March 5

Portland, Oregon, USA

FOSS4G calls for workshops, presentations and academic papers

The FOSS4G organizing committee calls for presentations, workshops and academic papers.  FOSS4G, to be held September 8th-12th in Portland, Oregon, USA is the premier international conference on open source geospatial technologies.  With two days of workshops followed by three days of presentations and academic papers, FOSS4G features a diversity of attendees and participants spanning academia, industry, and government.

Dr. Franz-Josef Behr and Drs Barend Köbben have issued the call for academic papers.  

The first two days of FOSS4G are half day workshops.  Participants are invited to submit workshop proposals for audiences ranging from beginner to advanced users, with topics covering the FOSS4G stack from server to client and anywhere between.  Read the detailed call for workshop proposals or submit directly.  Workshop proposals are due by March 15th.

Presentations showcase some of the most interesting developments and uses of Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial.  Read the details in the Call for Presentations.

Thanks to the many early bird sponsors that have already signed up.

See you in Portland,

FOSS4G Local Organizing Committee

About FOSS4G

Put on by OSGeo, the annual FOSS4G conference is the premiere global gathering for people working with and creating open source geospatial software. It brings together developers, users, decision makers, and observers from a broad spectrum of organizations and fields of operation for six days of workshops, presentations, discussions, and cooperation. From this melting pot of great spatial ideas and industry flow numerous successful geospatial products, standards and protocols.

FOSS4G has been held all over the world and draws attendees from over 40 countries. Nottingham, England hosted the conference in. In, Portland, Oregon, USA will host FOSS4G’s tenth year.

Conference Dates

Sep 8th-9th: Workshops

Sep 10th-12th: Main Conference

Sep 13th: Code Sprint and WhereCampPDX

About OSGeo

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation was founded in to support and build the highest-quality open source geospatial software. The foundation's goal is to encourage the use and collaborative development of community-led projects, data development and education. Many projects live under the OSGeo umbrella, including FOSS4G.

About PDX OSGeo - Portland Area and Oregon OSGeo Chapter

The PDX-OSGeo chapter of OSGeo has been meeting, discussing and promoting the use of open source geospatial technology. Chapter members often organize or present on open source software at regional geospatial conferences. PDX is the airport code and like the PDX airport, the group has a wide catchment area.

Independent software developers, scientists, industry experts, and agency representatives will come to meet at the FOSS4-Europe conference held in Bremen, Germany from July 15 to 17. Contributions can now be submitted on the conference website until April 15.

Under this year’s motto “Independent Innovation for INSPIRE, Big Data and citizen participation” the conference series FOSS4G-Europe (Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial - Europe) is uniting the GIS community from a broad spectrum of fields like geodesy, geo information, land management, and remote sensing. Industry and public authorities are expressly invited as they increasingly realize value and economic potential of free and open source products.

Several additional events make the FOSS4G-Europe in Bremen a unique event. A public viewing of the soccer World Championship final will kick off a week packed with events. The week will open with a workshop “Big Geo Data & INSPIRE” especially targeted at public authorities. INSPIRE Annex II and III will be discussed in relation to the pertaining standards of the Open Geospatial Consortium. Canadian Jeff McKenna, President of the OSGEO Foundation, will open the event with his keynote talk. As a charter member McKenna has got involved with spreading and usage of open-source software for geo information systems for many years. In a plenary, the winners of the international academic NASA World Wind Challenge Europe programming contest will be announced and honored at the conference.

Being in the tradition of the worldwide FOSS4G conference series, this event will bring together open-source experts and enthusiasts from all over Europe and beyond creating a unique, visionary atmosphere.

Conference Dates:

General presentations and workshops:

• Abstract submission: apr-15
• Review notification: apr-30
• Conference: jul-13

Scientific Track:

• Abstract submission: apr-15
• Full paper submission: apr-22
• Review notification: may-15
• Camera ready version: jun-15
• Conference: jul-13

Early bird registration deadline: may-22

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode. I don't aggregate geonews as frequently as I used to but the content is there and I hope to return to an increased frequency later this Winter. Are you German? If so, you might be interested in these efforts to have Slashgeo translated in German.

On the open source / open data front:

• The 20 millionth edit in OpenStreetMap, entry that includes some interesting stats such as 1.5 million registered users and 2,17 billion nodes in the database
• Yes, the FOSS4G-CEE is now transformed in a recurrent FOSS4G-Europe conference
• The City of Montreal's textured 3D buildings are now freely available in CityGML
• Some releases, GeoServer 2.4.4 Released, Rasterio 0.5, GeoTools 10.4 Released
• Good news, Brazil's open data and open source satellite monitoring system dramatically reduces illegal deforestation in the Amazon
• From MapBox, new interactive heatmaps plugin, they also shared their beautiful woodcut-inspired map for the entire world, MapBox also gets Customizable maps in Tableau
• It's coming Odyssey.js to "help journalists, bloggers, and other people on the web publish stories that combine narratives with maps and map interactions" (via APB)

On the Esri front:

• From Esri's blog, 10 open source projects every JavaScript geo dev should know about
• SAP being pretty common in the enterprise, Esri Maps for SAP BusinessObjects released!

