Indigenous Mapping Network invites you to attend a workshop tomorrow by Mano Marks, Geo Developer Advocate with Google. He will be speaking at U.C. Berkeley Monday, January 25, 2010,  from 2 - 5  pm in Rm 110 in South Hall.

The text below is an excerpt from UC Berkeley School of Information announcement:

"There are hundreds of millions of geospatial data files available on the web. Many of these files are in a format that makes it hard to access the data, or combine it with other data sets. This workshop will introduce the basics of geospatial data formats, and using open source tools to work directly with geospatial data. In particular, you will learn about shapefiles, KML, GeoRSS, GeoJSON and other standard formats. And you will learn about using the GDAL/OGR packages, GeoServer, and other tools to work with the data. And finalAndly, you'll learn about some options for displaying the data on a map."

Mano sends a special invite to all Indigenous Mapping Network members: "I hope you'll be able to join me for this workshop. I think you all could contribute a lot of knowledge and understanding."

On a personal note, Mano has been a critical member to the IMN/Google team who are developing the FREE Tribal Geo Tech Workshop, to be held at Google in Mountain View, CA next month. He was born in Mobridge, South Dakota while his family lived in Eagle Butte. Eagle Butte is the heart of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, home to four of the seven Lakota Tiospaye (Great Teton Sioux Nation): the “Titunwan” People of the Plains: The “Mnikoju” Planters By The Water, the “Owohe Nupa” Two Kettle,  the “Itazipa Cola” Without Bows, and the “Siha Sapa” Black Foot. Chief Touch the Clouds can be seen in the background of the flyer, as he was a great leader and also an Advocate for his people. Get ready to learn more about how to apply Google geo technologies for Indian country in the near future!

UPDATE 11FEB2010: With Manos permission, we tested live streaming video during this event. A copy of the video can be found here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4224124

and his slides are at: http://randommarkers.blogspot.com/2010/01/slides-from-my-upcoming-talk-at.html