State Of The Map 2010

As proven on previous SOTM’s mappers can actually be pretty creative. This year we decided to put up a song contest and we have received quite a few submissions. Ranging from own work to general ideas to Tenacious D. covers we can be sure this contest will ROCK!

Some songs need a bit of work and/or performers so please check out the the wiki.

Talking about business models, Steven Feldman is chairing a panel discussion entitled “Cocktails on the Titanic”. If you can’t work out the relevance of the title you might want to think about businesses that do not adapt their business models to rapidly changing circumstances. The core of this panel discussion comes from a session he ran at wherecamp.eu “We are all FCUK’d without a Business Model”

The second half of the panel at SotM will be an opportunity for startups and small geobusinesses to do a one minute elevator pitch to the audience about their business. You need to pitch the Who? What? Why? and How Much? of your business model. Have a look at this old post if you need some background on the questions. No slides, just a mike and 60 seconds not a single second longer followed by some challenging questions from the panel and the audience. At the end the community will get to vote for their favourite pitch and a small prize will be awarded. The big opportunity for a startup is exposure and possibly even an investor!

If you or someone you know want to grab a slot for an elevator pitch mail Steven through this link or mail henk@stateofthemap.org

image: (C)(C) Terence Faircloth http://www.flickr.com/people/atelier_tee/

AOL Inc., a leading global web services company with an extensive suite of brands and offerings and a substantial worldwide audience, has a strategic focus on local. MapQuest, Patch and City’s Best make up the three pillars of AOL’s local strategy.

• Mapquest is one of the leading brands online, offering maps and directions reaching more than 49.2 million users in May 2010, according to Comscore unified UV metrics.
• Patch is a hyper-local news and information platform operating in more than 65 communities currently. Patch is making an important investment in local journalism by placing professional journalists in each town it serves to encourage community participation and provide original, trusted coverage for each individual town.
• City’s Best will launch in 25 major metro markets in September 2010 and add high-quality, city-specific content to its “best of” entertainment options for each metro audience.

AOL’s local strategy is focused on building a leading portfolio of the most trusted, comprehensive and accessible local content, products and services. We aim to delight our consumers with new feaures and functionality across mapping and content at both the local and metro level.

With less than 2 weeks to go, it’s time to make travel arrangements to get to Girona. Good to know that we’ve arranged a 30% discount on train travel within Spain! Ideal when you’re flying to Barcelona: travel comfortably to Girona by train. Or … add a day visit to Barcelona right before or after the conference.

What to do: download this discount voucher. Print it and show it at the ticket counter when buying your train ticket.

This discount voucher is valid from wednesday July 7th until tuesday July 13th for RENFE tickets from/to Girona within Spain.

(image: CC-BY-NC by “NASA Videographer” via Flickr)

Girona is lovely old city with lots of characteristic features. That can also be challenging while mapping. Ivan explains in the short video about the difficulties with Girona’s renovated cathedral.
Do you have the perfect solution? Come to State of the Map and share it with us and the rest of the community.

There is more to Girona then just going to State of the Map. Ivan of OpenStreetMap Spain is telling a bit what you can do while you’re in Girona. He’s also throwing in a weather forecast. This may come in handy when you’re going to pack your suitcase….

We are happy to welcome Ulmon Solutions to the community and are pleased to announce, that Ulmon Solutions will participate as a sponsor in Girona.

Ulmon Solutions is focussed on delivering location-aware travel and navigation apps, based on openstreetmap and wikipedia data.

Their “2Go” Maps and Guides Apps have been very well received by users. Ulmon Solution has announced several innovations in the pipeline for this year. So we are looking forward to exciting discussions and networking with their representatives in Girona.

Recently several guys from the organizing committee has visited the city of Girona and the venue. They also taken lots of pictures and made several videos. In the coming days you can find a selection of these images on this website. Starting with a short impression of the city and the venue.

LWN.net has kindly offered to promote the State Of The Map 2010 on their website.

LWN.net is the premier source for news from the Linux and free software worlds. Each week, LWN provides in-depth coverage of a variety of topics of interest to developers and users of free software. During the rest of the week, LWN has information about breaking news in the community, including a daily summary of Linux distribution security alerts. The weekly contains unparalleled Linux kernel coverage and software reviews by the Grumpy Editor, as well as stories on distribution news, security vulnerabilities, development projects and more.

The Knight Foundation has given away over $20 million towards news innovation through the Knight News Challenge, a five-year $25 million initiative to build the next-generation infrastructure to inform and engage communities.

In the last few years, mapping has become an increasingly important element among our winners. Five of the 12 projects which won grants in 2010 involved mapping in some form: TileMill by DevelopmentSeed of Washington DC; CitySeed by Arizona State University’s New Media Innovation Lab in Phoenix; CityTracking by Stamen Design out of San Francisco; GoMap Riga by two Latvians; and LocalWiki by the founders of Davis Wiki of Davis, California. In addition, a 2009 grantee, Ushahidi also made its reputation through crowd-sourced crisis mapping.

The News Challenge is interested in all layers of the map stack, including data gathering, tile rendering, and interactive consumer-facing applications.

The requirements to enter the Knight News Challenge are three-fold: innovation, involving news and information, and having a local geographic angle. In general, the reviewers look favorably upon projects that can be considered catalytic — whether as a proof-of-concept, creating open-source infrastructure tools that can be leveraged by others, or taking an existing project with traction that can be brought to scale. It is generally a strength if an applicant has an existing history with open source projects or has an existing beta product. The News Challenge requires any code and intellectual property funded by the foundation to be released open source or under Creative Commons by the end of the grant.

Jennifer 8. Lee, the lead Knight News Challenge reviewer, will be available at the State of The Map conference in Girona, Spain to explain how to craft an effective proposal and to field questions.

Last year the contest received over 2,300 proposals. The initial application is a simple set of questions, designed to help lead people who have never gone through a grant process before. As you proceed through the rounds, the questions get more detailed.

The next deadline will be in fall 2010. Please visit newschallenge.org for more information.