Romanian Chapter Report 2007

Introduction

 * Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2007
 * Contact name:  Vasile Crăciunescu

The idea of starting an Romanian OSGeo Local Chapter came out after FOSS4G2006 but it begin to shape after FOSS4G2007. For the moment, the main vehicle for FOSS & OSGeo promotion is geo-spatial.org. The website (Romanian only at this point) represents a collaborative effort by and for the Romanian community to facilitate the sharing of geospatial knowledge and the discovery and publishing of free geographic datasets and maps. Anyone can make a contribution by submitting articles or datasets for publication, adding comments to the existing articles, join the discussion on the mailing list or user’s forum.

Key Accomplishments

 * Visibility at conferences and workshops:
 * 25-27 October 2007: a general presentation of geo-spatial.org, Romanian in formation chapter and OSGeo was done at the 15th GIS Users Conference, in Chisinau (Rep. Moldova).
 * 11 December 2007: a more detailed presentation was done at the second National Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference in Bucharest (http://portal.rosa.ro/index.php?item_id=169, http://earth.unibuc.ro/stiri/conferinta-sdi-2007)
 * 12 December 2007: in the framework of the same conference, we manage to organize a open source geospatial software workshop. Detailed presentations and step by step demonstrations were made for: QGIS, uDig, PostGIS, Geoserver, MapWindow, OpenLayers and VTP.


 * Romanian articles and tutorials published on geo-spatial.org:
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/articole/open-source-gis-I (FOSSGIS applications review: toolkits and libraries)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/articole/open-source-gis-II (FOSSGIS applications review: desktop software)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/vtp-primii-pasi (VTP tutorial)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/wingrass (GRASS Windows installation tutorial)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/instalare-grass-macosx (GRASS MacOSX installation tutorial)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/bazin-hidrografic-prin-QGIS-GRASS (GRASS+QGIS watershed delineation)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/postgresql-postgis-ziggis-arcmap (zigGIS tutorial)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/vtocx (VTP vtocx tutorial)
 * http://earth.unibuc.ro/tutoriale/manipulare-date-spatiale-gdal-raster (GDAL tutorial)


 * Articles:
 * Free and Open Source Geospatial Software. A Complete Alternative to Propriatary Applications (published in a local journal)
 * Developing an Open Romanian Geoportal (presented as poster at FOSS4G2007 and published in a local journal)


 * Work on open geodata:
 * Basic Romanian layers (country border, county border, cities) are available for free as plain download and web services (WMS, WFS): http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/romania-seturi-vectoriale
 * LANDSAT true color clipped after the standard Romanian 1:100k map sheets and reprojected in Stereo70: http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/datele-landsat-etm-in-stereo701
 * SRTM clipped after the standard Romanian 1:100k map sheets and reprojected in Stereo70: http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/datele-srtm90-reproiectate-in-stereo70
 * Corine Land Cover clipped after the standard Romanian 1:100k map sheets and reprojected in Stereo70http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/datele-corine-landcover-reproiectate-in-stereo70
 * Old Austrian maps georeferenced in Stereo70: http://earth.unibuc.ro/download/harile-austriece-1910-reproiectate-in-stereo70

Areas for Improvement

 * Get more exposure in media by publishing articles in technical magazines
 * Start translation of the OSGeo Homepage to Romanian
 * Present the FOSS benefits to companies involved in the geospatial business here in Romania

Opportunities to Help

 * Join and express your opinions to our local mailing lists (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/geo-spatial) or forum (http://www.nabble.com/geo-spatial.org-f25985.html)
 * Volunteers for translations

Outlook for 2008

 * First meeting between geo-spatial.org authors and users to discuss about the Romanian OSGeo Local Chapter already took place in a local pub. 17 people attend. The talks covered the need for a legal entity (something like an NGO), the need for more volunteers for translations, the need for a FOSSGIS local conference. Some pictures can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26994138@N00/sets/72157604006886688/
 * Regular meetings during the whole year, at least one to be held in other city than Bucharest
 * Create a legal established entity to support the Ro OSGeo Local Chapter
 * Become an official local chapter
 * Articles and tutorials to be published on geo-spatial.org in the following month:
 * A translation and adaptation of Gary Sherman's "Shuffling Quantum GIS into the Open Source GIS Stack" tutorial (http://earth.unibuc.ro/preview)
 * FOSSGIS applications review: server-side and webmapping applications
 * Mapnik tutorial
 * Two more GDAL/OGR tutorials
 * OpenLayers basic tutorial