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"

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.

Further information on the speakers is available at:

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.

The geo-spatial Association and OSGeo Romania, under the high auspices of the Ministry of Culture and in collaboration with the Romanian Spatial Agency, Romanian National Meteorological Administration, Faculty of Geography – University of Bucharest, Groundwater Engineering Research Center - Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest, Faculty of Geography - Babeș Bolyai University, Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence of the Romanian Academy and the National Library of Romania, organize the second edition of the international conference “Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial – Central and Eastern Europe” (FOSS4G-CEE). The event is dedicated to present the advantages of using free and open source geospatial technologies. This regional conference was born from the the global event Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial under the patronage of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Its main goals are to better address the specific and contextual needs, be it academic or commercial, of geospatial communities from Central and Eastern Europe.

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.

Use Twitter, Lanyrd, mailing list and/or the official website for the latest news.

You can now register to the FOSS4G conference.

The details: "There are three things you will need to plan:

• Which conference package do I want to book – Full, Day or Student?
• Which extra items do I want to book – workshops, icebreaker, closing party?
• Where am I going to stay – hotel on site, university accommodation, somewhere else?

Details of all the options are shown here. Note that the accommodation options are available once you’ve ticked your registration options checkbox(es), so you don’t need to book accommodation separately. It’s easiest to pay by credit card but if your organisation requires an invoice to pay you can tick that box when you register and we will send you an invoice.

• Please note that you must pay the full amount in £ sterling including any bank charges. 
• Invoices must be paid within 14 days of receipt to secure your room reservation and delegate place.

Early Bird prices are available until 31st May but we recommend booking as soon as you can as there are only a limited number of hotel rooms on the site."

Slashgeo is a proud media partner of FOSS4G.

I am glad to announce that Slashgeo is a proud media partner of FOSS4G, to be held in Nottingham, UK, on September 17-21, one of the dominant geospatial conferences.

Here's what it is: "FOSS4G is the global conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, organized by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). In, FOSS4G will be held in in the United Kingdom for the first time, at the East Midlands Conference Centre in Nottingham, from 17th to 21st September. FOSS4G will follow on from the Association for Geospatial Information (AGI) annual GeoCommunity Event at the same venue, and delegates will have an opportunity to attend both events for a full week of Geo-Goodness!

Expect a vibrant mix of workshops, papers, seminars, birds-of-a-feather meetings, and great social events, in a fantastic location. Key dates and travel information will be published shortly, from early September, so check back for updates, follow us on twitter, or sign up to our mailing list for more information."

We'll try to have one or two Slashgeo Editors on the site at FOSS4G. Slashgeo had the chance to be active and cover 4 recent OSGeo FOSS4G events.

The details of FOSS4G North America have been announced­. Everything is there, from registration, the call for presentations, the gala and the code sprint.

Amongst the keynotes they propose: "Eric Gundersen, CEO, MapBox.  With big names converting from Google Maps to MapBox (USA Today, Foursquare, etc.), Eric will be discussing the business proposition/value of open source geo.

Erek Dyskant, Sr. Analytics Engineer, Democratic National Committee. Whether you were happy or sad with the outcome of the recent election, they must have done something right!  Erek will talk about how open source solutions were used to empower tacticians with geospatial data, and describe what drove the intentional choice of using open source."

Last year, Slashgeo had the chance to be a media partner of the first FOSS4G-NA.

Sponsor Day Programming Highlights OpenGeo’s Vision

New York, NY, April 18, — OpenGeo, successfully held the first OpenGeo User Meeting on April 12, during Sponsor Day at FOSS4G North America in Washington DC. As Eddie Pickle, OpenGeo CEO, mentioned: “FOSS4G North America and Sponsor Day would not have been possible without our fellow Gold Sponsor RadiantBlue and Venue Sponsor RedHat.”

Eddie Pickle began the day with an overview of OpenGeo, its clients, and a vision of its future. This was followed by a detailed look into the OpenGeo technical roadmap led by Tim Schaub, OpenGeo CTO. Building on the technical roadmap presentation, various OpenGeo developers gave technical demonstrations led by Juan Marin Otero, Senior Implementation Specialist: Justin Deoliveira presented on the future of web-based spatial processing in GeoServer, WPS, Geoscript; Paul Ramsey discussed the state of Spatial IT and how it differs from the conventional desktop-based GIS paradigm; Tim Schaub presented on building applications for web and mobile audiences using the latest features in OpenLayers and GeoExt/GXP; and Matt Priour announced the recent launch of MapStory, a platform for telling stories with maps based on GeoNode. These presentations provided users with an inside view of the latest existing and planned capabilities of OpenGeo technologies.

