Help NGA get to SXSW!

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for the first time submitted proposals to participate in the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival.

“SXSW is the premiere event in the country for new ideas and creative technologies,” said Ben Tuttle, NGA’s mobile apps team lead. “But we need help to get there.”

SXSW 2016, which takes place this March in Austin, Texas, received more than 6,000 panel proposals. To help determine which panels are selected, the festival launched the SXSW Panel Picker, an online voting tool to welcome community participation in the selection process.

“When it comes to developing mobile applications or engaging with the open-source community, NGA is leading the way within the Intelligence Community,” Tuttle said. “SXSW represents a unique opportunity for NGA to show the world the kind of innovative and inventive agency we really have become.”

In order to vote, participants must create a SXSW account or log in via Facebook. Below are NGA descriptions of its two proposed panels. Voting ends Sept. 4!

What in the world is NGA?

Calling all map geeks and data nerds. We’re opening up for a look at a day in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. What’s NGA? Basically, anyone who navigates with a cellphone relies on us. Staff will discuss working on complex intel questions in our new unclassified lab, providing disaster relief support (and making that data publicly available) in world crises like the Ebola outbreak and Nepal earthquake, as well as some of the cool tech being developed by our R&D team. Want to get involved? We’ll show you what we’re sharing on GitHub and what areas we are hiring in. NGA is the nation’s primary source of geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT. Vote for this panel.

Find Pirates from your Couch

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is in your local mobile app store and on GitHub. With NGA’s apps you can find pirates from your couch and access geospatial information even when you don’t have a network connection. And, with the source code for these apps on GitHub, you can help make these projects even better. Our goal is to increase the impact of government investments and take things in new directions. Got an innovative geospatial-flavored mobile app of your own? We’re all ears. We even have a program to pay you for it. Vote for this panel.

Photo Credit: SXSW