For those who don't read our geospatial press releases feed, you might be interested in learning about the first FOSS4G - North America conference to be held in Washington DC in April 10-12. We mentioned in the possibility of a North American-specific FOSS4G conference to be organized by the OSGeo, it now has become reality.

From the press release: "In light of the success of last September’s international FOSS4G conference in Denver, Colorado, the newly-formed North America chapter of OSGeo, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data,  seized upon the opportunity to organize a regional follow-up conference focusing on the North American open source geospatial community. “2011’s event showed us that there is great interest in the region to continue the conversation and strengthen the network of individuals and organizations working the open source geospatial field,” said Paul Ramsey,  accomplished geospatial software developer and FOSS4G- NA conference chair."

Here's the recent open source / open data geonews covering the last two weeks.

• The OSGeo and the International Cartographic Association (ICA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding
• This Dr JTS entry mentions MapQuest's Open Elevation Service, that we never mentioned before - unrelated, Dr JTS aka Martin Davis, just got hired by OpenGeo 
• OpenStreetMap for Denmark is now 97.2% complete, yes, crowdsourcing and open data can succeed, but the servers does cost money, hence the new OSM Tile usage policy
• Here's an entry on expression-based labeling now in QGIS and the new expression builder, another one on QGIS Topological Editing and we even got a new QGIS Plugin Builder
• R algorithms can now be called from SEXTANTE

Here's the recent open source geospatial news in batch mode, which includes everything about FOSS4G on the geoblogs that we haven't mentioned yet.

On the FOSS4G Conference front:

• Interesting numbers, "By there are now 19,471 unique subscribers to OSGeo, more than 400 mailing lists, and more than 15 million lines of code, with 740 contributors, and 269 that have contributed for more than 12 months."
• Slashgeo editor Nicolas summarized Brian Timoney's excellent talk at FOSS4G, and if you want to hear it yourself, here is that 14-minutes impassioned talk on the state of the geospatial industry, Brian demonstrate how much better we could do
• Here's the slides of Paul Ramsey's keynote
• Here's Jody Garnett's updated slides on the WPS Shootout
• Here's the entry to read about Open Source and Open Data at the U.K. Ordnance Survey
• If you haven't read too much about it already, here's an entry on the case study of the U.S. FCC National Broadband Map based on open source geospatial software
• Here's the what's coming to PostGIS 2.0 slides [pdf]
• I heard comments that 30-minutes talks at FOSS4G was too short for the presenters to dive into their subjects, would you agree? If you're interested in what could be improved see this recap of FOSS4G by OSGeo's president
• Here's Directions Mag complete wrap up of the conference

In other news:

• I was surprised to read that Tyler Mitchell won't be the OSGeo Executive Director anymore
• GWT-OpenLayers version 0.6 has been released, that's the wrapper library for using OpenLayers in Google Web Toolkit applications
• MapFish is now an official OSGeo project
• This entry reminds us of the comprehensive list of web mapping toolkits (there's too much of them!)
• SS mentioned GrassrootsMapping, which is a crowdsourcing aerial image project with goals similar to OpenAerialMap

Version 5.0 of the OSGeo-Live GIS software collection has been released. OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software. The applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from the DVD or USB drive. A DVD or USB of OSGeo-Live is being distributed to every delegate at the upcoming international conference for Free and Open Source Software.

Highlights:

• 47 Quality GeoSpatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
• Quality free world maps
• One page overviews and quick starts for all applications
• Overviews of key OGC standards
• Translations for Greek, German, Polish, Spanish and Japanese

Here's the recent geonews in batch mode, covering the last 10 days. From the open source front:

• With GDAL being widely used, here's a comparison of the efficiency of various compression algorithms of GDAL
• Here's an entry on the rule-based styling feature of QGIS
• Here's another review of the OpenLayers 2.10 Beginners Guide by Jody Garnett, a particularly well documented review
• Here's the interesting raw survey results on the priorities of the OSGeo, looks like people want a certification program from the OSGeo
• Here's MapGuide Application Development tips

• Here's an entry named Demystifying The Esri Landsat Image Services And ChangeMatters Viewer

• O'Reilly offers an entry on Google Correlate, named Your data, Google's computing power, with an example using US state-based data
• Here's tips on building useful tours in Google Earth
• Here's their official entry on the latest imagery update for Google Earth / Maps

• There's a series of entries on the new GeoCommons 2.0, with details and screenshots, some aggregated highlights,  and how GeoCommons can work with Google Fusion Tables
• TMR informs us Pentax announced a GPS unit for its Digital SLRs
• Here's an entry on the updated MapQuest Android app
• TMR informs us that Garmin added cameras to the GPSMAP 62 Series and announced new eTrex and Rino GPS units
• Here's an discussion on the evolution of monolithic vs. distributed architectures in GIS
• V1 discusses how Greece economic woes partly come from lack of maps and GIS
• V1 also offers a perspective named How Do Geographic Information, Mapping and GIS Connect with News Media Today?

