Slashgeo is glad to announce we'll be media partners of the “Geo-Empower Middle East Summit” from 16-18th September to be held in Dubai.

The event's overview: "The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is going through a period of unprecedented change. In the‚ Arab Spring‘ countries, political transition, pressing social demands, and an adverse external environment have combined to increase the near-term risks to macroeconomic stability. A multi-sectoral and cross-industry approach is needed at the national and regional level. With this background, Fleming Gulf is proud to present “Geo-Empower Middle East Summit” which would provide a connecting platform to bridge the gap between the geospatial and the economic community. With the theme “Geospatial technology for strengthening economy and Advancing National Priorities”, the 3 day conference would bring to light the role of geospatial technologies in empowering various user segments and pave way for economic development."

Geospatial Technology for Strengthening Economy and Advancing National Priorities in Middle East and North Africa Region.

In the era of information technology and rapid advancement in computing, decision making has become more informed and scientific and 'Geospatial Technology' has emerged as a leading application with its diverse use. Today, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is going through a period of unprecedented change. A multi-sectoral and cross-industry approach is needed at the national and regional level and successful implementation of geospatial technology can lead to overcoming potential barriers for growth.

Fleming Gulf's “Geo-Empower Middle East Summit” that will take place between 16-18th September in Dubai will provide a connecting platform to bridge the gap between the geospatial and the economic community. This one-of-a-kind, three-day summit will see leading analysts, policy makers, end-users, technology providers and academicians discuss the status and future of geospatial technology in the MENA region.

The chairman of summit Prof. Abbas Rajabifard, Department of Infrastructure Engineering, Director, Center for SDI and Land Administration, School of Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia, Head said, “I look forward to welcoming all delegates to the Geo-Empower Middle East Summit in Dubai, UAE. This conference will provide a leading opportunity in to share and discuss the value of geospatial information in empowering our economies & societies, and also to explore innovative approaches for spatially enabling the industries across all sectors, local & national governments, and individual citizens.”

Topics such as Geospatial Technology for Telecommunication and Smart Utilities along with Geo-enabled Construction & Infrastructure Development in State of Qatar will impart knowledge on the delegation gathered. Interactive panel session's that throw light on developing Geospatial Development Mechanisms (Enabling funding of geospatial projects) that will aid promotion of investments in geospatial technology and geospatial technology transfer mechanisms is also be a part of the 3 day summit. Supported by Dubai Taxi Corporation, The Economic Commission for Western Asia (ECWA), Central Informatics Organisation(CIO), the summit is also sponsored by Microsoft’s UltraCam and Space Imaging Middle East (SIME).

About Fleming Gulf

Founded in, Fleming Gulf is young, dynamic and has fast become one of the leading providers of business intelligence through industry specific conferences, webinars and skills enhancement training courses.

Fleming Gulf delivers the most comprehensive business events by leveraging our network of industry influencers with specialist knowledge to provide organisations the winning edge that makes a difference in their decision making in today's competitive business landscape.

We are committed to provide our partners - speakers, delegates, exhibitors, sponsors and supporters - a unique learning experience where they can find stimulating topics, engaging conversations and meet the biggest names within their field.

The planning for the FOSS4G conference (17th – 21st September) reaches a significant milestone with the release of the full programme for the conference. This has been an extremely difficult process to orchestrate principally because of the desire to fit in as many of the excellent submissions that were received as possible. This has meant extending the programme to 9 continuous streams covering 200 presentations. A challenge enough of logistics, but in addition to this the Local Organising Committee have secured facilities to run additional workshops in parallel with the main conference. Community Voting for these additional workshops will be under way shortly, for which as an extra thank you to the community. These additional workshops will be run in a stream alongside the presentations and will be included in the conference fee.

Not only does your ticket now have added value, but in addition to mark the release of the programme the Early Bird deadline has been extended to the 14th June (closes midnight, British Summer Time). We hope that this gives as many of you as possible the ability to take advantage of the great reduction and confirm your place at the #geohappening of the year!

We informed you a few times already about the upcoming FOSS4G-NA conference in Minneapolis in May 22-24, what's new is Slashgeo is going to be a proud media partner of the event!

