RAM 5 is an open source media architecture meeting in Latvia. Several workshops are interesting like this one:
SEMANTIC DATABASE CARTOGRAPHY [w003] workshop facilitated by Jo Walsh locative packetsThis workshop will explore applications of 'locative packets', a metadata description dreamt up at the locative workshop in Karosta, July 2003. We use FOAF - the Friend of a Friend vocabulary - to describe networks of people connectioned to spatial annotations, events, places, and organisations.
We'll offer a short introduction to the 'semantic web' of machine-readable pages - such as RSS feeds and FOAF files - demonstration of a 'data aggregator' written for locative media at Karosta, which allows different applications to share and exchange metadata.
We hope to develop tools to build and share spatial 'ontologies' or taxonomies, metadata descriptions which can connect traditional GIS (Geographic Information Systems) with psychogeographic and narrative systems like PML, and the 'aware' moblogging system. We have an infrastructure, and want many interfaces!
We'll also cover some basic collaborative mapping techniques that should give participants a good idea of what's available to write their own maps-as-stories.