Where 2.0 Summary

Great write-up, on what appears to have been a successful conference. Location awareness is going to be huge, no longer will people need propietary tools from GIS vendors. Google Maps and Google Earth changed the rules with their open API's. Next we need Open Source tools:

Undoubtedly, the most interesting map geekery was coming out of a growing group of open-source programmers who've devoted themselves to liberating the tools once used by experts to do geographical analysis. Schuyler Erle, co-author of Mapping Hacks, said the open-source community has focused on all the things you can't do in Google Maps. "We can browse Google Maps, but the look and feel of those maps is fixed," he explained. "We want the flexibility to tell our own stories with maps. What's exciting is the ability to do your own cartography, to put your own labels on and show your own roads."

Erle is part of the Open Source Geospacial Foundation, or OSGeo, and like many of his fellow neogeographers he hangs out informally on an e-mail list called Geowanking. The members of OSGeo run mapping software projects, including the open-source version of Autodesk's MapGuide, and a powerful tool for producing maps with metadata called OpenLayers.

"Most web maps out there give you 'red dot fever,' which means that they're covered in red dots whose meaning is hard to decipher," Erle said. "But with OpenLayers, you can create meaningful symbols on your maps. You can make maps that show demographics or property values or erosion." Other members of OSGeo, sitting nearby, began to chime in and offer ways to use OpenLayers -- civic activists could make maps to explain issues to zoning boards; environmentalists might make maps that show the results of clear-cutting.

... "We want map-analysis tools to be as ubiquitous as spreadsheets," Erle summed up. "Everybody should be able to do geo-analysis."