Reminder: "FOSS4G brings together public and private-sector stakeholders, innovators and developers who are at the forefront of free and open source software for geospatial applications. FOSS4G-NA will offer a broad program to discuss and build tools to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems and business needs. FOSS4G-NA follows on the success of the conference held in Washington, DC.  This regional event complements the larger FOSS4G International Conference, the leading global conference organized by OSGeo focusing on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial."

It might feel like a long way off, but Maptember (the month formerly known as September) is fast approaching, and the key dates for ensuring your participation are perhaps nearer than you might think. As a community led event, the content for FOSS4G is driven by user submissions, which is then reviewed and voted on by the community! A truly democratic process that ensures that the programme reflects the latest developments, trends and issues affecting the OSGeo Community in. The final programme is then shaped and moulded by the Local Organising Committee and published in May – early enough to whet the appetite of anyone holding back on making their final travel arrangements! In order for all this to happen in good time for September, sorry, Maptember, deadlines for submissions are:

• for Workshops: 31^st March
• for Presentations: 12^th April, and
• for Maps: May 31^st (details to be announced!)

Also of note is the end of the Early Bird Registration: 31^st May

The FOSS4G-CEE conference will be held in Bucharest, Romania, on June 17-19. It was mentioned in a recent press release, and today I'm glad to announce that Slashgeo will be a proud media partner of the event!

From the press release: "This year's edition has a target of approximately 300 participants interested in geospatial open source applications. They will enjoy the presence and talks given by important personalities in the geospatial field, that have already confirmed their attendance. The event will take place in Bucharest in the newly built National Library of Romania. Activities will unfold during three days (17-19 of June), being shaped as oral presentations and hands-on workshops. All of these will address, in detail, the way in which free and open source software for geospatial (FOSS4G) can be successfully applied in the following:

• Application development;
• Interoperability and open standards;
• FOSS4G implementations for INSPIRE;
• Transition to FOSS4G;
• Case studies of FOSS4G implementations:
• FOSS4G in education;
• Analysis, manipulation and visualization of geospatial data;
• Open geodata;
• Digital and historical cartography"

16th - 18th September: East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham

The period for submission of papers for the AGI GeoCommunity '13 conference is now open. We encourage all of our members, and indeed non-members, to submit a paper on an area of interest to you. If your paper is selected, you will be invited to deliver this paper at the conference on either 17th or 18th September. The call for abstracts is structured around the topic idea areas identified.

To start with, we are simply asking for abstracts. These are summaries of what your talk will be about. We are requesting that these abstracts should be submitted electronically by the due date.

The topics are suggested to provide some ideas to shape the event and spark the imagination of contributors. AGI GeoCommunity is your conference, so please get involved. The conference programme is built from the content we receive. If we don't receive content that matches your particular interests then we will have no chance to include it. So why not make a submission yourself. These topics are not meant to form a 'straitjacket' so please feel free to submit a paper on a subject not listed here.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday 29th March

AGI GeoCommunity is the largest and most comprehensive independent conference in the UK digital mapping and data calendar. The conference provides tangible insight and leadership in current geographic information and location based issues via a range of keynote addresses and conference papers, a showcase exhibition, as well as by hands on training and face to face delegate networking. The event is already a 'must attend' for decision makers, practitioners and thought leaders from all aspects of the public and private sectors.

AGI GeoCommunity '13 will open on Monday the 16th September with the popular pre-conference 'Icebreaker' evening event and offer two full days of thought leadership, practical education, knowledge transfer and real world best practice and case studies.

AGI GeoCommunity '13 will also offer a select number of sponsorship spaces to showcase new products and services and network with delegates both at the sponsors' exhibition pods and in the conference sessions and social events. Companies that are AGI members can get additional booking discounts. The conference format will offer our sponsors an unrivalled opportunity to meet and network with the key practitioners and influencers across government and the commercial sectors.

To register as a delegate or sponsor at AGI GeoCommunity '13.

Platinum Sponsors

Esri UK and Ordnance Survey

Silver Sponsors

Leica GeoSystems and Oce UK

We mentioned in January the upcoming FOSS4G-NA conference in Minneapolis May 22-24. Yesterday, the organizers announced the preliminary program and early bird registration deadline.

