The sessions

The topics of the sessions at there WhereCamp EU where widespread. I normally enjoy technical developer focused talks the most, but this time it was different. It was such a great mixture from developers to mapping people that lead to broad variety of talks. Here are my favourite ones.

One-dimensional maps

It started with a historic abstract about one-dimensional maps, which was already interesting by itself. I really got the point, why such maps make sense. Sorry for the lack of more information about it, I should probably ask Laurence Penney for a blog post on this topic.

The final goal of his endeavors is having a nice app for mobile devices, that shows your way to a certain location as a simple list you can scroll through. No panning or zooming would be needed, it's just a simple list that includes everything important you might see, together with simple explanations where to go. It's not about being super precise, but about being simple. An explanation like "cross the park" is easier than a detailed explanation of all the crossings you might hit while walking through the park.

Psychogeography

The talk about Psychogeography from Tim Waters was an eye-opener for me. If never really thought about the impact of geography on the psych. You should really talk with Tim about it, or visit a talk from him if you get the chance. His slides are available on slideshare.

I've recently read a blog post from Chris McDowall about An exercise in getting lost which fits nicely into the topic of psychogeorgaphy.

Canvas for map visualisations/analysis

I've already known the nice demo created by Steven Ottens with Leaflet and the Canvas element. His talk gave lots of background information how he did it and what can be done with the Canvas element. For example displaying a heightmap from a line you draw on the map, all client-sided.

Earthwatchers

Another nice presentation came from Geodan about saving the uranguton by satellite. The project is called Earthwatchers. There you can take the responsibility of a part of the rain forest on Borneo and monitor it for deforestation.

There are plans to have an HTML5 based interface (instead of the current Silverlight one. Given that it is a Geodan project, I hope they'll use MapQuery for it.

Geo yoga

At the end of the WhereCamp, there were some lightning talks, one of the most fun ones was by Tim Waters called geo yoga. You can find pictures at the official geo yoga website. It is all about pantomiming places (e.g. countries.)

My session

My session was about MapQuery, I've already blogged about it last week, hence here's the link.

I planned for another one for Sunday, which was a Q&A about all sorts of Couch things. It would have taken place on the couch in front of one of the rooms. I'm not sure if people didn't get where it was supposed to take place, or were just not interested in the (Geo)Couch topic.

Conclusion

The whole WhereCamp EU was well organized and the crowd was very diverse, all you need for a great unconference. Hope to see you all next year wherever the camp might be.