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  • ESRI
  • Google
  • Nokia
  • Yahoo! Inc.
  • AND Automotive Navigation Data
  • earthmine
  • First American Spatial Solutions
  • NAVTEQ
  • Waze
  • Google
  • NAVTEQ

Sponsorship Opportunities

For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the conference, contact Yvonne Romaine at [email protected]

Download the Where 2.0 Sponsor/Exhibitor Prospectus

Media Partner Opportunities

Download the Media & Promotional Partner Brochure (PDF) for information on trade opportunities with O'Reilly conferences or contact mediapartners@ oreilly.com

Press and Media

For media-related inquiries, contact Maureen Jennings at [email protected]

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About Where 2.0

Experience Where 2.0 | Who Should Attend | Where 2.0 Kudos | Program Committee

Now in its fifth year, the Where 2.0 Conference is where the grassroots and leading edge developers building location aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. In the O'Reilly conference tradition, Where 2.0 presents leading trends rather than chasing them.

At Where 2.0, you'll find source mapping tools, reality mining, open standards for data and location web services, and sensors for obtaining location data. We'll learn how the established geo industry is reacting to the first businesses making money from their grassroots geospatial projects. There's no better place to meet the people behind the mash-ups, the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to the future of geospatial. Join us at Where 2.0 to debate and discuss what's viable now, and what's lurking just below the radar.

Where 2.0 2009 encompasses a full day of workshops followed by two days of plenary sessions featuring a unique combination of high profile keynotes with big players, lightning talks, panel discussions, demos, product launches, Q&A time, and much more. The most innovative and interesting people in this space are featured on stage, and stay around to debate and discuss with other conference-goers off stage.

Some of the questions and issues we'll address at the next Where 2.0 include:

  • Web mapping platforms and open source bring location based analysis, interfaces, and data to every application. What are the unique opportunities and pitfalls of these new tools?
  • What products are out there, and how are the best ones identified? How will they fit within an existing organization?
  • What are the steps to adoption of these new location-aware technologies?
  • What role do standards play in this space?
  • How are other companies using geo application and technologies and what have they learned?
  • Who are the leading technology developers and what have they built that we can use?
  • What can reasonably be expected of Where 2.0 technology in the near future?

For an overview of this space, read The State of Where 2.0 (PDF) co-written by program chair Brady Forrest. See also Where 2.0: The State of the Geospatial Web, An O'Reilly Radar Report.

Experience Where 2.0

Where 2.0's greatest asset is its participants. For the past four years, Where 2.0 has tapped into the creative spirit of all attendees, sparking provocative encounters and productive inspiration that continue long after the conference ends. Where 2.0 connects participants through:

  • High level plenary sessions that address current opportunities and future possibilities in the location space.
  • A full day of workshops led by experts and innovators, charting the depths of cutting edge location technologies.
  • Product demos and launches revealing exciting new tools pushing the geo-space boundaries.
  • An Exhibit Hall filled with some of the most important people, products, and services in the industry.
  • The fifth annual Where Fair, a science fair style event that brings forward the location aware tools, apps, and hardware being created in garages, university labs, and other unexpected places. Want to demo your project or invention? Check out previous Where Fair participants.
  • Ignite, an evening of rapid-fire presentations showcasing the unusual (a separate call for Ignite submissions will be issued in early 2009).
  • Informal events and Birds of a Feather sessions, allowing all participants—speakers, attendees, media, and sponsors—to exchange ideas and debate face to face.
  • WhereCamp, an un-conference for geo issues taking place the weekend following Where 2.0—visit the WhereCamp wiki to volunteer.