On the Google front:

• From the official source, Introducing Slovenia Street View and updating Russian imagery
• And of course, Mapping the Sochi Winter Olympics in Google Earth
• They can do that too, How Google identifies house numbers in Street View
• Interesting on WebGL and more, 4 reasons why Google’s Lego-Maps is not your average tech demo
• I haven't seen the movie yet, Every Earth view from “Gravity” identified in Google Earth
• Mountain lover? Awesome Google Earth image of Mount Everest from NASA
• And why not, Snowboarding in Google Earth

Discussed over Slashdot:

• In the U.S.? Map of Publicly-Funded Creationism Teaching
• Locating workers all the time, Virtual Boss Keeps Workers On a Short Leash
• Privacy once again, EU Secretly Plans To Put a Back Door In Every Car By
• Location leaks via Angry Birds and Google Maps, NSA and GCHQ Target "Leaky" Phone Apps To Scoop User Data
• Using Android and care about your privacy? The App That Tracks Who's Tracking You
• Crowdsourcing located tweets, Rome Police Use Twitter To Battle Illegal Parking
• Thanks open data, Open Data Tells NYC Residents Where the Rats Are
• Another indication that 3D printing is getting mainstream, Dell Partners With MakerBot To Resell 3D Printers and Scanners and World's First Multi-Color, Multi-Polymer 3D Printer Unveiled
• History meets digital, Atlas of US Historical Geography Digitized
• Impressive hack, Finnish Hacker Isolates Helicopter GPS Coordinates From YouTube Video Sounds
• Satellite for near real-time measurements of global rain and snowfall
• Mapping outer worlds, First Global Map Outside the Solar System
• You were certainly convinced already, Why We Need OpenStreetMap (Video)
• We knew about that already, Mozilla Is Mapping Cell Towers and WiFi Access Points

In the miscellaneous category:

• Nice, France To Make Older Spot Images Available to Researchers for Free
• It's easy to agree with, Why Leaders Should Learn Geography
• A new initiative GI-N2K, Geographic Information: Need to Know, towards a more demand-driven geospatial workforce education system
• Convincing, LiDAR pushes archaeological revolution
• Location-driven music, Ryan Holladay: To hear this music you have to be there. Literally
• Build your own GPS, no kidding, over Make: Finding Your Way with GPS
• Stilll from Make, Using Quadcopters for Photogrammetry
• Nothing surprising there, How geolocation may play a bigger role in future newsgathering
• Wired on There’s a Science to Foot Traffic, and It Can Help Us Design Better Cities
• Also from Wired, How the U.S. Maps the World’s Most Disputed Territories
• GPS accuracy: GAGAN, India's SBAS (similar to WAAS) is now operational

In the maps category:

• Ok, that's strange / map geeky. Vend they fir jug 45679: the Map Hiding Under Your Fingers
• As always, Brian Timoney is pretty pertinent, In Praise of the Static Map
• A map of scientific research, The Research Map of the World
• Informative, The Last 40 Years Of The World’s Refugees On A Single Map
• And scary, If all the Ice melted: National Geographic’s Interactive map on Rising Seas

Ok, I did it again, way too much time since our last batch mode edition, but here it is, thanks for your patience!

On the open source / open data front:

• Amongst the numerous FOSS4G summaries out there, I selected Paul's for you to read... and here's to watch, the FOSS4G talks on YouTube, that's 86 videos. Amongst what else happened at FOSS4G this year, Arnulf Christl Received the Sol Katz Award
• Open source GIS software not ready for real maps? Look at this FOSS4G State of the Art Digital Cartography Collection
• We now know what's new in GeoServer 2.4, thanks! :)
• That's easy, mapping csv files with Leaflet Simple CSV
• This demonstrate how OpenStreetMap data is great, New York City and OpenStreetMap Collaborating Through Open Data
• And yes the recent iD editor helped OSM and here's OpenStreetMap's Contributor Community Visualized - Individual by Individual
• The open source GeoMesa software proposal seems interesting, 'a foundation for storing, querying, and transforming spatio-temporal data in Accumulo [read the cloud]'
• OSGeo officially has the non-profit status to the eyes of the IRS
• On Creating a WebGL Earth with three.js, a topic mentioned before
• I also became aware of the GeoTriple / Geozilla open source software to handle WMS services, Windows-only
• Already, MapStore 1.3.0 released

On the Esri front:

