For terrestris, the annual German-language conference FOSSGIS (Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformation Systems) is one of the highlights of the year.
The 2010 conference took place from March 2nd to 5th in Osnabrück on the grounds of the University and University of Applied Sciences. This year, the conference was extended by one day to provide space and a worthy setting for the first German OpenStreetMap conference. In addition to free software as a natural focus of the conference, there was also a clear secondary focus on free geodata from the OpenStreetMap project. We consider this development to be extremely positive.
What was the conference about? The entire OSGEO software stack around PostgreSQL/PostGIS, UMN Mapserver, Geoserver, OpenLayers, Mapbender, Mapfish (and others such as GeoExt) was represented with high-quality presentations on applications and future potentials. In our opinion, the program was balanced, both in terms of the components used and the target groups addressed. The conference audience was surprisingly international: in addition to participants from the German-speaking world such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Spaniards, Dutch and Swedes were also present.
In addition to the actual conference, user and developer meetings traditionally take place at every FOSSGIS. For example, the Mapbender Development Sprint on March 5th, in which we participated in the person of Marc Jansen, should be emphasized. In addition, this year there was also a “Birds of a Feather” session for the first time (a type of presentation known from the international parent conference FOSS4G) on the topic of “GeoJQuery”. Interested developers met here to openly discuss the possibility of a new open source project that seeks to combine the simplicity of the JavaScript library jQuery with the comprehensive geographic competence of OpenLayers.
As in every year, we were pleased to meet long-standing business partners and colleagues from the industry and to talk about developments in the GIS industry. In addition to maintaining existing contacts, new contacts were of course also made. We are already looking forward to reworking the developed ideas with the appropriate ladies and gentlemen. We were also often congratulated on our idea of writing and publishing a book on the subject of “OpenLayers – Web Development with Dynamic Maps and Geodata“.
Conclusion: We thank the organizers of the conference for their wonderful preparation and execution of the event (keyword: catering). A strenuous but very successful conference has come to an end and we are already looking forward to the next FOSSGIS. Where and when FOSSGIS 2011 will take place is currently not yet known. You can participate in the discussion process via the page of the FOSSGIS e.V. and are cordially invited to do so.
terrestris at FOSSGIS:
- Lightning Talk “WebGIS and the Honey Marmalade Bread”, Till Adams
- Keynote “HTML 5, ECMAScript 5 and the Cloud“, Marc Jansen
- Presentation “Are there alternatives to OpenLayers?“, Till Adams
- Presentation “WYTIWYS (What You Type Is What You See)“, Marc Jansen
- Workshop “Practical Introduction to OpenLayers“, Marc Jansen and Ingo Weinzierl, Intevation
- Workshop “Raster Data Processing with GDAL“, Till Adams and Andreas Fischer, Kreis Unna
- Workshop “Extended WMS Functions with OpenLayers – An Insight“, Marc Jansen and Stephan Holl, Intevation
- Workshop “Practical Introduction to MapFish“, Till Adams and Cédric Moullet, camptocamp
- BOF (Birds of a Feather) “GeoJQuery“, initiated by Till Adams
