Social Location Sharing Sites

Abstract still to come.

Panel:

Travis F. Smith is one of Vancouver's earliest most active Gowalla users, http://gowalla.com/users/nep , and is a hyperactive user of many location-driven social media services. Since he started developing Web sites in 1995, he has been wrestling with issues of mapping real-world activities to virtual spaces. He was one of the founders of the Los Angeles Times Web site, and the editor of Variety.com. He now owns a Web development firm called Hop Studios www.hopstudios.com, which builds top-notch sites for publishers, authors, independent media, educational institutes and non-profits. He's also one of the officers of the Northern Voice Society, which runs this conference.

Noah Bloom is a social topology anthropologist—dedicated to understanding, from the past, why we behave the way we do, and setting that into a future of rich interpersonal interactions. His history spans from studying human behaviour anthropology at Harvard, founding a mobile telecom infrastructure vendor (Blueslice Networks) empowering carriers to understand fully their subscribers, and creating the next mobile social network (Zedmo).

His passions include mobile technology and the implications of hyper-connectivity: what mobile customers want, why they will share their media and personal information, and how they can connect to a virtual topology over a city or landscape. He’s a published book author, a prolific blogger at NorthGeek.com, a two-time US national champion rower, a thoroughly recorded and toured rock musician, a world traveler and documentarian, a competitive cyclist and runner, and a appreciative eye of beautiful objects and meaningful web products.

His current startup, Zedmo, answers the question: what is the best thing going on right now—around me, according to my friends, or customized for your interests. To Zedmo, he brings previous startup success and a keen and forward-looking sense of product design, mobile Internet evolution, and tech marketing. Follow Noah at @nbloom, and check out noahbloom.com.

Ian Bell created some of the web's first sites while working as an Apple research fellow at Simon Fraser University. A veteran of Silicon Valley and a pioneer VoIP and presence-based communications, Ian began his career in Product Management at Telus and Cisco Systems before moving on to create and launch BuzMe and RingCentral. Compelled by the intersection of realtime communications and social behaviour he has conceived and launched a number of pioneering services leading up to the forthcoming launch of Tingle, quote "possibly the coolest mobile dating application ever conceived". He blogs at ianbell.com and tweets as @ianb