WhereCamp EU 2011 Comes To Berlin, supported by Nokia

Berlin is not only the center for Nokia’s maps and location based activities. This week it will also be the place to be for all European maps and location geeks. Because with the help of Nokia WhereCamp EU is coming to Berlin on May 27 and 28!

What is a WhereCamp? A WhereCamp is an unconference inspired by FooCamp and the Silicon Valley WhereCamp which traditionally follows Where 2.0. Two years ago, Gary Gale (now Director of the Places Registry for Nokia in Berlin) and Chris Osborne were at WhereCamp in Palo Alto and they decided to bring the WhereCamp unconference to Europe, holding it in London, UK in 2009, in Nottingham, UK in 2010.  As you know, Nokia has a lot of interest in location business and we would love to support any kind of creativity in this field. So when we heard that the WhereCamp is coming to Berlin in 2011, we were happy to support them.

But what is an unconference? There’s a lot of conferences on maps, on geo and on location; these can be close to home, further afield or across the other side of the Atlantic in America. People see publicity for these conference and they tend to experience what we call the conference curve of despair. It goes something like this.

You find a conference. The theme, the topic, the genre .. fits. You look at the speaker list and they look good, informed, witty, erudite, educated. So far so good.

But then you see that it costs. Often the delegate price alone is, shall we say, on the steep side.

Your initial enthusiasm has been tempered by the hard facts of just how much time and money you’ll have to find in order to attend. It’s a roller coaster curve, up one side and down the other.

You’re probably not going to go, are you?

But it’s not always like this. You find another conference. The theme, the topic, the genre – fits. You look at the attendee list and not only are they informed, witty, erudite and educated but you can get the chance to speak just by writing your name and the talk title on a PostIt note and slapping it on a wall in a free slot.

So far so good and this isn’t what you expect. It’s not a conference, it’s an unconference. And it gets better. It’s not merely cheap to attend, it’s actually free!

Supported by Nokia among others, WhereCamp 2011 will be held next week across two days, Friday May 27th and Saturday May 28th on the campus of the GLS Sprachenzentrum, one of Berlin’s leading language schools.

There will be interesting talks, demos, discussions and more with experts coming from Nokia, Yahoo, Google, Skobbler, Open Street Map Foundation and many, many more.

Want to find out more? You can apply for tickets on EventBrite, read the blog or follow the Twitter feed. The Nokia Location team hope to see you there.

- Sebastian Kurme, Nokia Berlin.