Eric is in Punta del Este, Uruguay for the Inter-American Development Bank MICTTing conference to discuss how open source technology and open data can improve the international tourism industry and specifically sustainable tourism. Today he presented on this with Javier de la Torre from Vizzuality, focusing on offering concrete examples of open source tools attendees can use immediately to improve their services.

Much of this presentation centered on interactive maps, which is particularly relevant to the tourism industry given the geo nature of much of its services, with both Eric and Javier showing what is possible to do with open source tools like TileMill and CartoDB. Tomorrow Eric will be on hand to walk attendees through how to use TileMill to design fast, interactive maps and further discuss how they can be used to improve tourism services.

More than just presenting together, we are excited to be working more closely with Vizzuality. Their team gets how open source and open data can change international development. We will be collaborating a lot more as we continue to push hard in this thought space.

The MICTTing conference brings together people working in tourism and technology to work together. While in the past the conference has primarily focused on proprietary tools from Microsoft, this year the Inter-American Development Bank included open source solutions as well, identifying that often they are more relevant to the needs of tourism operators around the world. To get a feel for the conference, view the full agenda and read Javier’s blog post on our presentation together.

If you’re are there, look for Eric to learn more about TileMill and open source mapping.