Nestoria Blog

Last Friday Nestoria was at the Ordnance Survey geo mash-up conference.

The talks ranged from a simple ‘how to’ through to discussions on the best ways to share geographic data and some heated audience debate. Examples ranged from plotting schools on a map to calculating journey times around the country.

There were also two panel sessions where the audience were able to ask questions and differing views were expressed by the panelists. One of the most contentious questions was ‘who will pay’ which resulted in some fairly polarized opinions. One extreme was that the users should pay and that the current free data was not viable long term. The other view was that the content could be free because the cost of delivery was so low and so enabling other revenue streams that were not possible a few years ago.

Representing the ‘new way’ were some engineers from Google who we ate lunch with. It was a good opportunity to thank them for the maps API which has made that part of our job so much easier. There did not appear to be any representatives from Yahoo or Microsoft. MultiMap’s Sean Phelan was there though and gave a talk, laying to rest any doubts that they are being left behind - we’ll be watching their progress very closely in case they can help us.

It was pleasing that Nestoria was mentioned in a few of the talks, mostly for our recent integration of OpenStreetMap and our use of GeoRSS. It was disappointing that there were not more representatives of commercial mash up sites there as it would have helped give a more real world feel. There was a ready acceptance of most of the delegates to facilitate mashups and greater data sharing, but an uncertainty as to what steps should be taken first.

An interesting day with many acquaintances made and renewed. It is great to see this sort of enthusiasm for what we are doing from the Geo community.