New school GIS to the traditional mapper is 'Business Unusual' rather than 'Business as usual'...
This event was one of the highlights of my tech-calendar for '09. Hosted at the ILRI Nairobi(Uthiru) Campus Grounds,
WhereCamp, was the free unconference for geogeographers, mobile location experts and social cartographers and all kinds of folks interested in place. It was an opportunity to exchange ideas, questions, projects, politics, technical issues and make new friends (or rather network, friends with benefits... ).
One of the memorable contributions were from my pal from M$, Wilfred Mworia who did an eye-opener on Mobile Computing Technology and gave a sneak-peak of
Microsoft's Geo-Life Architecture, a research project in China. GeoLife enables user to share travel experience using GPS trajectories.
Will also coined 'ku-facebook' a term used in reference to the impact of the Social Network site and the commoditization of social networking.
PS: Check out Will's
Afrinnovator Website. It is basically about putting Africa and African Innovation on the map!
Had a fun exchange with
Micheal Lin, a Lecturer at Stanford Uni, who showed me some of what they are working on to create a
Green Dorm, a virtually self sustaining 'Green' Building that would be the coolest(no pun intended) place to live on campus. He is currently teaching a course at Stanford University entitled Sustainable Development Studio, in which students are creating sustainable solutions to real-world problems, including designing the green dorm at Stanford slated to be completed in 2009. Micheal has recently been in East Africa to sampling miniature electricity generator gadget which could apparently pump a 20-minute(Talk-time) charge on your average phone with five arm-swing pulls.
Google, one of the sponsors of the event, who had launched
Google Map Maker for Kenya which enables locals to create and contribute to GMaps. Jessica Pfund the Google GIS Specialist for Kenya show cased it and even gave us the Google Map Maker Kenya source data download for non commercial users
here. So the next time you search for
hotels,
restaurants or even for
Kenyan Currency/forex, just go to Google Maps.
Other outfits, too many to remember off-the-top, that participated were
InternationalFoodPolicyResearchInstitute,
AGCommons,
ESRI,
ILWIS,
WFP,
CharitySolutions, ILRIKenya, and more...
For those interested the next WhereCamp Africa will be held in Bamako 2010
In the Pic: @
judemwenda and @
whynnot, my Twitpals.
Freebies: Google Earth 5.0 CD, ILWIS Open Software CD, WhereCamp T-Shirt, Google T-Shirt, Happy Hour - Drinks Free.
On the 14th May 2009, Ericsson Kenya will be hosting an Ericsson Experience Day at the Sarit Centre.
