[OSGeo-Discuss] Free GIS mashup event @ MIT, Jan 15-18th

[Noah A Raford]

Hi everyone,

Please join us for a free GIS development mashup event next week, hosted at MIT
in Cambridge, MA, called MashupCamp.

Held at the Hotel at MIT from Jan 15-18th, the event is free and open to the
public.  Registration is limited, however, so please register soon if you'd
like to attend.

We are also hosting a small competition at the event, called FutureBoston @
MashupCamp.  The goal is to use Mass Ave and Boston as a case study to create
new ways of using GIS, Google Earth, GoogleMaps, Yahoo, MapGuide, ESRI, etc.
for urban planning and design in a "mashup" format.  Winners receive $500 and a
chance to develop their mashup further for presentation on Boston.com.

Should be lots of fun and very interesting.  More details at:

MashupCamp
http://www.mashupcamp.com/

FutureBoston at MashupCamp
http://web.mit.edu/piper/www/mashupcamp/

All are welcome and please forward this to anyone who you think may be
interested.

Best,
Noah Raford
Director of Research
MobiLab @ MIT
Department of Urban Studies and Planning


**************************

FutureBOSTON at MashupCamp
ANNOUNCEMENT AND COMPETITION RULES

Do you have a mapping fetish?  Are you into data diving?  Do you care about
cities and neighborhoods? Wiki cities?  Social networks?  Innovation and
start-up companies?  Are you a leader of the future?

Then come to the FutureBOSTON at Mashupcamp, January 15-18, 2006!  Held on MIT's
campus in Cambridge, MA, hosted by MobiLAB at MIT in the Department of Urban
Studies and Planning, join 200 other Web innovators and free-thinkers who, in
addition to attending Mashhup Camp, are invited to prototype their vision of
the future. The competition is being convened in association with Boston.com,
Massachusetts Technology Collaborative/John Adams Innovation Institute and the
National Association of Industrial and Office Properties/Massachusetts.


WHAT?

FutureBOSTON is an examination of technology's role in shaping Boston's
competitive edge.  As part of this initiative, FutureBOSTON is hosting two
competitions to help prototype what the urban planning tools of tomorrow might
look like.

>From January 15th to the 18th, dozens of creative people from around the world
will descend on MIT's campus for a FREE community event to develop new software
known as Mashup Camp.   In conjunction with Mashup Camp you and your friends are
invited to bring your best visions, dreams, codes, programs, and ideas to
participate in two experimental Web development competitions.



COMPETITION DETAILS

The objective is to create two prototypes that will allow citizens to
participate in the life of their city in a manner never before possible. 
Individuals and teams will compete to create the best "proof-of-concept" along
two themes, described below, working with their preferred software tools and
integrating them into API's from Google, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth
and others. The competition is a beginning, not an end; an experiment in
speed-innovation to see how far developers can get in framing a concept,
generating a use-narrative, writing an application and pushing the
state-of-the-mashup-art.

The winners of each competition will receive a cash prize of up to $500 for each
competition and a chance to develop their work further with FutureBOSTON and
Boston.com, to be launched in the Fall of 2007.  This competition presents an
exciting opportunity for creative individuals to network with industry leaders,
demonstrate their creativity and technical ability and help push the envelope of
what is possible in mapping, planning and design.



Competition 1:  Innovation Landscape

 The first competition, "Innovation Landscape", is an exercise in creative
information visualization.  Using data on economic performance from the
Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's 2005 Index of the Massachusetts
Innovation Economy participants will create interactive 3D landscapes, point
clouds, bubble maps, or diagrams of the Boston metro area in GoogleEarth,
Virtual Earth, or ArcGIS Explorer.



Entries should demonstrate their ideas in three ways:

   1. Visualizing the Innovation Landscape: Representing areas of high and low
innovation in terms of peaks and troughs, areas of different size, color,
shape, intensity, etc.
   2. Showing change over time:  Animating changes in these values over time.
   3. Identifying key trends and exceptions: Means of highlighting or selecting
areas of fast or slow innovation, exceptional companies or communities, etc.,
with a way to investigate further via web links, embedded information, etc.

FutureBOSTON will provide all competitors with common data in specialized layers
from a Web server in the form of georeferenced point and polygon layers with
associated attributes, as well as geocoded text databases. This information
should be visualized against standard backdrops of maps and photos in Google
Earth, Virtual Earth and other mapping environments, as well as other Web
sources.



Competition 2: ScienceCITY Model Maker

The second competition involves a first-cut exploration of real world data,
focusing on the area around the MashupCamp competition itself.  The objective
is to demonstrate an application that returns a map, showing information useful
to different groups of peoples interested in locating in an area.

Using parcel-level data of Cambridge around the Hotel at MIT, should propose
creative visualizations that render social networking opportunities, resource
accessibility, housing costs and other dimension of daily life. These scenarios
should be considered from at least one of the following perspectives:



    * An entrepreneur interested in starting a company on a site close to a
research university
    * A candidate considering an application to attend a research university in
the area
    * Graduating talent considering where to take a job

For each scenario, participants should create a map that displays information
relevant to each scenario, bringing together data such as:

   1. Lot size, building footprints and building heights, etc.
   2. Land value
   3. Zoning provisions
   4. Proximity to universities, mass transit, restaurants and other amenities,
etc.
   5. Apartment rents and home ownership costs

Participants should also combine this with other relevant data from the web and
their own ideas as they see fit to create attractive and informative maps as
possible in the time available.



JUDGES AND COMPETITION

This is a short competition to see how far participants can get in two days. The
competition expects functional concepts that work on the Internet via a browser
or a desktop mapping and visualization package that uses one or more of the
APIs, presented at Mashupcamp.

Winners will be chosen based on the most innovative approach,  the most
attractive interface and the approach which has the most likelihood to be
successfully developed further.

Awards will be based on the following criteria:

    * short narrative describing their strategy
    * functional demo in their web application of their choice
    * a description of workability, backend software and scalability of their
approach

The winner in each category will be selected by representatives from MIT,
Boston.com and venture capital firms. The winner from each category will
receive a $500 cash prize and recognition for their work.  Successful
MashupCamp participants may also have the opportunity to be involved in
subsequent phases of work with the FutureBOSTON and Boston.com team.



FINE PRINT

FutureBOSTON at Mashupcamp is a feature of "FutureBOSTON," a major civic dialogue
focused on increasing Boston's competitive edge; being convened by the MIT and
State Street Corporation, in association with WCVB-TV5, Boston Magazine and
Boston.com. FutureBOSTON will culminate in a televised town forum, broadcast
live from MIT, November 15, 2007.

In addition to State Street, sponsors of FutureBOSTON at MIT include Blue Cross
Blue Shield, Chiofaro Company, Distrigas/Suez, Harvard Pilgrim, John Hancock,
Liberty Mutual, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Novartis Institutes, Partners
Healthcare, Staples and The Boston Foundation.

REGISTER

To register, go to MashupCamp.com (http://www.mashupcamp.com). For more
information, please contact:

Thomas Piper

Executive Director and Principal Investigator
LABORATORY FOR MOBILE LEARNING/FutureBOSTON
MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
MIT Room 9-534
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02139

Phone: 617-253-8950
Fax: 617-253-2654
Email: piper at mit.edu

Noah Raford

Director of Research
Email: nraford at mit.edu

Competition website: http://web.mit.edu/piper/www/mashupcamp/