• Here's What’s New in ArcGIS Online (September), including the ArcGIS Marketplace, CityEngine Web Viewer and more
• A new term pushed by Esri, What is CyberGIS?, essentially, it's WebGIS / CloudGIS to me
• A list of ArcGIS Online Learning & Help Resources
• Another major update to Esri's World Topographic Map, specifically for France
• There's ArcGIS API for JavaScript Version 3.7 Released with lots of new features

On the Google front:

• For developers, Full screen maps and new marker features now available in the Google Maps Mobile APIs, with marker animations!
• A hot topic, Mapping climate change in Google Earth
• Here's how to Embed your Google+ posts into Google Earth
• The GEB shares The best 3D models of all time for Google Earth
• Street View arrives at CERN
• Google share a blog entry on The HALO Trust: Helping communities reclaim the land with Google Maps for Business, but you know me, as much as I like Google, I still can't understand why they don't user OpenStreetMap data

Discussed over Slashdot:

• Metadata On How You Drive Also Reveals Where You Drive
• Ordnance Survey Creates Minecraft Model of Great Britain
• Protesters Are Dodging Sudan's Internet Shutdown With a Phone-Powered Crowdmap
• Wealth In Africa Mapped Using Mobile Phone Data
• Bypassing US GPS Limits For Active Guided Rockets
• Yeah, privacy... NYC Is Tracking RFID Toll Collection Tags All Over the City
• I tell you, we'll see this on the roads sooner than later, How Google, Tesla, and Uber Could Team Up For the Driverless Taxis of the Future
• Regulations need to be updated, FEMA Grounds Private Drones That Were Helping To Map Boulder Floods
• Social and location, Wi-Fi Sniffing Lets Researchers Build Graph of Offline Social Networks
• Researchers Develop the Most Detailed Map of Gravitational Variations Ever

In the miscellaneous category:

• Last time we mentioned GeoGit was a year ago, Geoff shares an entry named Distributed spatial data management with long transactions
• An excellent reminder of the contributions of SAR imagery, SAR – we love it, we hate it. Take a general look!
• Or even more general, an ESA article named Looking to the future of Earth observation
• More easy access to Landsat data from the ESA, currently, it's Landsat 5 data, with Landsat 7 planned
• Rumors are rumors, Apple's Maps Team Hiring Web UI Designer for 'New Secret Project', maybe they need such a project, Apple's Maps App Directs Alaska Drivers onto Airport Taxiway
• Still Apple related, Tidbits discusses The Promise of iBeacons in iOS 7, to help you locate things around you via Bluetooth
• A real improvement, now wireless, 3DConnexion releases their wireless SpaceMouse
• It's been several years that we mentioned eCognition, well, its version 8.9 has been released
• You can Add MapBox to iOS 7 with One Line of Code
• Here's an excellent question we'll eventually have to answer, Can crowdsourced land cover data be used as an authoritative data source ?
• Yahoo's not dead yet, Updated Yahoo Maps for the U.S. which includes public transit and pedestrian routing

In the maps category:

• APB links to a long series of maps related to drug use in the U.S., from a survey, impressive stats
• An excellent way to understand geographic projections, This is Your Brain on Maps
• Poison, Mapping Arsenic in the United States Is Not Pretty
• My wife would love this, Mapping emotions across the World
• Some free time? Things that look like other things in Google Earth

And the final bonus, totally unrelated to geospatial though, if you have a smartphone or tablet, try Just a Reflektor

September, in the UK at least, is Maptember! The sheer volume of geospatial conferences and events has led to the month having to be renamed, with a dedicated website being set-up to guide delegates through the myriad of options open to them.

For the first time ever the global Open Source caravan, FOSS4G, comes to the UK. Co-located with the huge annual UK GI gathering, the AGI GeoCommunity, these two events will turn Nottingham University campus into the focus of the geospatial world. Also, for the first time since its inauguration event, State of the Map will return to the UK being hosted in Birmingham.

In addition the Society of Cartographers, British Cartographic Society and the Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society all hold their annual conferences in Maptember, with workshops and Hacks for OpenStreetMap and QGIS aplenty.

As we all know, Geospatial Conferences are intense affairs and with this focus of activity in a single month we’re advising delegates to prepare for the onslaught with an appropriate training programme. A phased introduction of sleep deprivation, wifi-signal hunting, finger-strengthening exercises are recommended, with additional focus on #geobeer intake enlargement. On a more serious note, how about getting your social media presence ready? Make sure you are using the right #hashtags, connecting with the relevant groups, your profiles are up to date and start networking ahead of the event…or just have business cards at the ready. And don’t forget packing all the electronics – phone chargers (and plug adaptors).

Booking for FOSS4G remains open until 9^th September.

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 the United Kingdom for the first time in, at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham, from 17th to 21st 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 

Different IT models have been analysed by IRIN (a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs): Quebec (Canada) (open source and GIS), Taiwan (ESRI-ArcGIS+Sahana) and Thailand (Sahana) in this UN news:

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