Open Travel Culture: Wikitravel Press and OpenFlights

Open Travel Culture
Jani Patokallio
[email_address]

The Idea
“ Travelers’ best information source is other travelers. ”
-- Evan Prodromou,
founder of Wikitravel

Wikitravel.org
"Wikipedia meets Lonely Planet"
Launched in July 2003
Almost 50,000 articles in 20 languages
Over 20,000 in English version alone
10,000+ edits/week
Webby Award for Travel in 2007
CC Attribution-ShareAlike license

Printed guides and Wikitravel Press
We turn Wikitravel the website into printed Wikitravel guidebooks
Addresses an obvious need
Internet is good, but sometimes paper is better
Current guides are 3-10 years out of date
Sold online at Amazon.com
Ordinary bookstores are too slow for us!

Flow between website and book: 1) Edit guide 2) Publish guide 3) Deliver guide 4) Read guide 5) Edit guide...

Editorial process
Hand-picked editors in charge of books
Intimately familiar with destination
Receive a royalty on sales
Realtime conversion from web to print
Automated typesetting with Yucca engine
Cross-references, page numbering, indexes, image formatting etc etc

Print on demand
Revisions every month
Soon: Immediate prints of “live” data
Printed on demand at a press near you
Under 24 hours from order to print at Amazon

Sample order
Mon: Place your order
Wed: Your order ships
Fri: Your order arrives
(target for regular shipping in continental US, no guarantees unless you order as expedited and may take longer elsewhere)
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri

Future plans
Roll-your-own guides
Pick your places, we print your book
How fresh do you want it?
Absolutely uncensored, latest patrolled version, or human-edited

The Idea
“ map , search, filter and share your flights and travels with friends or the entire world ”

In a nutshell
First open-source travel mapping application
Launched January 2009
"Web 2.0" interface
Map changes in realtime
Share your map with friends
On Facebook as well
CSV/KML import/export

Aviation data
Commercial airport databases cost >US$1000
The OpenFlights airport and airline DBs are free!
As of Jan 2009:
5391 airports
5871 airlines

Thank you!

Open Travel Culture: Wikitravel Press and OpenFlights

by Jani Patokallio on Feb 28, 2009

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Open Travel Culture: Wikitravel Press and OpenFlights — Presentation Transcript