August 20, 2012

Sheepallenge

From the people that brought you IronSheepSheepCamp and last year's Satan vs. Santa Challenge comes:


SHEEPALLENGE 2012!  The virtual IronSheep competition: virtual data remixed virtually.

In early November 2012, we'll share a super-secret data set with those who register for Sheepallenge.  They can mix, mash, and recompose the data in anyway they chose.  There are no rules about group size or composition, but all authors must be acknowledged on the final submission. 

Final submissions must be sent to Monica (Monica.Stephens@humboldt.edu) by midnight EST on November 30 to be considered for Sheepallenge.  Submissions will be judged by a panel of sheep on their aesthetic value and use of the data. Winners will receive a sheep-related prize.

Early registration is now open.  You can register yourself or your group (group can be changed at anytime) by visiting early registration. Undergrad students from Monica's Intro to Cartography and Ate's Intro to GIS class will participate in the competition as part of their course. So signing up your GIS/Cartography class is definitely encouraged!

Questions?  Comments?  Expressions of interest?  Please email Monica at Monica.Stephens@humboldt.edu.

Let the sheep roll in!

Sheep Droppings, 7/30-8/19: CFPs, SxSW and Volunteered Sheep Information

It's been awhile since the last edition of Sheep Droppings, so we come to you now with a handful of important news and notes spread out over the course of the last few weeks.

First, the Swiss are developing a way for sheep to text message in order to alert their shepherds as to the presence of wolves. All we can say is that we're planning a future paper on Volunteered Sheep Information (hat tip to Jeroen Verplanke for this item).

There are a handful of recent CFPs out worth mentioning, including this planned special issue of the International Journal of Communication entitled 'Big Data, Big Questions, or, Accounting for Big Data'. Abstracts are due October 1.

And seeing as it's that time of the year when everyone is scrambling to make their AAG plans for the following year, there are a couple of session CFPs for the Floatingsheep co-organized #GEO/CODE symposium recently released. Jonathan Cinnamon and Britta Ricker from Simon Fraser are planning a session entitled "Citizen Data at a Crossroads: How should VGI be conceptualized?". The deadline for abstract submissions is September 14.

Craig Dalton and Matt Wilson are also planning a session, this one entitled "Situating the Geoweb as Technoscience". Deadline on this one is today, but there's always time! Both of these, along with all of the planned sessions for #GEO/CODE are sure to be interesting, so be sure to look into them!

In other sheep-related news (not the kind dealing with actual sheep), Mark and Matt, along with Andrew Boulton, had their paper on urban augmented reality published online in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. If you don't have institutional access, shoot them an email to get a copy. Monica and the Price of Weed map were featured in this piece about medical marijuana in the Tucson Weekly.    

Last, but certainly not least, go vote for Mark and Monica's panel for SxSW on geographies of the internet! Let's keep taking internet geography to the public!