• TMR links to an interactive map of pedestrian deaths in the U.S. down to the local level with StreetView of where the deaths have occurred. From to, 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States
• Here's a dramatic map of the state of fish stock in the Atlantic
• TMR links to a map of measles cases across Europe
• NASA released a new map of carbon stored in tropical forests

Here's the Friday geonews in batch mode, exceptionally covering the last two weeks. We're now up to date regarding geospatial news! From the open source front:

• You can influence what the OSGeo priorities should be with this quick survey, here's funding ideas partial results
• Here's an entry on Sextant, a geoportal solution from IFREMER
• In a maintenance release, GeoTools 2.7.1 is now available

• Google Transit is now available in Washington DC
• Google shared an entry named Make beautiful interactive maps even faster with new additions to the Fusion Tables API
• Google Places now supports in-business 360-degree perspectives, in another entry, the new Google Places API is described
• The GEB compares Nokia's new Ovi Maps 3D vs Google Earth
• The GEB discusses using Google Earth to confront government lies about damaged rainforest in Sarawak

• Andrew Zolnai has en entry on ESRI's Change Matters website to compare satellite imagery, and that's possible thanks to Landsat imagery dating back to 1972 now available through ArcGIS Online

• While we mentioned it before, Kurt too is, as I am, enthusiastic about Microsoft's free Photosynth iPhone / iPad 2 app
• There's a New Bing Maps iOS SDK
• Microsoft invites you to See AJAX 7.0 in action with the new interactive SDK

• The MapQuest for Android Navigation App got updated and improves GPS capabilities
• Slashdot discusses using credit card transaction locations to determine CO2 footprints
• Spatial Law mentions a California Bill that would regulate 'Precise Geolocation Information'
• Vector One argues on Why Now is a Good Time to Invest in Geospatial Technology Stocks, and here's entries specifically on Trimble and DigitalGlobe stocks
• SS informs us Moscow Upholds Limits on the Resolution of Satellite Imagery

• TMR links to an excellent series of 12 static maps of the Canadian federal election results 
• Mapperz mentioned WeatherSpark Beta, a Google Maps mashup to visualize historical weather patterns
• The FGT blog mentions Free Marine Chart Views, Plus An Online Waypoint/Route Editor With GPS Export
• Here's a New York Times's Natural Disaster Map for the U.S.

The annual open source GIS unconference in Portland, Oregon is later this week.  Specifically, March 31st - April 1st at Portland State University. Hope to see you there! Eli

As much important as the job we do, is with whom we do it. Our work environment matters. What also matters to most of us is feeling part of a larger community, in that case, the geospatial community. Yesterday, I felt part of it again for a few hours. It was the welcoming event of this week's OSGeo Montreal Code Sprint. I am not contributing to the code sprint itself, but it's always nice to chat with fellow geospatial professionals that we haven't seen for a while and meet new people. It's surprising to notice how small the world is. We were even lucky to be honored by the presence of three Sol Katz Award recipients at the event. Clearly, it felt good to participate to such a 'get together', even if it's just for a few hours. It helps us wait for the next geospatial conference! ;-) In Fall I shared some thoughts on what is the geospatial community, and later in Summer, there was a few entries over the geoblogs on the state of the geospatial community (apologies, we haven't migrated the user comments of our old stories after our move to Drupal in Summer, causing user comments not showing up on those stories). When we launched Slashgeo in under the umbrella of a non-profit organization, we hoped it would draw the community to share even more on this virtual space. Fast forward to, judging by the low frequency of user comments on the site, it's obvious that we failed that part of the dream. But with our relatively significant readership (over 5,000 subscribers just in Google Reader, a number anyone can easily validate), I guess the geonews aggregation services we provide are not entirely useless. And hey, maybe someday community participation on the site will take off and reach orbit? It doesn't matter that much to me now, sometimes the voyage is more important than the destination! And in this voyage, when we look around, we are not alone, we are a spatial community after all.

Earlier this week the FOSS4G organizers announced that registration is now open. Being hosted in Denver, Colorado, in September 12-16, it's expected to be the largest FOSS4G conference ever and clearly be one of the geospatial conferences to put on the agenda. From the main FOSS4G website: "Recent years have seen substantial changes in the geospatial industry. One of those changes has been the growth in maturity and adoption of free and open source solutions. In many cases organizations are using a mixture of open and closed source solutions. With the growth in interest in open source solutions, combined with the fact that FOSS4G has not been in North America since, we anticipate a great audience for FOSS4G, around 1000 people." The call for speakers was released last week. The workshops and initial tutorials were also announced. Of note, OpenStreetMap's State of the Map conference will take place immediately before the FOSS4G Conference. Slashgeo has been a media partner to the FOSS4G conference in and. We're in talks to again provide coverage on-site this year. You'll find our previous coverage with a search.