During the Sponsor Day lunch, a policy-focused panel comprising speakers from RedHat, the US Department of Defense, and the Institute for Defense Analysis discussed policy initiatives related to the acceptance and implementation of open source software within the federal government.

The afternoon sessions began when Dr. Christopher Tucker, a key advocate for open source and open standards within the US government, delivered an inspiring message on the “Open Future”. This was followed by panels highlighting successful deployments of OpenGeo technology that featured open source geospatial innovators and practitioners from over a dozen government agencies including the US Department of State, FCC, NOAA, NGA, Army Geospatial Center, and the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication (DoITT).

Commenting on the OpenGeo User Meeting, Eddie Pickle noted, "OpenGeo is looking to provide the best possible educational opportunities for users of the OpenGeo Suite. Sponsor Day at FOSS4G North America allowed us to support both FOSS4G North America and our software users. The day proved to be an exciting and informative forum on the open source geospatial ecosystem and how OpenGeo fits into its future."

About OpenGeo

OpenGeo is a social enterprise working to build the best web-based geospatial technology. The company brings the best practices of open source software to geospatial organizations around the world by providing enterprises with supported, tested, and integrated open source solutions to build the Geospatial Web. OpenGeo also supports open source communities by employing key developers of PostGIS, GeoServer, and OpenLayers. Since, the company has provided successful consulting services and products to clients like the World Bank, US Department of State, NYC DoITT, Ordnance Survey Great Britain, SFMTA, Portland TriMet, MassGIS, GeoScience Australia, NOAA and the Federal Communications Commission. OpenGeo is the geospatial division of OpenPlans, a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit that informs and engages communities through journalism and open source software. All of OpenGeo's revenue has been and will continue to be re-invested into innovative and useful software in support of the OpenPlans mission.

I'm glad to announce that Slashgeo is a proud media partner of the first FOSS4G - North America conference. We certainly have experience with these after having participated to the previous three FOSS4G conferences. We'll provide on-site coverage of the event and share with our users any pertinent related news. We already mentioned FOSS4G-NA a few times and here's how the about page presents it:

"FOSS4G conferences highlight the latest and greatest projects from the Open Source Geospatial foundation OSGeo.  This year’s program targets a range of interests with the following tracks:

• Technology & Tips Track: Learn about the latest open source software from the developers and power users themselves. What are the new features? How do you get the best performance? How do you configure for the best results? For power users, deployers, system integrators and developers!
• Deployment & Decisions Track: Learn who is using open source geospatial software, and what their experiences have been. What kinds of organizations are deploying? What scale are their systems? What were the business drivers behind their plans? For managers, project leads, consultants, and other decision makers!
• Ideas & Trends Track: Where the latest tastes meet and mingle! Open data and crowd-sourcing, balloon photography, personal sensor packages and hardware hacking. For everyone with an itch to scratch!

Over 900 international attendees came together for FOSS4G in Denver. The event fostered new ideas and enthusiasm to build great things. Join us in Washington, DC this spring to make magic again!"

El capítulo hispanohablante comenzará a tener reuniones generales a las que están invitados a participar todos los miembros.

La idea es que todos puedan opinar y exponer sus ideas para mejorar el capítulo y agrandar la comunidad.

En principio, las reuniones serían mensuales y se llevarían a cabo el último lunes de cada mes.

El objetivo de estas reuniones es lograr mejor integración y más compromiso entre las miembros del capítulo.

La primera reunión sería el lunes 26 de marzo y el horario es de 18.00 a 19.00 UTC/GMT+0. 

El lugar de encuentro será el canal IRC del capítulo.

We are very proud to announce the release of the 4th edition of FOSSGIS Brasil Magazine.

In this 1st issue, the cover section addresses Medatada theme, which deserves special attention of any professional who works with geospatial data.
This 4th edition of FOSSGIS Brasil was built with the effort of the GIS community, including international contributions. Consering this, be sure to check the interview with Jeroen Ticheler, founder and CEO at Geonetwork project, and also the text written for three of the most important contributors of the gvSIG association, talking about the new development model for the project of the robust gvSIG GIS suite.

This year, greatest desire for us at FOSSGIS Brasil team is to continue doing what we have been doing in: To georreference knownledgment

Sincerely, 
The FOSSGIS Brasil team