FOSS4G-BE 2016 Call for Papers

FOSS4G Belgium 2016
After the very succesful FOSS4G Belgium event in 2015, OSGeo.be will organise another edition of the FOSS4G Belgium Conference on Thursday 22 September 2016 in Brussels (http://bel.brussels/en).

FOSS4G conferences gather developers and users of Open Source geospatial software as well as managers and decision-makers 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 (tbd), a main track with presentations of use cases, one side track targeting IT-officers and covering the practicalities of the use of FOSS4G in institutional settings, and a second side 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 September 22, 2016 in the beautiful new conference facilities of the [http://www.environnement.brussels/ Environment and Energy Agency] of the Brussels Capital Region which supports the event by providing the location.

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?

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 sent by e-mail to the following address: presentation@foss4g.be 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 (300 words max.)
 * The nature of your intervention (Explanatory / Application / Demonstration);

Deadline
Deadline for submission is June 24, 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.