Where 2.0 - Thank You for Joining Us!

[Arnulf Christl]

O'Reilly Conferences wrote:
> Dear Where 2.0 Attendee,
> 
> We want to thank you for attending the second Where 2.0 conference last
> week. It was a whirlwind of incredible projects, amazing announcements, and
> knowledgeable speakers. The growth of this industry is astounding, and
> the full-to-capacity crowd and wide media coverage the conference received
> reflects that.
> 
> Where 2.0 focuses on the rapidly growing intersection of location and the
> Internet. Network connected data services bring applications to the
> mainstream that were previously only within the realm of GIS
> professionals. We heard you loud and clear: this revolution is only
> starting.
> 
> Congratulations to the speakers and attendees who were quoted in the press
> coverage of the conference. You can see both mainstream media articles
> and blog posts at <http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/where_20/>,
> and soak up the work of our excellent conference photographer,
> James Duncan Davidson at
> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/x180/sets/72157594164344807/>.
> While your at it, you may also want to check out the speaker 
> presentation files:
> http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/47/presentations.html
> 
> We of course appreciate all of the feedback, suggestions, requests, and
> critiques we've received thus far. We have been combing through surveys,
> leafing through the wiki, and reading blog posts on the conference. And
> we're not done yet: we urge you to fill out those online survey forms to
> help us improve still further. You'll find those surveys at:
> 
>  >> General conference evaluation: http://www.oreilly.com/go/confeval
>  >> Speaker evaluation: http://www.oreilly.com/go/spkreval
> 
> Congratulations to Chris Patterson and Phillip Kandal who each won a free
> pass to next year's Where 2.0 Conference for filling out conference
> surveys.
> 
> We're already beginning to plan the next Where 2.0 conference, which 
> will return again to
> the Fairmont San Jose on June 19-20, 2007. Save that date!
> 
> We'll post cool technology and new business angles to the Radar blog
> <http://radar.oreilly.com> as we find them, but here's our current
> thinking for the direction the industry will take:
> 
> = The portals will continue to add both business and cultural data to
> their maps, as well as expand their efforts to collect social data from
> their users.
> 
> = More and more services will produce and consume KML and GeoRSS.
> 
> = The next business model for mash-ups is syndicated local advertising:
> Who will win the race to build an advertising network around their mash-up
> platform?
> 
> = Open Source GIS will continue to offer features formerly only available
> in established commercial software packages, forcing the commercial world
> to innovate further.

Hello,
first off thank you for the reference and kudos.

We would very much appreciate if you could reconsider your wording here. 
The commercial world is NOT (emphasize!) the opposite to the Open Source 
  world. The Open Source world is perfectly well powered and funded and 
fostered and more than anything used by the commercial world to create 
business and make money. Thus these 'worlds' are not orthogonal at all 
but rather parallel or slightly adjacent.

Open Source GIS in many areas already (emphasize!) is (emphasize!) an 
established component, oftentimes even an integral part of the engine 
under the hood of - tadaa, big secret! - proprietary software packages 
(just check out who ships GDAL/OGR...).

Open Source does not force anybody to do anything. If the proprietary 
world feels the need to innovate further to rival Open Source this is a 
great thing for everybody. But it is by no means an actively steered 
activity of "the Open World". I just try to imagine who would possibly 
be able to control or steer a distributed grass roots environment. It 
wont work, except you can make grass grow out of your pockets (ie not 
come from this world but a better one).

Some guidance and voluntary coordination may be provided - the OSGeo 
Foundation has set out to do just that, but this is far from steering, 
controlling or actively trying to knock out proprietary software.

The gap has been dug with the help of many fearful proprietary shovels 
and powered by marketing and product management - but definitely not by 
developers or users (and maybe the media has some fun in pointing at 
shell-shocked innovation victims too - war sells). In many cases it 
turned out that the trench later proved to not hinder furthering Open 
Source but rather turned out as pitfalls for closed shop development.

Hmmm. Maybe this kind of talk is also digging at the grave - ahm - 
trench between FOSS and closed shop. :-)

Just 2 cents.

If anybody in the OSGeo discuss list feels like this is just the crappy 
opinion of a guy from the fringes of reality they will surely speak up 
(and tell me about steering). Stay tuned.

Best regards,
Arnulf

> = The business model of improving data and then reselling it will grow.
> 
> = As more services and devices offer networked location, consumers place
> emphasis on privacy and service providers can differentiate by providing
> it.
> 
> You'll find all the details on Where 2.0 and our other O'Reilly 
> Conferences at:
> http://conferences.oreilly.com/
> 
> Thanks again for being part of it all!
> 
> Brady Forrest & Nathan Torkington
> Where 2.0 Program Co-chairs
>