About ...

Gary at Coit Tower

A self professed "geek with a life", I've had a life-long love affair with maps since discovering the iconic Harry Beck map of the Underground on the back of the London A-Z street atlas at an early age. After "growing up and getting a proper job" I now live in Teddington in South West London with my family and work in London and Berlin as Director of the Places Registry for Nokia; I'm also the co-founder of WhereCamp EU, the chair of w3gconf and I sit on the W3C POI Working Group and the UK Location User Group.

Prior to Nokia, I was at Yahoo!, leading their Geo Technologies group in the UK, releasing GeoPlanet and Placemaker and providing the geo heavy lifting for Flickr and Fire Eagle; I've also been at Digicon, developing geophysical technologies to aid in the search for natural resources and at the European Space Agency Research Institute in Rome, Italy, participating in the development and launch of ERS-1, Europe's first remote sensing satellite. Outside of the location and geo field, I've been at companies including the BBC World Service, Reuters, Factiva.com and Network Associates.

Fascinated by technology, I first started hacking on a Commodore PET, built my own Sinclair ZX-80, spent too many years behind the console of a VAX, and even more years coding in Assembler, FORTRAN, C and C++.

I speak and present at a wide range of conferences, workshops and events including Where 2.0, State of the Map, AGI GeoCommunity, #geomob, mashup*, the British Computer Society, WhereCamp EU, the Location Business Summit and FOWA.

Writing as regularly as possible on location, place, maps and other facets of geography, I blog at www.vicchi.org and I tweet as @vicchi.

Despite living in London for most of my life I still haven't managed to visit every station on the London Underground network and I now face the additional challenge posed by using the Berlin U-Bahn network every week.

Events & Talks

I'm lucky enough to speak on matters geo, location and privacy at various conferences and events; these are the latest ones.

Full archive of past events

Bio

A quick bio for cutting and pasting

  • Being Digital '09 - London, 2009

Self professed "geek with a life", geo-blogger, geo-talker and geo-tweeter, Gary's had a life-long love affair with maps since discovering the iconic Harry Beck map of the London Underground on the back of the London A-Z street atlas at an early age. He now works in London and Berlin as Director of the Places Registry for Nokia; he's a co-founder of WhereCamp EU, the chair of w3gconf and sits on the W3C POI Working Group and the UK Location User Group. Writing as regularly as possible on location, place, maps and other facets of geography, Gary blogs at www.vicchi.org and tweets as @vicchi.

Contact

How to get in touch

The quickest and easiest ways to get in touch are on Twitter, where I'm @vicchi or via email to ; both of these come through to my iPhone and are checked regularly.

My bookmarks are on delicious, my photos are on Flickr, my professional profile is on LinkedIn, what I'm listening to is on Last.fm and if you know me, then add me as a friend on Facebook.

Decks

If there's a deck from a talk I've done, it's on SlideShare; these are the latest ones.

  • Turn Left For Coffee

    "Turn Left For Coffee" at Location And Navigation USA 2011, San Jose on October 19th. 2011 and AGI GeoCommunity, Nottingham on September 22nd. 2011.

  • A Sense Of Place

    "A Sense Of Place", presented at The Location Business Summit 2011, Amsterdam on May 24th. 2011 and at WhereCamp EU 2011, Berlin on May 26th. 2011

  • The (Geo) (Mobile) (Smart) Web

    "The (Geo) (Mobile) (Smart) Web", presented on April 11th. 2011 at the CIPR Social Media 2011 conference, Russell Square, London, UK

  • 5 Location Trends For 2011

    "5 Location Trends For 2011", presented on 2nd. February 2011 at the mashup* Digital Trends 2011 event at the British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London, UK.

See all of my decks on SlideShare

Blog

Occasional journal entries on work and other stuff.

Mentions

Occasional mentions.

  • AGI - AGI News - AGI announces four new council members

    The AGI is delighted to announce the four AGI members who have been nominated to join AGI Council from 1st January 2012. They will serve for a period of three years. The four individuals are as follows: Chris Ewing - Impact Forecaster, Aon Benfield Gary Gale - Director of the Places Registry, Nokia David Henderson - Head of Product Management, Ordnance Survey Anne Kemp - Director & Group Chair, Atkins (rejoins council after 18 months service in a co-opted role)

  • Google to Charge High-Volume Users for Map Use | GPS World

    SAN FRANCISCO — Google’s major partners, who have more than 25,000 Google Maps application uses per day, will be charged starting next year — a decision that was a hot topic at the Geo Loco conference here. Some say it won’t hurt small companies much — and may even help companies who compete with Google. Either way, some say the decision was inevitable for companies making a profit — and using Google’s resources for free. One panel member, Gary Gale, director of Places Registry for Nokia, disagreed, saying that while Google keeps on giving its location products and capability away for free, it may force companies to look elsewhere when it decides to charge them. “People don’t like change. Some people will look for alternatives,” he said.

