Professionals attend a 2013 Transportation Camp event in Arlington, Virginia. Image via flickr/M.V. Jantzen.Texas is poised to get its first iteration of Transportation Camp, a participant-led "un-conference" that's been especially popular on the East and West Coasts in recent years.
The event, which is timed to coincide with an American Society of Civil Engineers conference in Houston this month, is designed to bring together transportation professionals from diverse backgrounds to discuss the latest developments in their fields, with an emphasis on technology.
As the organizers of the June 26 even describe it:
TransportationCamp Texas will be held as an unconference - a loosely structured conference emphasizing the informal exchange of information and ideas between participants, rather than following a conventionally structured program of events. Typically at an unconference, the agenda is created by the attendees at the beginning of the meeting. Anyone who want to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space.
Transportation Camp was first held in New York and San Francisco in 2011; since then, it's expanded to the Montreal, Atlanta, Boston and the Washington, D.C. area.
The event is facilitated by Mobility Lab, the Arlington, Virginia reserach organization supported by various government agencies in Virginia. This month's event in Houston will be the first Transportation Camp held in Texas.
"One of the big reasons we wanted to have it in Houston is that we've had a lot of initiatives that people are taking notice of around the country," said Nicolas Norboge, an assistant research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute who is helping to organize the Houston event. "There's METRO Reimagining. The bike plan is coming down the pike. So there's a lot of exciting things happening in Houston and in Texas."
TransportationCampTX will be held Sunday, June 26 at the Omni Houston Hotel. For more information and to register, click here.