation or clone an existing simulation, rewind, fast forward, set granularity of computation, upload new agents, include or exclude agents defined by other users.
After this point the goals would no longer be technical but promotional. Initial value would be best for specialized communities trying to model very specific problems, and as they add new agents the tool will have increasing utility and value for wider audiences and more complex interactions.
Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?
(this was a trickier question - because I’m not into many of the metrics people create - but at least it was a chance to voice thoughts about better metrics )
The optimal outcome would be that people are happier, healthier and fit into their working landscapes better. Local watersheds and ecosystems are healthier. A generation of SimCity kids emerge who have an intuition about the space of civic planning and who respect and work with their world better.
Narrow empirical measurements can be done by interview; asking people using the tool if the tool is more or less effective at helping them negotiate a given civic issue between different stakeholders.
More broadly although the tool is intended to improve quality of life - I think it’s probably dangerous to select for human welfare as a baseline measurement - I see the Peter Singer calculus of “harm minimization” to be degenerate. Rather some measure of creativity, freedom and joy should be used as the measuring stick. A good metric would also be to measure local before and after regional biodiversity on the theory that biodiversity probably means more people have more choices and are more happy.
Usability studies and interviews should be conducted to get feedback on the effectiveness of the tool. Quality of life should be measured and defined by a multiplicity of factors including general human health, free time, quality of local physical environs. We also want to measure civic participation in terms of awareness of local issues and any feeling of satisfaction in having a voice in local issues.
A friend of mine asked the WhereCamp team, probably facetiously, “Are the first three rules of location, Real Estate, Real Estate, Real Estate?”
And my answer to him, in all seriousness, is, “Yes.”
It’s no secret right now that the US economy is in pretty serious trouble. The reasons behind this are many and complex, but the situation as it stands is that many banks and other lending institutions are freezing their funds. Money that used to be available as loans or grants to help small companies grow or survive isn’t there any more. The trickle-down effect of this financial meltdown could be catastrophic collapse, as those small businesses that are dependent on external funding are unable to meet their operating budgets. Any way you look at it, the situation is grim, especially for small, young, and start-up businesses.
But there is also potential. Strange though it may sound, I think this is an opportunity for location-based services to find their niche. After all, the one thing every business needs is customers. Much of the money that investors provide is to boost growth, which means giving these businesses ways to reach more customers. Losing those funds, for many businesses, means that they’re going to have to find new ways to engage with their customers. New ways to do their transactions directly with the people who want to purchase their goods or services.
And guess what? Those people, without exception, have one thing in common. Every single one of them has a location. Has friends, neighborhoods, routes, and other businesses that they frequent in the course of their daily lives. Locative services, in all their myriad flavors, have enormous potential to benefit many businesses that are seeking new ways to get together with their customers. They can help business learn their customers’ needs and desires and to integrate their products and services into their users’ lifestyles. That’s how I’d answer my friend… bring your business to your customers, on their real estate!
So there’s the challenge for anyone and everyone in business who’s looking to grow their customer base: start thinking outside the box. Instead of mainstream, old-fashioned marketing and business development, start thinking about how you can relate to your customers directly, on location. Think about how you can bring your products or services to your users, where and when they really need them. And then come to WhereCamp PDX and see how many locative-services experts are ready to help you do just that!
A disturbing new trend is showing up among the consumer base. It has the potential to be worse than mix-tapes, worse than the VHS, indeed worse than online piracy. Consumers are taking it upon themselves to make their own maps of their own neighborhoods and their own issues. The HQ for this behavior appears to be at WhereCamp Portland in October - we need to infiltrate this event and put a stop to this kind of behavior!
What we are seeing is increased collaboration and knowledge share between GIS professionals and amateur “social cartographers”. The net effect of all this is that there may be less reliance on a single top down point of view and official maps of streets, places and businesses. After many years we are finally able to provide beautiful, car centric, easy to use maps of city streets and businesses. But instead of relying solely on what we’re providing people are instead beginning to rely on maps they make themselves - maps that have short-cuts through empty fields where there isn’t a single store, or that feature things that are not for sale. Indeed concepts such as “friends” and “trust” are appearing which may circumvent advertising and marketing in some cases. Consumers may start to explore their neighborhoods more and may become more neighborly and participate more in local events - and may even consume less. This has to be stopped!
Already consumers are engaged in activities such as finding places where fruit may be plucked from trees “for free”. See http://urbanedibles.org for example. We are consumers not foragers - we don’t have forager report we have consumer report! Clearly this is circumventing taxation, organic certification process, liabilities and insurance payments and much of the infrastructure that has been built to protect us. Not to mention this kind of marginalization of clear ownership creates doubt as to some of the specific enforcement roles we’ve asked of law enforcement, lawyers and the judicial system.
