Geodata is by far the most important geospatial topic today and the range of presentations and discussions on offer at this year's Where 2.0 conference bear witness to that. What makes geodata such a key element, however, is the variety of ways in which the subject relates, not only to what is happening elsewhere within the geospatial arena, but also to topics not normally associated with geodata.
Take privacy, for instance. When you use a geolocation device to find out where you are in relation to some geodata you're interested in, who owns that location data? This is just one of the security and privacy issues that will become more important as geodata is used more widely.
Torkington and Forrest take us on a whirlwind tour of the subjects covered in Where 2.0 2006, including the growth in importance of social data as an annotation of definitive geographical data and the way social data is increasingly becoming the route of choice for attempts at monetizing geodata. They also make a plea for what seems to be most needed in the industry at the moment; open standards.
Nathan Torkington is an editor and conference planner for O'Reilly Media by day but by night he's the project manager for Perl 6, a banjo player, husband, and father. In his spare time, he wonders where the rest of his spare time went.
Brady Forrest is on the Radar Team and is the co-chair for Where 2.0. He used to work on Live Search, where he was one of the organizers of the Search Champs program. He came over to MS with the acquisition of MongoMusic (which became MSN Music). Before his forays on the Internet Brady worked in the Supply Chain Management industry.
He lives in Seattle and when he's not building cars for Burning man or filming Angel parodies, he hikes and devilsticks.
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