Who Should Attend Where 2.0

  • CIOs, products managers, and technologists curious about how to incorporate location technology into existing products
  • City planners, government planners
  • Officials from USGS, DOD
  • Open source mapping and location tool developers
  • Grassroots developers building important mash-ups and systems
  • Researchers and academics studying the field and building prototypes
  • Artists creating collaborative experiences with a spatial focus
  • Activists and community organizers building tools for managing non-profit location groups
  • Neographers and traditional geographers working deep in the trenches of geospace
  • Venture capitalists looking for the next investment opportunity

Where 2.0 Conference Kudos

"Many thanks indeed for an excellent conference. I was dead-impressed with the welcoming congeniality of the staff, the quality of the presentations, and smooth running of it all. Thanks for making Yahoo! a part."
-Tyler Bell, Yahoo! Inc.

"A hotspot of creative thinking and investigation into what’s possible in terms of location-based services today, and what’s just around the corner." -Mike Cooper, Nokia

"The presentations from the Where 2.0 conference always blow me away." -Andrew Crook, GIS and Agent-based Modelling

"I spent Wednesday listening to presentations about how the evolution of location-based mobile services and the geo-coding of information on the Web were changing the way we experience the Internet. It was geeky, exciting stuff." -Chris O'Brien, Mercury News Columnist

"Where 2.0 was tremendous." -Gregory Dicum,freelance journalist

"[Where 2.0 2008] was a great conference, an excellent set of speakers and a wonderful opportunity to learn and network." -Frank San Miguel, Founder, Concharto.com

"Back to the office after a great week at #where20 and #wherecamp-- looking forward to following up with lots of the great folks we met." -SarahManleyvia Twitter

"Where 2.0 was the most interesting and provocative conference I have ever attended" -John Frank, Founder and CTO, MetaCarta, Inc.

"The Where 2.0 conference is probably one of the most important meetings of the year for developers of new Web 2.0 mapping technologies." -Frank Taylor, Google Earth Blog

"I can't remember a conference I have attended in the past few years where there was just so much to take-in. [The next] Where 2.0...will be a show not to miss." -Ed Parsons, edparsons.com

"Where 2.0 was a terrific event that showcased cutting-edge technology, geo-spatial tools and advanced thinking about place and participation. It's like a sneak preview of tomorrow's consumer and enterprise applications." -Greg Sterling, Sterling Market Intelligence

"Many companies are trying to position themselves as leaders in the geolocation field this week, which makes sense since the sure-to-be-fascinating Where 2.0 conference kicks off next week." -Rafe Needleman, CNET News.com

"[Where 2.0] presentations provided a stimulating combination of cartographic history, bleeding-edge technologies (many of them still under construction), and debate over how businesses can tap into the new excitement over consumer access to geo-referenced data on the Web." -Wade Roush

"The Where 2.0 Conference is an excellent forum for the mapping community to discuss the future of mapping for businesses and consumers." -Stephen Lawler, Microsoft MapPoint GM

"If you are in the web 2.0 mapping business, and the virtual globe business, I think this is probably one of the best conferences, if not the best, to attend." -Frank Taylor, Google Earth Blog

In the past, Where 2.0 has brought together representatives from such diverse companies, organizations, and projects as: AAA, AOL, Apple, Autodesk, Cisco Systems, Citysearch, deCarta, eBay, City of Phoenix, Defense Intelligence Agency, ESRI, FedEx Services, Flagr, France Telecom, GeoWankers, GlobeXplorer, Google, Intel, Mapquest, Microsoft, Navteq, National Geographic Society, OnomyLabs, Metaweb Technologies, Norwegian Armed Forces, Open Geospatial Consortium, OpenStreetMap, Openwave, Overstock.com, PennySaverUSA.com, Placebase, PlaceSite, Platial, Poly9, Qualcomm, Siemens, Skyhook Wireless, Stanford Business School, TDC Group, Telcontar, Tele Atlas North America, The Open Planning Project, Toyota InfoTechnology Center USA, UC Berkeley School of Information, UCSB Geography, uLocate Communications, University of California Los Angeles, Urban Scan, Valtus Imagery Services, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Online, Wikitravel, Yahoo!, and many more.