The keynote speakers according to the preliminary program pdf:

• "Eric Gundersen, CEO at MapBox. With names like USA Today and Foursquare leaving Google Maps in favor of MapBox, Eric will be discussing the business proposition and value of commercial open source geospatial. Hear why “giving away the code” does not mean giving away the farm.
• Bibiana McHugh, IT Manager of GIS and Location­Based Service, Portland TriMet. A true instigator, Bibiana started what became Google Transit. Her team has made nearly all TriMet data accessible for anyone to use and develop on. She will touch on aspects of making open source successful in government, working with the developer community and open data.
• Erek Dyskant, Sr. Analytics Engineer at Democratic National Committee. Regardless of your political affiliation, it is clear that the Obama Campaign must have done something right. Erek will provide a more technical discussion on how they used an open source geospatial stack to support the campaign and describe what drove the intentional choice of using open source.
• Paul Morin, Director of the NSF and NASA funded Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota. He makes maps for Wired, Scientific American and National Geographic and is co­author of “Exploring Geology” one of the best selling introductory geology textbooks. Morin contributed to David Attenborough’s Frozen Planet and is the US representative for geospatial data to the Antarctic Treaty System. His group of less than two dozen people are mapping both the Arctic and Antarctic at sub­meter resolution with a combination of open source and proprietary tools, and a lot of imagery."

11^th March FOSS4G keynote speakers are announced: The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference, the premier international conference focused on open source geospatial software, is fast approaching. The conference will be taking place in Nottingham, UK from 17^th – 21^st September). It is therefore with great pleasure that OSGeo is able to announce four world renowned speakers from the open source community as keynote presenters.

Paul Ramsey co-founded the geospatial software company PostGIS in and has continued to support the open source geospatial community with his work in government and industry, winning the Sol Katz Award in. Kate Chapman, based in Jakarta, Indonesia, is the Acting Executive Director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), a non-governmental organization dedicated to helping support communities, governments and humanitarian responders in their utilization of the free and crowd-sourced map OpenStreetMap for crisis response and contingency planning.

They will be joined by Ian James the Chief Architect at Ordnance Survey responsible for the overall systems architecture. His 20 years’ of working in information systems has enabled him to work on a wide variety of Geospatial production systems, but more recently as the Technical Architect for the UK Location Programme. Finally we will hear from Edward Anderson (Open Development Technology Alliance at the World Bank) who coordinates the World Bank’s ICT Knowledge platform’s programme to use digital engagement tools for building greater public transparency and civic participation, as well as more accountability around public services.  His varied carrier from aerospace engineer has led him to working and building new technical communities between NASA, Google, Random Hacks of Kindness, and CrisisCommons amongst others.

Each of these speakers will be bringing with them a wealth of knowledge of working with open source tools and data in a wide variety of application areas that will act to set the tone of the entire conference. As thought leaders in their respective fields, expect to be challenged in how Open Source software and data is being used, and can be used in the future, to change the world to a better place.

The theme for FOSS4G’13 is “Geo for All” which reflects an aim to encourage attendance from anyone considering using open source and geospatial software for the first time. The numerous current initiatives propelling Open Data have highlighted to an even wider audience the benefits of using geospatial data to gain additional insights into their data, Add the current economic climate, and the interest in open source geospatial solutions grow ever stronger. These speakers provide an excellent opportunity to provide insight into the rising prominence of Open Source software and data.

About FOSS4G : FOSS4G is the global conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, hosted by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and organised by a Local Organising Committee. FOSS4G will be held in in the United Kingdom for the first time in, at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham, from 17^th to 21^st September. FOSS4G will follow on from the Association for Geospatial Information annual GeoCommunity event held in the same venue. These two conferences form a part of the geospatial focused events happening across the UK in September.

About OSGeo : The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software, and promote its widespread use. The foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit. OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. The foundation's projects are all freely available and useable under an OSI-certified open source license.

Media Sponsorship: FOSS4G would welcome the support and encouragement of media sponsors.