"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 and cartographical. 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!

The February meeting of Portland's first JavaScript and ECMAscript users' group. We will discuss topics ranging from client-side web frameworks, to functional and prototypal programming theory.

Topics slated for this meeting are:

• An Introduction to CouchDB from a Beginner's Perspective by Merlyn Albery-Speyer
• CouchApps Demonstrated by J. Chris Anderson
• Overview of Mapstraction, a Unified Interface to Various Mapping APIs by Adam DuVander
• JSONP for Cross-Domain Scripting by Jesse Hallett

Feel free to join our mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/pdxjs if you too are a JavaScript admirer. Or visit our website at http://pdxjs.com/ for more information.

Hello all!

Just so you know, the first Pre Development Workshop will be on Saturday the 5th in the month of September! Please mark it on your calendar. The time has been set from 10:00-12:00.

Tickets are now on sale at http://portlandpredevworkshops.eventbrite.com/

Thanks, Jordan Gensler

Join us on Saturday the 5th for the Portland Pre Development Workshop. Everyone is welcome to attend, no prior programming experience is needed.

  What is a Pre?
  The Pre refers to the Palm Pre, a new competitor in the Smartphone market.

  Why develop for the Pre?
  The pre offers a simple but comprehensive SDK that is easy to build on but is also powerful. The Pre has a flourishing open source community.

  Why is the Pre so good?
  There are many reasons why the Pre is a good development platform. The big reason is potential. While the SDK only allows web coding with additional API's, the core of the system is Linux, which already has a large community.

  What do I need for a Pre Development Workshop?
  Please bring a laptop with the SDK already installed.

  The SDK can be downloaded from http://developer.palm.com

  I also recommend installing the eclipse platform with the Mojo plug-in. Instructions can be found here: http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1639

  Why only six tickets?
  The space we are using at Souk has space for six people. If tickets sell out, then we will add more tickets.

  Contact Jordan Gensler (@kesne) for more information.

Named by JWT Intelligence as one of the 100 things to watch in 2011, Portland's Geoloqi has garnered national attention for being at the forefront of location-based services. Forbes recently asked if Geoloqi was "Foursquare's Biggest Threat?"

Why is there so much buzz for this small project in Portland? Because Geoloqi is on the cutting edge of taking location information and making it truly useful.

As Aaron Parecki, one of the co-founders of Geoloqi, explained to Forbes, "I’d like to share my location with a client if I’m meeting them somewhere, so they can know when I’ll arrive."

We're honored to have Aaron Parecki and Amber Case as our first presenters of 2011. They'll be talking about the next generation of location apps and the importance of ambient location services.

Presentation Description

Wouldn't it be nice if your colleague's phone could SMS its location to you? If you know position and velocity, you know when they'll arrive. The result: the interface disappears. No redundant actions or queries. The same software could turn your lights on as you approach the house. Or automatically "check in" to certain locations for you. Or leave a note for yourself the next time you're at the store.

Augmented reality and location were hot topics last year, but there is often a confusion between aesthetics vs. practicality, and fantasy vs. reality. This presentation will highlight the advantages and disadvantages of visual and non-visual augmented reality.

In the presentation, they will highlight why developers of apps should look at what users want to do now, as well as what users want to do in the future, why social apps should try to mirror real-world relationships, why sharing should be about who you share with as well as how long you’re sharing, and why developers should think about how to make apps "ambient” and require less user interaction.

They will cover the current players in the geolocation market, the location market itself, and why location is such a big deal. They will discuss real-time location sharing, geolocation triggers such as geonotes, proximal notification and automatic checkins, and privacy and security.

What Will Be Covered

• The location market. Where it is now and future projections.
• Why the market is here (timing, hardware, affordability, etc.).
• Some history (PARC research, etc.)
• The current players: What they’re doing and where they fall short
• What we’re passionate about and are trying to solve.
• Philosophy of interface evaporation.
• (Other cool things you can do with ambient location and sensors (fun home automation tricks and pranks).

Aaron Parecki

Aaron Parecki is a Portland-based iPhone and PHP developer interested in solving practical problems with technology. In his free time, he enjoys geolocation, linguistics, and building home automation systems and IRC bots with a sense of humor.

For the past 2.5 years, he has been tracking and visualizing his location every 6 seconds, making him a frequent presenter at the Portland data visualization group. His fascination with location sharing and GPS began at the age of 6, when he traced the routes of family road trips on a map with a highlighter. He combined these interests and created Geoloqi.com with Amber Case in an effort to help people connect in the real world.

Aaron has 11 years experience in web app development, database design, graphic design and printing, and server administration. You can learn more about Aaron at aaronparecki.com, and you can follow him on twitter at @aaronpk.

Amber Case

Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist and user experience designer from Portland, Oregon. Her main focus is mobile software, augmented reality and data visualization, as these reduce the amount of time and space it takes for people to connect with information. Case founded Geoloqi.com, a private location sharing application, out of a frustration with existing social protocols around text messaging and wayfinding.

