Discussion: Humans As Sensors

Brady Forrest, Tech Evangelist for O'Reilly Media led a very interesting panel at the Web 2.0 Summit entitled "Humans as Sensors." Brady Forrest is Chair for O’Reilly’s Where 2.0. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and NYC. Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey. Bios for the panel are below the video...





Di-Ann Eisnor of Waze

Di-Ann is a neogeography pioneer, employing all means to increase the worlds citizen mappers. Di-Ann is Chairman of Platial, The People’s Atlas and now Community Geographer at Waze, crowd-sourced navigation and live mapping. Di-Ann believes social mapping will be a critical tool for cultural diplomacy.

Di-Ann lives in Palo Alto by way of Portland, OR, Boston, New York City, and Amsterdam. Since moving to the Northwest, she has pressed apples, canned pickles and peppers (incorrectly), pressed wine, increased werewolf play and raised chickens.

• Her entrepreneurial passions lie with community development, urban exploration, community cartography, social mapping, cultural diplomacy.

• She makes psychogeography inspired art when time allows including the urban adventure game “HERE”. She occasionally shows her work at galleries and art fairs in the US and in Europe.

• She’s active in a few non-profits as a community advocate for school choice and mentor for girls.

Sharon Biggar of Path Intelligence

Sharon is a co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer at Path Intelligence. She is responsible for strategy and product development and has assisted Path Intelligence to develop their two flagship products FootPath and QPath.

Sharon is originally from New Zealand but completed her MBA at MIT where she became exposed to the idea of ‘reality mining’. Sharon and her co-founders saw the potential in marrying the techniques being developed in the reality mining space with the innovations and flexibility of another great MIT idea, software defined radio on off-the-shelf hardware.

Path Intelligence today utilise open-source software defined radio to detect RF signals from GSM phones, sensing and collecting anonymous data across all networks but without relying on the mobile networks to provide that data. They are installed throughout the UK where their technology is primarily used to assist shopping malls, retailers and airports enhance their offering to consumers. The firm has been recognised for its innovation and technology leadership through various awards and has been featured regularly in the media including on the BBC, CNN and most recently in the Christmas 2008 edition of The Economist.

Sharon has an MBA degree from MIT, an MA in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Markus Tripp of Mobilizy

Markus Tripp is manager business development at Mobilizy. He is responsible for the content eco system and search technology for the Wikitude world browser. Additionally he developed Wikitude.me the social web interface to Wikitude. Markus is also founder and CTO of Netociety, a company that develops a wiki like social enterprise system using HTML5 technology.

Previously, Markus worked for Sony in Austria and Germany, where he was leading software architect of the music download and streaming server platforms Connect Europe and StreamMan (Vodafone music). Prior to that he lead a team to develop solutions for the MHP (multimedia home platform).

Markus studied computer science at the University of Salzburg and as an Austrian he loves to ski in winter.

Deborah Estrin of Computer Science Department, UCLA

Deborah Estrin is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at UCLA. She holds the Jon Postel Chair in Computer Networks, and is Founding Director of the National Science Foundation funded Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). CENS’ mission is to explore and develop innovative, end-to-end, distributed sensing systems, across an array of scientifically and socially relevant applications, from ecosystems to human systems. Estrin and her colleagues are currently exploring Participatory Sensing systems that leverage the location, motion, image, and attached-sensor data streams increasingly available globally from mobile phones; with particular emphasis on human and environmental health applications and on privacy-aware architectures. Estrin’s earlier research addressed Internet protocol design and scaling, in particular, inter-domain and multicast routing. She received her PhD in 1985 from MIT and her BS in 1980 from UC Berkeley, both in EECS. Estrin currently serves on the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) and was previously a member of the NSF National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Advisory board, the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, and DARPA-ISAT. Estrin was selected as the first ACM-W Athena Lecturer in 2006 and was awarded the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Innovation in 2007. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009. She is a fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and AAAS and was granted Doctor Honoris Causa from EPFL in 2008.