We even see people getting lunch from tasty and cheap outside food carts instead of a proper sit down indoor restaurant. There is a sense of a civic life being created that involves being outside, chatting with friends in groups of two or more and enjoying the outdoors simply for its own sake. See http://foodcartsportland.com. Clearly this will just lead to frivolity and enjoyment of simple pleasures!
Aside from the obvious inaccuracies of these “people made maps”, it clearly is not possible for consumers to collaboratively create quality by collectively adding to shared maps. We are going to end up with a wikipedia like level of quality that is superficially compelling but that ultimately will have imperfections. With individual bias, and human error, and lack of a professional auditing process and the years of specialized training that this requires - the outcome necessarily must be compromised. As well with subjective human input places may be colored by personal experience or emotion rather than subject to the dry rigor of reason. The fact that a certain field may be “a nice place to take the dogs for a run” is really secondary to the fact that it is a “development lot that will be turned into stylish condos”. When communities start to favor emotional qualities rather than economic qualities there may be an aspect of “place making” that takes place. Consumers may start to insist on things being a certain way - they may become more ‘picky’ and ‘demanding’ - and this could be bad for business.
Longer term trends could even include the diminishment of big box store outlets, chain outlets and the service industry as a whole. People may learn to rely on neighbors and friends for things they need. When people can see bargains “anywhere” using their social cartography tools they may go to bazaars of the back streets rather than to the convenient and shiny pseudo markets that we’ve built on front street. Instead of staying at clean and comfortable new hotels people may even just camp for free, or stay with friends of friends when traveling, because places that were formerly invisible will show up on their maps! Instead of everybody owning a car people might just do social hitch-hiking! Effectively our economy will be driven underground. The hyper-liquidity of the market that we enjoy today, with the large pools of dollars that we have at our disposal, will dry up as it becomes harder to scoop off the cream of peoples labor with taxation.
As well people may more quickly develop an understanding of their neighborhood - even if they’ve just moved there - and how those neighborhoods connect to the local environment. See http://www.everyblock.com/ for example. They may react poorly to issues like local superfund sites, or underfunded community schooling or other inescapable side effects of civic planning. We really have no way of seeing what people will respond to. There is a concerning possibility that entire communities may become highly mobilized to improve their local quality of life, their local watersheds and ecosystems at the expense of industry. This could harm development!
How can we stop it? Of course if we come right out and make it illegal this will just systemically foster resentment. We’ve tried this before by giving charter rights to specific organizations but ultimately just ended up creating Open Street Maps [ http://www.openstreetmaps.org ] . The right approach this time will require more subtlety.
We could seek to deflect genuinely new ideas by having them fit within tired old paradigms. In particular build heavy clumsy standards that bog innovation by requiring people to be “doing it the right way” or face censure. We can build a pro-forma “open source” consortium and define standards - while at the same time populating that standards body with vested interests that reflect traditional values. This may work.
We could try to keep GIS professionals and amateurs safely apart so that expertise and new needs don’t intersect. For example we could offer what appear to be grass roots “open source” events that in fact have significant barriers to entry such as holding the event in South Africa and having entrance fees even for speakers - presenting a facade of being “fair” or “egalitarian” while actually effectively blocking outsider thinking. This will help assure that participants have the orthodox vested interests and expertise to preserve the status quo and appropriately marginalize disruptive new ideas.
It may even be possible to try and frame grass roots activity as a kind of specialization of traditional GIS - say referring to it as “volunteered geographic information” to create the appropriate radioactive waste handling wrapper around any invocation of the phenomena - and in this way treat consumer participation not as a revolution but as simply an extension in line with previous thinking and planning.
We could also try to encourage that people seek to maintain as much ownership over intellectual property and data assets as possible to minimize the possibility that the pooling of those assets creates a critical mass of real value. Ideas about “the commons”, Creative Commons licensing, federating data, aggregation and suchlike should be avoided in all discussion. We can laud concepts such as “open source” while preserving all other aspects of traditional business process and ownership and thus appear to be forward thinking while not compromising revenue streams.
Overall we are facing a challenging landscape and if we want to maintain the status quo as it exists, with our traditional maps, and their emphasis on official streets, well named resources, and approved place names and civic resources, we will have to work hard. The social cartographers are organizing in two weeks right here in Portland on October 17th 2008. We have significant challenges ahead - I beseech you to do your best to stop this menace - remember our economy is counting on you!
