A little “trip report” from Whidbey Island!
Yesterday I ventured off the Island in the afternoon for a whirl wind tour of Seattle events.
1) Met with some folks from LizardTech, a GIS shop in Seattle who has been in the imagery/compression business for a long time and is really trying to re-define their business around what is happening in the GIS industry as a whole.
They are now an Associate Sponsor of the OSGeo (Open Source Geospatial Foundation) and very actively engaging parts of their business in the OS paradigm. Very cool office downtown and some great Northwest contacts.
A group of us hit this event at the new Seattle Art Museum waterfront sculpture garden and had a great time. Defiantly worth seeing the 60 foot nurse log… on display as a “living” piece of art. Probably one of the largest and most active Enviro social events I have been to. 300+ people all bumping into each other with free beer and wine… great stuff. With my tour guides from Umbrella Consulting I got a very good introduction to many of the organizations based out of Seattle including OneNW (http://www.onenw.org/), Grist (http://www.grist.org/), Cascade Agenda (http://www.cascadeagenda.org/), and many more. Awesome event and will hopefully be a monthly thing for me.
3) Ignite Seattle.
Wow… you have never seen so many hackers, geeks, and crazy people in one room… it was good to feel welcome! 8pm until almost midnight of straight through 5-minute talks… about 22 of them from every topic including new technology out of the Google and Microsoft labs to building a multi-person pogo stick for Burning Man! Crazy stuff, high energy event which is gaining in popularity (now sponsored by Google and O’Reilly). Again, every couple of months and a great connection to the roots of the OS and hacker community in Seattle. I do hope it does not get taken over by the corporate mongers (I hope you are listening O’Reilly!)
2am arrival back home has not done great things for productivity, but all in all one of the most productive days I have spent in the community.