When There's a Bump in the Road

It's easy for geospatial to be awesome when things are going as according to plan. But what happens when the unexpected comes knocking? To welcome the new year this month's GeoNYC explores how we respond to the bumps -- the unexpected -- in the road. What is a bump? What do they tell us about our world and our tools? And do we avoid them or run towards them?

Join us, with a bump of your own. Because any map doesn't just elucidate the expected, but gives insight into the unexpected. So we might have some surprises for you.

SPEAKERS
Janine Yoong [@janineyoong (https://twitter.com/janineyoong)]runs business development at Mapillary (http://www.mapillary.com/), the platform for crowdsourcing street-level photos with computer vision. Based in the New York City, Janine works with U.S. cities, businesses, and app developers using street photos to create 3D photo maps, visualize locations or routes, and extract geospatial data. Prior to Mapillary, Janine worked at startups in the live video and hardware space, and at Google in strategic partnerships for local search. Janine will be smoothing out those bumps in the road and how (maybe even why) Mapillary turns street photos into 3D maps.

Varun Adibhatla [@vr00n (https://twitter.com/vr00n)] is a founding member at ARGO (http://argolabs.org/) Labs, a civic data science organization that rapidly prototypes for cities by partnering with local governments around device, data and decision-making. ARGO has built Street Quality Identification Device or SQUID (http://bigapps.nyc/project/1502/squid-street-quality-identification-device) - a low-cost sensor platform that when mounted on city vehicles can perform citywide street surveys by integrating accelerometer data with imagery data and empowers end users to prioritize street repairs by using a complete dataset as opposed to 311/citizen reported data. With over $1.6 billion projected over 10 yrs in spending on street surfacing Varun will demonstrate how SQUID is a scalable way for NYC and other cities to make more informed and optimize decisions around street resurfacing.

Marc DaCosta [@marcdacosta] is a sponsor! and the co-founder and chairman of Enigma (http://enigma.io/), an open data and platform company that lets users search and analyze billions of public records published by governments, companies and organizations. Marc will be talking about Smoke Signals (http://labs.enigma.io/smoke-signals/), an open source set of tools and algorithms that help identify houses at high risk for not having smoke alarms. Smoke alarms are the single biggest variable that determines whether one will be killed or injured in a fire. Enigma's Smoke Signals project helps get smoke alarms where they're needed most.

Jim McAndrew [@jimmyrocks (https://twitter.com/jimmyrocks)] is a Research Associate working with the National Park Service to create innovative tools that collect and publish geospatial data. Jim is the lead developer on the NPMap Places Project (https://twitter.com/npmap), a system that makes it easy for National Park Service employees to share their datasets and create custom maps matching the National Park Service cartographic style. Prior to working with the National Park Service, Jim was a software developer on the USGS National Map Corps project, which allows volunteers to contribute data to USGS Topographic Maps and implemented a successful validation process. Jim's goals are to make it easier for people to share their local knowledge with the rest of the world and to make the world more accessible through open geographic information.

OUR SCHEDULE
6:30PM: Mingle: doors, beer, pizza, dumplings! and people
7:00PM: Presentations & Q&A
8:30PM+: The after hours celebrations