The DLD conference kicks off today in Munich. This years conference theme: “It’s just the begining” fits well with the “Maps & Data” panel I’m presenting on Tuesday.
The mapping industry is changing fast and it will affect everything from logistics, food delivery, navigation, search etc. Fun fact: 80% of actions on the phone are already location-based. The established players in mapping are struggling. OpenStreetMap, microsatellites, open source, drones, crowdsourcing are completely changing the landscape. New players like Uber, Lyft, delivery services, running apps are turning into platforms that track the pulse of whats happening in our world through GPS probes - and almost in real-time. This session will give an outlook from various perspectives.
The conference hits right at the broken economics of the traditional approach to data acquisition by the old school mapping companies. Spending a billion dollars a year to keep data fresh can’t scale. I will specifically speak to the rewards of investing in open data communities, like OpenStreetMap and OpenAddresses. Working with open communities brings ground truthed data without the data being locked up by a big companies, and without the costs of driving cars around the entire whole world.
Steffi and her team at DLD have been putting on this conference for more than a decade and always tried to mix it up a little, bringing together journalists, artists, designers, musicians, and business leaders to talk about the broader implications of technology on culture and society.
Swing by the talk Tuesday 9.40-10:20 am and ping me, @ericg or @usethekey to grab a beer.