  • 3rd Annual Location Business Summit USA | TheWhereBusiness

    Everyone who is relevant to your LBS business will be in San Jose this October but not only this, we have the very best speakers in the market poised ready to present, analyze, debate, deliver and discuss key industry issues, opportunities and challenges to ensure our delegates take home fool-proof solutions and strategies. A sample of these great speakers include: Keynote Presentation from Gary Gale, Director Ovi Places, Nokia

  • AGI GeoCommunity Website

    Kimberly C. Kowal, Lead Curator of Digital Mapping at the British Library, is the final plenary speaker to be announced for this September's AGI GeoCommunity '11 conference. Kimberly will be presenting alongside Nokia's Gary Gale in the concluding plenary session of the conference. "We are extremely pleased that Kimberly has accepted our invitation to speak at AGI GeoCommunity. She is an international speaker and recognised expert on the subject of digital mapping and she joins a distinguished and compelling line-up of plenary speakers for this September's flag-ship AGI event" said Chris Holcroft AGI Director & CEO. Other plenary speakers announced are: Emer Coleman, Director of Digital Projects, GLASir Ian Magee CB, Chair of the PSMA GI GroupGary Gale, Director of the Ovi Places Registry, NokiaProfessor Danny Dorling, University of Sheffield

  • AGI - AGI News - AGI GeoCommunity '11: Gary Gale joins plenary speaker line-up

    The AGI is delighted to announce that Gary Gale will be a plenary speaker at AGI GeoCommunity '11. "Gary is an enthusiastic, highly knowledgeable and entertaining 'geo-speaker'" said Chris Holcroft, AGI Director & CEO. "He is very active at the cutting edge of international mapping services with Nokia and he can bring an incisive perspective on historical as well as future factors and trends. I am extremely pleased that Gary will be able to take to the podium at AGI GeoCommunity this September" he added. Gary joins our other plenary speakers already announced Emer Coleman, Sir Ian Magee CB, and Professor Danny Dorling.

Full archive of mentions is at http://delicious.com/vicchi/garygale+clippings

Articles

  • w3gconf » Blog Archive » W3G 2011; It’s A Wrap

    Another year, another W3G and another day’s worth of geo related insight, inanity, information and irreverence passed by all too quickly. Being an unconference, the day didn’t quite go as planned, with frantic schedule changes and plaintive calls on mobile phones to find out where people were and why they weren’t where they were supposed to be. So how did the day pan out? It looked something like this …

  • w3gconf » Blog Archive » W3G 2011 – More Geo, More Location, More Maps

    There’s more to Geo than just Maps and Check-ins. Which sounds like a good theme for a one day (un)conference doesn’t it? All of which can only mean one thing. W3G is back and this year the theme is “There’s More To Geo And Location Than Just Maps And Check-Ins”

  • w3gconf » Blog Archive » Veni, Vidi, Geo – A W3G Wrap Up

    So we came, we saw and we, err, geo’d. After months of planning, fretting and wrangling the day of W3G dawned, sped past and then it was all over. So how did it go? To judge from conversations over a geo-beer or two post conference and from the flurry of comments from the Twiterati and the Blogosphere it went pretty well.

  • w3gconf » Blog Archive » Another 3 W’s … This Time, Who, What and When?

    With just three days to go before W3G commences, now is probably a good time to make sure everything’s nailed down, geotagged and is spatially and temporally correct and that can mean only one thing … the schedule for the day and other hopefully helpful information.

  • w3gconf » Blog Archive » W3G Approaches And So Do More Sponsors (And Geo-Beers)

    With under a week to go, w3g is starting to loom large and geotastically on the horizon. We’re in the process of finalising the running order and will keep you all updated as soon as all the arrangements have been geocoded.

Videos

I'm occasionally on video as well.

Full archive of videos is at http://delicious.com/vicchi/garygale+videos

Photos

These photos are all hosted on Flickr and may have differing terms of use; click on the photo, go to Flick and check out the small print.