Some of Where 2.0's past sponsors and exhibitors include: Autodesk, Automative Navigation Data, deCarta, DigitalGlobe, earthscape, earthmine, ESRI, EveryScape, First American Spatial Solutions, Garmin, GeoTango, GlobeXplorer, Google, LightPole, MapJack, MapQuest, MetaCarta, Microsoft, Navteq, Nokia, Poly9, Skyhook Wireless, Skyline, Talent, TeleAtlas, uLocate, waze, Yahoo!, and Zvents.

2009 Program Committee

Program Chair

Brady ForrestBrady Forrest
Brady Forrest is Chair for O'Reilly's Where 2.0 and Emerging Technology conferences. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Berlin and NYC. Brady writes for O'Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

Committee Members

Catherine BurtonCatherine Burton
Catherine Burton is the founder and principal of Endpoint Environmental LLC. Endpoint Environmental is an applied geospatial technology product and service provider. Catherine has over nine years of experience in geographic information systems, photogrammetric and remote sensing technologies. Between 2004 and 2005, she worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center as a student intern, was promoted to project manager and continues to be retained as an Ames Associate. In 2003 and 2004, Catherine worked with DARPA during the Autonomous Ground Vehicle Race as Satellite Imagery Expert and Cartographer for team A.I. Motorvators.

She has worked with commercial, non-profit, federal, state and local government agencies and has had clients in the environmental, natural resources, defense, and educational industries. In the previous five years she has presented at ten industry-related conferences.

Her work has been featured in ten publications including the 20008 issue of NASA Spinoff, NASA Tech News, GeoIntelligence Magazine, and Science News. Catherine earned her B.A. and M.A. in geography from San Francisco State University. She is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Space Enterprise Council, the American Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Society, and the Bay Area Automated Mapping Association. She is the Lead Organizer WebMapSocial, Silicon Valley.

Tom Carden
Tom Carden joined "Stamen" in November 2006. Before that, he wrote passenger flow simulation software for London-based architecture firm YRM and studied for his Masters in Virtual Environments, Imaging and Visualisation at University College London. He also has a Bachelor's degree in Artificial Intelligence with Mathematics from the University of Leeds.

Tom's computer science background has always been balanced with a strong interest in design and visual arts and he is actively involved in the community surrounding the "Processing" development environment. He was an early participant in "OpenStreetMap", a project that aims to create free maps of the world using GPS and aerial photography, and his personal weblog "Random Etc." has been a place for thoughts, sketches, interactive maps and visualisations since 2003.

Alec Dara-AbramsAlec Dara-Abrams
Alec Dara-Abrams is currently a technical consultant with Kinnexxus, Inc., a web-based collaboration company working on small, private, social support networks. He is Assistant Organizer of WebMapSocial, Silicon Valley.

He has more than 20 years of R&D experience working on distributed measurement systems, self-describing sensors and sensor networks, clock synchronization, speech signal processing, digital home entertainment networks, and programming languages at Hewlett-Packard Research Labs and Sony Research. He holds seven US patents with five applied for in sensor networks and digital audio/video networks.

One ongoing theme of Alec's work has been to understand and enhance the relationship between information systems and their physical context - (geo-)spatial and temporal context being of fundamental importance.

Schuyler ErleSchuyler Erle
Schuyler Erle is a free software developer and activist. He is responsible for NoCatAuth, an early open source wireless captive portal, and geocoder.us, an open source U.S. address geocoder. Erle wrote O'Reilly's Mapping Hacks with Jo Walsh and Rich Gibson, and Google Map Hacks, also with Rich.

Presently, he works with MetaCarta in Cambridge, MA, USA, developing nitfy geographic projects like OpenLayers, an open source web mapping framework written in pure JavaScript, and Gutenkarte, a service for exploring the geographic dimension of classic works of literature. Erle is proud to be a founding member of the OSGeo Foundation.

Mike LiebholdMike Liebhold
Mike Liebhold is currently a senior researcher for the Institute for the Future, IFTF, initially focusing on the implications and technologies of a geospatial web as a platform for pervasive and contextual computing. Most recently, Liebhold has been investigating the long-term futures of high-performance computing and broadband networks. Previously, Liebhold was a visiting researcher at Intel Labs, working on a pattern language for ubiquitious computing based on semantic web frameworks.

