News

FOSS4G follow up

Submitted by pbatty on Fri, 09/23/2011 - 3:53pm

Thanks to everyone who attended FOSS4G and contributed to it being such a great event. We had over 900 people from 42 countries and a lot of good feedback. We are working on making video of the presentations (slides and audio) available - these are being posted at FOSSLC, where you can also find a wide range of other videos from State of the Map and other open source events. We will also be providing links from the original program schedule on this site to the videos. You can also see full video footage of some plenary sessions, some of the introductory sessions, and the legendary GeoGlobalDomination: the Musical on Vimeo here (more will be added over the next week or so). We will also be uploading presentation slides, and again will provide links from the original program schedule to these (like this or this). Uploading and linking all these files may take a couple more weeks, please bear with us!

Our team of volunteers collected most slides during the conference. If you didn't give a copy of your slides to anyone at the conference, you can upload them via ftp:

Host: 2011ws.foss4g.org
Protocol: SFTP
Port: 22
User: foss4g
Password: ws_2011
Folder: presentations

Or if you prefer, you can email smaller files to Peter Batty, or upload files to slideshare, tag them with foss4g2011 and send us a link. 

Online registration for FOSS4G will close on September 7th

Submitted by pbatty on Sun, 09/04/2011 - 9:58am

Online registration for FOSS4G, including workshop enrollment, will be available until Wednesday, September 7th at 6PM Denver local time ( -6 GMT). On-site registration will be available 2:00-5:00PM on Sunday and opens at 7:30AM local time on Monday, September 12th. Workshop enrollment will be available on-site as well, subject to availability (we recommend you register in advance if possible to ensure availability). Major credit cards--Visa, Mastercard, American Express--will be accepted for on-site registration.

FOSS4G 2011 in Denver Gathers Momentum

Submitted by admin on Sun, 08/21/2011 - 11:00pm

DENVER, August 22, 2011 -- The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference, the premier international conference focused on open source geospatial software, is fast approaching. The event, which will take place in Denver from Sept. 12-16,  has gathered a great deal of momentum, with more than 600 attendees from 31 countries and 43 states signed up so far. It’s not too late to take advantage of this unique learning opportunity that presents a world-class program at great value to attendees, and in a beautiful setting.

The response has been very positive for the Monday and Tuesday workshops that provide a hands-on experience to participants. If you’ve been thinking about taking some of these courses, you’ll want to act now as a few have reached the maximum capacity of 80 participants, and many are well subscribed.

Program published and new web site launched

Submitted by pbatty on Fri, 06/10/2011 - 12:06pm

We are pleased to announce the publication of the FOSS4G 2011 program. You can view the program details here. Selection was very competitive - we had almost 300 submissions for around 150 sessions. So congratulations to those who made it, and commiserations to those who didn't, but we hope to still see you in Denver for the conference! We feel we have an excellent program lined up. Since we were slightly later than planned in publishing the program, we have extended the early registration deadline to June 30.

FOSS4G speakers selected and program to be published shortly

Submitted by pbatty on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 2:00pm

 

After a lot of hard work from our program committee over the past few weeks, we completed the selection process today and sent out emails to everyone who submitted an abstract to notify them whether they were accepted or rejected. Thanks to everyone who submitted abstracts, congratulations to those who were accepted and commiserations to those who weren't. We had almost 300 submissions for around 150 slots, so unfortunately there were lots of good submissions that we couldn't find a place for. We're excited that we have such a strong program.

We're still finalizing some details on the program schedule and uploading everything to the web site (and re-vamping the site at the same time). We plan to have the program available online at http://2011.foss4g.org this Friday, June 10th. Since we're a little later than planned in publishing the program, we have also extended the early registration deadline to June 30th. We encourage you to register before then to get a $150 discount!

Almost 300 abstracts submitted for FOSS4G

Submitted by pbatty on Mon, 04/18/2011 - 12:46pm

We had a great response to the call for abstracts, so we are confident that we will have an excellent program to add to the strong lineup of workshops we've already announced. Altogether we had 289 abstracts submitted. Just to keep the organizers' nerves on edge, most people decided to wait until the last moment to submit! In the last three days we had the following numbers of abstracts submitted:

  • April 13th: 21 (7%)
  • April 14th: 56 (19%)
  • April 15th: 161 (56%)

So a total of 82% of submissions in the last 3 days, 18% in the first two and a half months :).

We had a good geographic spread of submissions, with abstracts coming from 35 countries. Half came from the US and Canada, and half from the rest of the world, which is a nice balance! Here are the leading submitters:

  • United States: 114 (39%)
  • Canada: 33 (11%)
  • Italy: 19 (7%)
  • Germany: 19 (7%)
  • Spain: 13 (4%)
  • Netherlands: 12 (4%)

And here is a simple thematic map from OpenHeatMap showing all the countries with submissions:

Watch this space for details about the community voting process, which will start soon and will provide input to the conference committee on selecting the final program, which will be announced by the end of May.

Registration is open

Submitted by pbatty on Mon, 02/28/2011 - 4:57pm

We are pleased to announce that registration for FOSS4G 2011 is now open! You can see more details on the various elements of the program here, and click through to register from there. Based on previous experience, we expect that many of the workshops may sell out, so we encourage you to sign up early.

We also encourage you to stay at the conference hotel, the Sheraton Denver Downtown. Not only is this a very nice hotel at which we've negotiated good rates, but it's where all the conference sessions will be and it will be the natural social hub of the conference. The hotel contains three bars, Katie Mullen's Irish Pub, 16Mix, and 15Fifty, a Peet's coffee shop, and the Yard House restaurant, which has 150 different beers on tap. So no shortage of venues for socializing! And there are hundreds of other bar and restaurant options within a short walk or free bus ride on the 16th Street Mall shuttle that runs right past the hotel every few minutes.

Flight discounts with United for FOSS4G and State of the Map

Submitted by pbatty on Sat, 02/19/2011 - 5:21pm

Thanks to our friends at State of the Map for organizing a travel discount with United Airlines, who are the airline with the most flights in and out of Denver. The discount is good for people attending FOSS4G and/or State of the Map. In most cases you should be able to get discounts between 5% and 11% off published fares (with a few exceptions). For all the details and how to book, check here. The discounts also apply on some United codeshare flights with their Star Alliance partners including Lufthansa - see the fine print for details.

Workshops and initial tutorials announced

Submitted by pbatty on Thu, 02/17/2011 - 10:01pm

The workshop committee has announced the workshops that will be held on Monday and Tuesday before the main conference starts. We have a great lineup of 24 workshops covering a wide range of topics, and suitable for a variety of experience levels. An initial set of 12 tutorials has also been selected. Tutorials will be part of the main conference program from Wednesday through Friday. Additional tutorials may be added to the list after the rest of the paper submissions have been evaluated.

Call for Presentations Under Way!

Submitted by pbatty on Thu, 02/03/2011 - 8:16pm

We're now happy to make the official Call for Presentations for FOSS4G 2011.  Abstracts will be accepted from February 2nd to April 15th.  For more information on the regular and academic programs, see our Program Overview page.

After the deadline, there will be a community voting mechanism to help select the final program. There is always very tight competition for these spots, so make sure your abstract is clear, engaging, relevant and has an attention grabbing title.  With more than 300 proposals expected for half as many slots, voters will have a lot to wade through - make your abstract count!