WhereCamp Palo Alto 2009 May 22, 2009

The question on everybody's mind this year is where is WhereCamp? Y'all asked for a 2 day event, not centered on the weekend, with a late evening hack session - and we are mighty pleased to finally announce the schedule and venue.

WhereCamp2009 is the unconference for hackers, mappers, thinkers, artists and anybody who wants to know their place. Hot on the heels of Where 2.0 [ http://en.oreilly.com/where2009/ ] we bring together up to 300 enthusiasts for two days of in depth discussion and hacking. Last year we did this at Google - thanks Google! And the year before at Yahoo - thanks Yahoo! This year we're doing it at SocialText in Palo Alto on Friday May 22nd and Saturday May 23rd 2009.

We are self-organized in true bar-camp style. Bring your projects, work and ideas to get feedback from a group of the worlds most passionate social cartographers. Topics are whatever you want them to be. Over the last two years we've seen presentations ranging from emergency crisis response such as the work http://ushahidi.com is doing, to local food such as http://www.serveyourcountryfood.net/ to psycho-geography to visualization, to mobile mapping to re-factoring urban landscapes.

The expectation is simply that you participate. It's your event and we'll all get out of it what you put into it. As usual the event is zero dollars to enter - we will be seeking sponsorship to make yummy food and other consumables appear.

WhereCamp2009 will be held at the SocialText Campus at 655 High Street Palo Alto, California. Please see:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=655+High+Street,+Palo+Alto,+California,+94301,+United+States&hl=en

Note ( as mentioned ) that due to popular demand and due to the Memorial Day Weekend we are going to be doing WhereCamp one day earlier and closer to Where 2.0 than usual. The schedule currently is as follows:

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Thursday May 21st 2009
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Where 2.0 wraps up! [ http://en.oreilly.com/where2009/ ]

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Friday May 22nd 2009
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09:00 - 09:30 : Breakfast snacks
09:30 - 10:00 : Opening Circle - Introductions and co-session planning for the day.
10:00 - 13:00 : Sessions
13:00 - 14:00 : Food!
14:00 - 18:00 : Sessions - Possibly including lighting rounds of brief rapid fire presentations
18:00 - 18:30 : Closing Circle - A chance to review the day as a group, and perhaps clean up a bit.
18:30 - 04:00 : Food and hacking and talking - WhereWolf anybody?

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Saturday May 23rd 2009
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09:00 - 09:30 : Breakfasty snacks
09:30 - 10:00 : Opening Circle - Introductions and co-session planning for the day.
10:00 - 13:00 : Sessions
13:00 - 14:00 : Food!?
14:00 - 16:00 : Sessions
16:00 - 16:30 : Closing Session, Clean up and get out!

We close out fairly early Saturday and wander off to our respective geo hackery - however of course please feel free to help with any OpenStreetMap mapping parties or social activities and geo games. Sarah @ cloudmade.com also can help organize here. We're using the http://wherecamp.org wiki as a central organizing and planning place for anything that requires pre-planning. Post for ride-share and any other topics on the wiki as well. Now that we have a venue you should start to see the Wiki shape itself up over the next few days.

Look forward to seeing everybody!

If you're interested in sponsoring please contact Ryan Sarver ( [email protected] ) or Anselm Hook ( [email protected] - http://twitter.com/anselm ).

You can follow http://twitter.com/wherecamp for ongoing updates.