FOSS4G-BE 2017 Call for Papers

FOSS4G Belgium 2017
>>>Submit here <<<

After succesful events in 2015 and 2016, OSGeo.be will organise another edition of the FOSS4G Belgium Conference on Thursday 26 October 2017 in Brussels.

FOSS4G conferences gather developers and users of Open Source geospatial software from around the world to discuss new directions, exciting implementations, and growing business opportunities in this domain. 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.

We will share knowledge and experiences during the whole event through presentations and demonstrations with 25 minutes each at most. We are looking for contributors who want to support this event.

Target Audience and Structure of the Event
The goal of the conference is to target a broad audience of at least 300 participants.

There will be plenary sessions with a high-level keynote speaker, a main track with presentations of use cases, side tracks on academic usage of open source geo, openstreetmap and a last track targeting developers of FOSS4G.

Presentations and debates with be both in English and in the major official languages of Belgium: Dutch and French.

See the event web page for more information.

Date and Venue
The event will take place on October 26, 2016 in Brussels.

Topics & Debates : Tools • Goals • Applications

 * Foss4G’s Tools: What are the current offers for storage, treatment and web distribution of spatial data? How do Open Source tools allow you to successfully personalize software for your needs?
 * Goals: How can OSGeo help you in your organization? How to build an effective Open Source solution? How to choose between different solutions?
 * Applications: Which Open Geomatics tools are deployed and used by administrations, companies, teachers and researchers? What about INSPIRE infrastructures, climate change and smart cities? What are the problems and opportunities that you encountered during migration of commercial software to Open Source software?

Special Topics
This year FOSS4G Belgium will have two special tracks
 * OpenStreetMap track
 * 1) Talk about OpenStreetMap data, community, new tools for mappers or map users
 * 2) Workshop
 * 3) Round table about tagging discussions, improve documentation, collect real life data etc.
 * Free Open Source Software in Geo Education
 * 1) Overview of Free Software in the academic and in the research environment with data from a survey on what is existing in the global context in Belgium Universities (status – inventory)
 * 2) Talk about Geo4all (http://www.geoforall.org/) & OSGeo-Live (https://live.osgeo.org/fr/ - overview of FOSStools & demos)
 * 3) Round table about experiences we had with training and teaching FOSS4G : moving to FOSS, what we have as new open data, new FOSS tools, what are the needs for education to developers, what are the resources we have (which materials already exist and how to enhance new material using FOSS in the existing flow)

Format of presentations

 * Presentation will take place both in English and in the major official languages of Belgium: Dutch and French.
 * Each individual presentation will be allowed about 20 minutes and 5 minutes for Q&A.
 * Submissions can be written in English, French or Dutch (and have to adhere to the template available soon in ODT format).

Submission
Summaries must be submitted using this form by specifying the following elements:
 * Your name and first name;
 * A contact email;
 * Your company (organization) and/or employer;
 * Your intervention's title;
 * A short abstract

If you have any additional questions, feel free to contact presentations  foss4g.be

Deadline
Deadline for submission is September 4, but we invite presenters to send their title as soon as possible. Abstracts will be evaluated by a program committee and authors will be notified of their acceptance early August. All the presentations will be made available on the event website.

How do we evaluate
The choice of presentations will be based on the quality of the submitted material, its interest for professional and student audiences and also its consistency with the program. The decision of the selection committee will be final and binding. Committee members speak on their own behalf, their choices do not reflect the position of their employer. The Dutch and French coordinators of the program committee are Johan Van de Wauw (NL) and Gaël Kruwialis (FR). We encourage you to send us an email (presentation@foss4g.be) for any inquiries.