Mikel MaronMikel Maron
Mikel Maron is a freelance web developer, specializing in Open Geospatial and Wiki tech. He's been active in the standardization of GeoRSS and in the OpenStreetMap collaborative mapping project, as well as projects like Mapufacture and GeoPress. He's developed two of the first Wikis in use at the UN. Previously, Mikel worked as senior developer of My Yahoo! and researched evolutionary models of ecosystems for an MSc at the University of Sussex.

Greg SterlingGreg Sterling
Greg Sterling is the founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, a consulting and research firm that tracks the impact of the Internet on offline consumer purchase behavior and its disruption of traditional media. SMI covers consumer adoption and ad models across a range of market segments, including local search, online yellow pages, online newspapers and classifieds, mobile search, social media and multi-channel shopping. Sterling is also the lead analyst for LocalMobileSearch, an advisory service from Opus Research. Before founding SMI, Sterling ran The Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media program. Prior to The Kelsey Group, Sterling was at TechTV where he helped produce "Working the Web," the first national television show dedicated to e-business and the Internet. Prior to TechTV he was a founding editor and executive producer at AllBusiness.com. Before joining AllBusiness, Sterling was a practicing attorney in San Francisco.

Dr. Paul M. TorrensDr. Paul M. Torrens
Dr. Paul M. Torrens is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University, an Affiliate in the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, and an Affiliate in the GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation. He is also Director of Geosimulation Labs, LLC, a research and development consultancy. He holds a Ph.D. from University College London (2004). His research is focused on Geographic Information Science and development of geosimulation and geocomputation tools, applied modeling of complex urban systems, and new emerging cyberspaces. His projects have been supported by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Herberger Foundation, Science Foundation Arizona, Autodesk, Inc., and Alias Research. His work earned him a CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2007. (See geosimulation.org for more details.)

Frank TaylorFrank Taylor
Frank Taylor is the publisher of Google Earth Blog which for 2.5 years has been providing news, tips, and links to content and features of Google Earth. He worked for fifteen years in the fields of 3D graphics and space simulation mostly while at NASA Johnson Space Center. In recent years he has started several Internet companies the most recent being the blog. Because of his research of Google Earth developments his interest in geospatial applications and the developing Geoweb has intensified. Taylor is a hiker, pilot and a blue water sailor when he isn't in front of a computer - although he sometimes combines the activities.

Andrew TurnerAndrew Turner
Andrew Turner is an engineer who develops tools and technology for geospatial and automation systems. He is the author of the O'Reilly Shortcut "Introduction to Neogeography" and also contributes to MacTech Magazine and Linux Journal. Andrew has built airships, spacecraft, and robotic vehicles. Andrew now lives in Southeast Michigan, but travels the world as frequently as possible. He dabbles in photography, scuba diving, snowboarding, and is an avid curler.

Myrna James YooMyrna James Yoo
Myrna has been publisher of Imaging Notes magazine (www.imagingnotes.com) for five years, and has worked in national magazine publishing for almost two decades. Imaging Notes is a quarterly publication for professionals covering geospatial technologies and Earth remote sensing for energy, security and the environment. The team is launching a new online and print journal for organizations that are integrating location into business and enterprise decision-making in Spring 2009: LB(x) Journal (www.lbxjournal.com).

Raven Zachary Raven Zachary
Raven Zachary helps people create, develop, and launch iPhone products and services. He also is a Contributing Analyst with The 451 Group, an IT industry analyst firm. Raven works with O'Reilly Media on iPhone and mobile technology related events and coverage, and is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developer conference. He is currently advising a number of companies on iPhone strategy and product development. Raven has directed the launch of two Top 20 iPhone applications, Obama '08 for Obama for America and Nearby for Platial. He is regularly quoted by the press about the iPhone and is a frequent conference speaker on the topic. Raven’s iPhone pursuits can be viewed at www.raven.me and he can be followed on Twitter, @ravenme.