Last week, on September 10, the annual global meeting of the Open Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) Community took place. Normally, this meeting is part of the regular program of the annual FOSS4G, but what is normal this year? Consequently, there was an online event that was also streamed on YouTube at the same time. This created the conditions to reach a large circle of participants worldwide, and in fact, some of the speakers noted that this year was the first time they were able to participate in the annual meeting.
In terms of content, the entire range of OSGeo content was covered and presented. After introductory words by President Angelos Tzotsos with a general remark on OSGeo, figures on members, projects and events, the annual financial report and a report on their work presented by the entire Board of Directors followed. Of particular note are the impending cooperation between OSGeo and ISO/TC 211, the technical committee of ISO, which deals with Geographic Information and Geomatics, as well as the deepening of the existing cooperation with the OGC, which has been extended to support projects in the OGC certification process.
Subsequently, the Organizing Committee (BALOC) of the upcoming global FOSS4G in Buenos Aires spoke. As of today, the conference is being planned in two tracks, once as an on-site and in parallel as an online event. We all hope, of course, that it will be possible to meet again in person in September 2021 and keep our fingers crossed for BALOC! However, the subsequent report on past conferences and code sprints was very sobering, as most of the planned events could not take place. The FOSSGIS conference of the German-speaking Local Chapter FOSSGIS e.V., which took place in Freiburg in March, was thus the last OSGeo presence event before the worldwide cessation of such activities. Nevertheless, the ingenuity of our community is also evident here, with quite a few events taking place online, such as the otherwise annual Bolsena code sprint, which this time took place from the home office. We would also like to refer to “de Grote GeoShow“, a monthly online web seminar of the Dutch Local OSGeo Chapter.
Finally, the OSGeo committees, projects and local chapters themselves had their say and presented their activities of the past year. Among the projects, the newly included projects in the OSGeo project family, GeoStyler, in which we as terrestris are significantly involved, presented itself to the entire community for the first time.
The meeting concluded with the announcement of this year’s winner of the Sol Katz Award, an award given annually for outstanding service to our community. This year’s award winner is Anita Graser (@underdarkGIS), who has made a special contribution to the QGIS project with a great deal of personal commitment. From us at this point again congratulations on this very well deserved award!
If you would like to find out more about all OSGeo activities or just about some projects in particular, the OSGeo AGM is recommended. All links to the program and to the presented slides as well as to the YouTube channel, with this year’s recording, can be found on the wiki page for the AGM.
In conclusion, one can note that one only becomes aware of the value of a presence event when one cannot have one due to external circumstances. However, it should be noted that the easy access via web seminar or live stream will most likely remain, also to keep the threshold of participation in this very informative event as low as possible for as many interested parties as possible.
