The Washington URISA conference is just about over, and it's made me realize how long it has been since I've gotten a chance to interact with the local GIS community.
Some impressions:
- The panels were probably the best part. I see now why the Barcamp/Unconference model has become so popular. Unfortunate no one from ESRI/AutoDesk/etc participated in these as far as I can tell - just the local/state government representatives and open source guys.
- Best talk I heard was from Aaron Racicot on haiticrisismap.org and OSM. Even if you came in knowing the story, the energy of the speaker, quality of maps, and audience participation was excellent.
- I was happy to see there wasn't too much stigma hopping between rooms to hit particular talks as long as you were quiet and professional about it.
- It was nice to shake hands with some Well Known Nerds (WKN) of the open source GIS community.
- Some excellent balance in conversations about the variety of solutions to a given problem. No one was especially partisan about a particular product, software, or method.
- Vendors were not as aggressive as I had been warned.
- The turnout of the CUGOS group was good. I didn't seen any equivalent ESRI or AutoDesk user group wandering around in a similar fashion.
- Smart people giving poor presentations is heartbreaking. I know this might ring hollow coming from someone who didn't give a talk, but some folks should thumb through Presentation Zen again. Walls of text all over the place.
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