BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Ensemble Independent//vPim 0.360//EN
CALSCALE:Gregorian
X-WR-CALNAME:Where 2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20080512
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20080514
SUMMARY:Where 2.0
LOCATION:Burlingame, California, USA
DESCRIPTION:Over the past four years the geospatial web and its significanc
 e has grown--maps are everywhere now!--and Where 2.0 has grown with it.
\n
 \nGIS has been around for decades, but is no longer only the realm of speci
 alists. The Web is now flush with geographic data, being harnessed in a usa
 ble and searchable format. The right tools to easily create geo content hav
 e finally emerged and the outcome is the ability to represent and search th
 e physical world online. Virtual representations of the physical world are 
 becoming more realistic and important. As this happens, their geographic lo
 cation becomes relevant and the scope becomes larger and problematic. Compa
 nies feel the need to have quality data across the globe—inside buildings a
 nd out—and are increasingly turning to their users to collect this data. In
  addition, the wide availability of geo-data has caused maps to become a re
 quired component of many online applications, creating a new market for com
 panies like WeoGeo and GeoCommons to aggregate and generate revenue with ge
 o-data and maps online.
\n
\nGIS has been taken to heart by neogeographers,
  a new breed of developers with increasingly powerful tools built on the ba
 ck of open standards and free APIs from the likes of Google and Microsoft, 
 and application frameworks like Mapstraction and GeoDjango. Increasingly, t
 he open source GIS stack is supporting the Web, adding a new arrow in the n
 eogeographer's quiver. Geonames, an open-data service, is built from this d
 ata web-accessible data. Google has started exposing geo data in a separate
  index that is growing daily.
\n
\nAt the O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, we
  expose the tools pushing the boundaries of the location frontier, track th
 e emergence of new business models and services, and spend time examining n
 ew sources of data and the platforms for collecting them. New to Where 2.0 
 2008 will be a full day of in-depth tutorials on the best and the latest so
  that participants can return to their projects with new tools in hand.
\n
 \n
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR