Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 about Geo

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Saturday 12th March 2011

• Beyond Check-Ins: Location Based Game Design

  This dual presentation will explore common play elements in location-based games. We’ll analyze the popular "Check-In" mechanic (used by products like FourSquare and GoWalla), and take a look at the business and social forces that have influenced its emergence as the popular geo game model.

  The presentation will compare current location-based products, charting their strengths and weaknesses to identify where we believe large areas of opportunity exist in the market.

  We'll evaluate the challenges and untapped opportunities of Geo Games from the technological and design perspectives of the two presenters. We’ll outline how the limitations in location technology can be an elegant part of the game design itself, and how new innovations will help to create richer and more immersive parallel worlds.

  We’ll describe why we think its time to move beyond "social" Check-In systems, to “true games” that engage, challenge, and stimulate players.

  LEVEL: Intermediate

  • Game Design
  • Games
  • Geo
  • Location Based Services

  At 9:30am to 10:30am, Saturday 12th March

  In Room 12AB, Austin Convention Center

  Coverage audio clip slide deck

• Time Traveling: Interfaces for Geotemporal Visualization

  Displaying geography alone is easy: interactive maps are more and more a part of our everyday lives. Displaying time alone is easy: we are all familiar with charts and animations that show the passage of time. It is increasingly common to display time and space together in a single visual interface as well, but this combination has raised a number of new questions. There are few conventions or standards for geotemporal visualization, and we are still discovering which approaches are most effective for which datasets. Focusing particularly on historical data, this panel will explore issues in the modeling and visualization of geotemporal information, presenting existing approaches and discussing new trends.

  LEVEL: Intermediate

  • Data
  • Geo
  • Visualization

  At 12:30pm to 1:30pm, Saturday 12th March

  In Ballroom B, Austin Convention Center

Sunday 13th March 2011

• Building Fences in the Sky: Geo-Fencing Has Arrived

  Imagine walking past your favorite restaurant, and receiving a coupon for a free dessert. Imagine jogging through Central Park, taking a break, and receiving a text from The North Face about a trail nearby that you’ve never taken but sounds great. These scenarios aren’t set in the future, but happening today, and are made possible through geo-fencing, the location-based technology pioneered by Placecast. Through geo-fencing, Placecast creates virtual fences around physical locations – stores, entertainment venues, parks, apartment buildings – literally anywhere on Earth.

  The technology is described here by the NYTimes http://www.vscconsulting.com/pla... and here in the WSJ: http://www.vscconsulting.com/pla...

  This session will provide data-backed information and dispel myths around location-based services (LBS). The audience will learn:

  1) How to go about starting a location-based program utilizing geo-fence technology
  2) Challenges and best practices in LBS
  3) How geo-fences are being used today, including case studies from major brands such as The North Face, American Eagle Outfitters, SONIC
  4) How privacy/security issues are handled

  Location-based services can offer information, discounts, alerts, and more – all making our lives easier, and bringing the messages we want directly to mobile phones via SMS. The possibilities for geo-fencing are immense, and we’ve only begun to tap into them.

  LEVEL: Beginner

  • Geo
  • Location Based Services
  • Privacy

  At 11:00am to 12:00pm, Sunday 13th March

  In Salon F/G, Hilton Austin Downtown

• The Man in the Van Needs Geo Location

  There are lots of obvious geo-location use cases for consumers. But how can enterprises benefit from geo-location apps? Everyone knows the man in the van – they are installing your cable, technicians fixing heavy equipment in the field, landscaping office parks, repairing medical devices on-site and more. Shouldn’t those businesses be able to benefit from mobile apps that are geo-location aware? Whether they need to pick up and install a new fetzer valve or simply need to know where there next job is, there’s no reason why they can’t benefit from what Gowalla, DoubleDutch and foursquare have done for consumers.

  LEVEL: Intermediate

  • Foursquare
  • Geo
  • Geolocation
  • Gowalla
  • Location

  At 12:30pm to 1:30pm, Sunday 13th March

  In Salon F/G, Hilton Austin Downtown

Tuesday 15th March 2011

• Interoperable Location Data

  Developers and applications have challenges matching the same location between data sources and sharing a location between applications. Why?

  - Much of the place data captured on newer geo-social services is entered by users on mobile devices which could vary wildly in accuracy and completeness of the record

  - Proprietary data set licensing may prevent opening up enough information to share and compare to match against other data sets

  - Some data licenses disallow mixing and combining data from different sources

  - Some services are a black box and disallow storing anything beyond a reference ID locally, leaving your application dependent on external data calls

  - Definition, categorization, and the hierarchy of a place varies from service to service

  In this panel, we'll look at the pros, cons, and challenges of using proprietary, open source, and/or community-built data sets; why there won't be one location database to rule them all; ways we can all work together to make sure your place is my place when our applications talk to each other; and why all of this is important.

  • Geo
  • Location

  At 3:30pm to 4:30pm, Tuesday 15th March

  In Grand Ballroom, AT&T Conference Center