Nestoria Interview - Chris Osborne - WhereCampEU
Fellow Nestors!
I know lately we've been on an interview tear, but today we had the chance to speak with Chris Osborne - one of the lead organisers of this week's WhereCampEU to be held here in London.
Many of you will remember Chris from past Nestoria posts - he's the man behind the regular #geomob events, and he worked with us last year on our Where Can I Live project. Chris thus officially becomes the first Nestoria team member to move up into the lofty realms of Nestoria interviewee. (And to think I knew him back when.... ). By day he hangs his hat at ITO World, which both fights the good fight to improve public transport for all of us and creates mindblowingly cool data visualisations.
WhereCampEU is sure to be a great event, showcasing the cutting edge of what's happening in the European online geography space. We're very pleased that Nestoria is a sponsor (along with geo upstarts like the Ordnance Survey, Google, Bing and Yahoo! amongst many other forward looking oranisations). We'll hopefully be announcing a little geo-innovation of our own before the event (watch this space). We look forward to meeting any Nestoria blog readers at the event. Please say hello!.
Chris, thanks very much for making the time to chat with us.
1. You are organising the first WhereCamp in Europe. Can you explain what a WhereCamp is and what made you want to organise one?
I went to my first WhereCamp last year in Silicon Valley, right after the Where2.0 conference (editor's note: Chris was kind enough to guest post a summary of Where2.0 with us last summer), and loved the participative nature of the event. Its an unstructured conference, or unconference as the kids say, with a blank timetable that the attendees create themselves by running sessions or doing a lightning talk. As the name implies, its all about geography, place and location technology. As something of a geography geek, I had so much fun that I just had to organise the first WhereCamp in the EU.
2. Who do you expect will attend the event?
I've worked hard to attract a wide cross section of attendees, a quick glance at the ticket list shows over 13 different countries represented from diverse backgrounds - government, web2.0 startups, National Mapping Agencies, OpenStreetMap people, academics, bloggers and your good selves at Nestoria.
3. You say you are passionate about "neogeography". What is neogeography and what's so exciting about it?
Neogeography is about community map-making, people generated maps where we remove the separation of the map maker from the map consumer. I'm really excited about the opportunities for an enhanced democracy that comes from people having more knowledge about their environment and being able to participate in decision making. At ITO World, we work on visualising complex transport networks so that communities can view how planning decisions will affect them. In my local community, Clapton, residents have already rejected one new housing development this month partly due to a lack of transport planning.
4. What's the most exciting development in internet technology in the past few years to you?
Right now, I'm mostly interested in how people are interacting with technology. I have been focused on technology for too long now and am taking a step back and looking at user interaction. I think the touch screen is actually what is going to drive more and more IT/internet usage as it provides a natural interface that we haven't seen before. The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was convincing people that the iPhone wasn't a computer but a mobile phone. I expect to see much more embedded, touch-screen computing devices in all manner of places we haven't seen before.
What's something that you're still waiting for, an app, service etc. that you'd like to see in the future?
Thanks Chris for the chat, and also for organising the event. We're looking forward to it!
On a final note: For anyone who needs a reminder of the current age of online cartography awesomeness that we live in, check this sweetness out (made with OSM data, free and open geodata FTW!)
past Nestoria interviews: Kevin Burke, Nick Turner-Samuels, and Josh Devins.