- anselm@hook.org
I think that WherecampPDX may be the most important unconference in Portland this year.
Why do I think that? It’s not just because I’m helping organize it… I’m helping because I think it’s that important. I think that location-based services, in general, have more potential to bring about fundamental change in our society than any other modern technology. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to participate in this conference, and that’s why I want everybody else to, as well.
What’s so special about location based services? Well, to me what’s special about it is that this is where the virtual world and the physical world intersect. Because if you think about it, in many ways the most important aspect of the physical world is location, is space. Where things are relative to where other things are, how to get from place to place, what things are located where… these are fundamental issues in our daily lives. Everything we do in the world involves place. Location-based services, for the first time, let us bring the electronic world to serve us as we go about our physical lives. The value to this, the potential to revolutionize the role of technology in human life, is… is beyond imagination. But let’s try.
I do a lot of work in emergency preparedness, disaster planning and recovery. One of the most critical aspects of EM/DR is simply knowing what resources you have, what resources you need, where they are (or need to be) and how to get them there. Take medical services, for instance. In the event of a major disaster, the county health centers need to get medical supplies and services together with patients and customers. But how do they know where they are? Well, for instance, technology to plot the locations and menus of food carts or happy hours, might easily be adapted to address this fundamental societal need! Events like WhereCampPDX will let people who need these services explain what they need to people who can provide them. I am hoping that this event will draw those people in, people who aren’t developing location-based services, but who need them.
The most amazing thing about Portland is the spirit of generosity that pervades the entire community – people WANT to solve problems! They don’t wait to be told what to do, they don’t stall until they get the contract signed or the check clears, they don’t expect somebody else to solve all their problems for them… they jump in with both feet and start solving! More than anywhere I’ve ever been, Portland has the culture, the community, and the technical know-how to create solutions to national problems. Let’s get started with WhereCampPDX!
Irene Schwarting
To kick off WhereCamp PDX, on Friday night, October 17th, we’ll be taking part in an interactive art installation entitled “Equilibrium: The Human Mash Up” taking place at the Olympic Mills Building at 107 SE Washington St Portland, OR 97214
“In the spirit of disruptive ideas and breaking down barriers we ask, “How can art and technology and the synergy of the two address humanity’s next evolutionary step?” Four categories of work will address these questions and collectively speak to the power of human ingenuity. We invite artistic and technological creators to submit their work that addresses human survival in an era of interspecies evolution, revolution, and devolution.”
We encourage you to participate and submit your work! Submissions are due by October 3rd. Possible submissions may include:
Fine arts and mixed media, Tech painting or sculpture, Holography, Ascii-art, Robotics and robotics sculpture, Mail-art, Art and artificial intelligence, Fractal art, Digital stamping, Net.art, Projected displays, Dioramas, Digital art and photography, Software art
To submit your art or to learn about Sponsorship Opportunities, please contact Rachel Kjack at rachel.kjack@sao.org or 503-228-5419.
For more info, check out these links:
WhereCamp Portland Oregon, October 17th~19th 2008
“Society is being transformed by new maps and new mapping technology. Our mission is to help create a free forum for people to talk about, present, explore, and learn about projects that involve place.”
What is WhereCamp PDX?
WhereCampPDX is a free unconference focusing on all things geographical. This informal meeting of minds welcomes all geo-locative enthusiasts, anyone who asks “where am I” or feels the need to “know their place”.
We share a vision of a fully transparent world where data is geographically relevant and just in time.
An unconference is a conference planned by the participants, we all convene together, plan sessions, and have break-outs into sessions. This gives everybody an opportunity to bring to the table the things that interest them the most and lets us talk about new topics that are still new and exploratory. Part of what is important to hearing new voices and getting new ideas is lowering barriers to participation - this event is free and it is driven by the participants.
What kinds of people and topics will be discussed?
This event is community driven and is what you make it. It provide cross pollination between many different kinds of folks from all walks of life. Topics may include remote sensing, geoinformatics, forestry and agriculture, food chain transparency, civil engineering, emergency disaster relief, urban planning, local search, context awareness, place hacking, social cartography, citizen journalism, locative gaming, psychogeography, locative art, and beyond. Expect to participate in conversations on the nature of place as described in pixels, with rays, on paper, and by social practice!
When and Where?
WhereCamp PDX will be happening Oct. 17-19 at Souk. We’ll be having a kick-off party on the 17th at a to be determined location, sessions all day on the 18th at Souk, and then more sessions and locative games on the 19th. You can join the mailing list to be involved in the planning process.