Last year, Case was featured in Fast Company as one of their Most Influential Women in Technology and spoke at TED on technology and humans. She worked with Fortune 500 companies at Wieden+Kennedy and now works as a user experience designer at Vertigo Software in Portland, Oregon.

You can learn more about Case at caseorganic.com, cyborganthropology.com and on Twitter at @caseorganic.

If you were at WhereCamp 2008 you might have had the opportunity to play Pacmanhattan. The game was epic and played by cell phones on the park blocks!

Come play a new version of the game using real-time location and GPS through the Geoloqi app! We'll be starting at 2Pm at the playground in the North Park blocks.

To play, you'll need Geoloqi for iPhone: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/geoloqi/id415603875?mt=8 or Android https://market.android.com/details?id=com.geoloqi.android1

We'll turn on the PacMap layer before the event, so all you need to do is bring some comfortable running/walking shoes and a fully charged phone!

See you there!

CyborgCamp is an unconference about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. We’ll discuss topics such as social media, design, code, inventions, web 2.0, twitter, the future of communication, cyborg technology, anthropology, psychology, and philosophy.

Three scheduled speakers will give talks on biomedical engineering, cybernetic control systems and the stock market, and quantified self. The rest of the day will be unconference sessions.

Contact @caseorganic for more details and to volunteer, speak or sponsor.

Register at: http://cyborgcamp2012.eventbrite.com

Event is $12 to cover breakfast and lunch. Scholarship tickets are available upon request.

Join us on Sunday, Nov 4th at 10am at Geoloqi HQ for an all-day wearable computing and Crisis Commons Data Hackathon.

More info here: http://portland.cyborgcamp.com/2012/10/wearable-computing-and-open-data-hackathon-sunday-nov-4th/

It’s free! You can participate as an individual or a team. Breakfast and coffee will be available in the morning, and we’ll head to the food carts for lunch. We’ll have a Makey Makey and some Lily Pad Arduinos. The wearable computing hackathon is for those comfortable with soldering and working with electronics. Bring your own equipment for best results.

Don’t have your own equipment? Join the Crisis Commons hackathon. Use various tech such as the Geoloqi SDK and Portland open gov data to build useful apps for emergencies like Hurricane Sandy.

Update: due to demand we opened an additional 20 slots!

RSVP: http://cyborgcamp2012.eventbrite.com/

--Schedule--

Doors open at 10:00am with breakfast and coffee.

Coding will stop at 5:30pm, and teams and individuals will demo their apps.

Cleanup and after-events. Likely at the Lotus.

--Location--

Geoloqi HQ 920 SW 3rd Ave #400 Portland, OR 97204

--Who Should Attend?-- Hardware hackers, Ruby, Python, PHP, web developers, coders, interaction designers, graphic designers and anyone who has a passion to code, hack or conceptualize applications that will free (or otherwise enhance) the accessibility and usefulness of government-shared data or wearable technology.

Although the sprint takes place on Nov 4th after CyborgCamp Portland, you don’t have to be attending the conference to join us.

Participation is free and open to anyone with an interest in design or coding… we just ask that you register in advance so we know how many we need to accommodate.

Register at: http://cyborgcamp2012.eventbrite.com

Free Bar-camp unconference on all things geospatial, geographic, location-aware, and maps.

Hosted by the Portland Open Source GIS Users Group (http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-osgeo), this "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, GIS In Action (http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action), which includes an open source track on Wednesday May 1st. Attendance at GIS in Action is not required to attend the unconference, but there is a single day rate for those who would like to attend that.

Schedule 9am - Registration 9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 10:00 - Sessions start 12:00 - Lunch on your own 5:00 - Adjorn for Geo-beers

Please register at Eventbright (http://pdxosgeo2013.eventbrite.com) so we know how much coffee and pastries to order!

Come take an in-depth look at the world of iBeacon. Find out what they are, how they work and what other types of Bluetooth Low Energy beacons exist and how they differ from the iBeacon standard.

We'll also talk about security and privacy concerns for businesses and consumers of iBeacon; different use-cases for iBeacon in retail and business; what hardware options are available; and give a high-level overview of iOS and Android facilities for communicating with these devices.

About the Speakers

Steven Osborn

Steven Osborn is a start-up entrepreneur, software hacker, and hardware enthusiast. In 2009 he co-founded a mobile messaging company called Urban Airship (urbanairship.com) that powers thousands of mobile applications on iPhone and Android for companies like Starbucks, Redbox, and ESPN. In his spare time, he enjoys participating in triathlons, baking bread, traveling, and spending time with his family. Steven lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, Jenny, and son, Theo. He is also an accomplished Guitar Hero rock star and Army veteran.

David Crow

David Crow is a mobile engineer at Urban Airship involved in early stage ibeacon r&d. He consistently spends time outside of work on quantified self projects, floating in sensory deprivation tanks, and enjoying spicy bloody marys (always gin).