FOSS4G 2011 Denver Program

=PROGRAM=

High-Level Program
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday . 8:00:00 Registration . 9:00:00 . 10:00:00 . 11:00:00 Preconference Workshops Plenary Presentations Panel Discussions . 12:00:00 Lunch Lunch Lunch Closing Plenary . 13:00:00 Short Plenary Lunch . 14:00:00 . 15:00:00 Presentations & Labs Presentations . 16:00:00 Workshops Field Trips USGS, NREL, NCAR, etc.. 17:00:00 BOF Sessions BOF Sessions Code Sprints Mapping Party Code Sprints . 18:00:00 . 19:00:00 Free as in Beer Social Exhibitor Reception DAM Reception . 20:00:00 . 21:00:00 Social event for code sprinters and mappers at separate venue

Academic Track
The Denver LOC includes many members of the academic community who are excited about bringing the premier international conference on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial studies to North America. Academic interest in FOSS4G has grown significantly in recent years with the Association of American Geographers Cyberinfrastructure Specialty Group establishing a chair position for FOSS4G and the International Cartographic Association creating a Working Group n Open Source Geospatial Technologies. Like prior FOSS4G confererences, we will feature a peer-reviewed paper presentation track. We will strive towards having selected papers published either as a special journal issue or have the proceedings in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science. The LOC is also considering poster presentations as an avenue for students and early academics to present their efforts and findings to the community.

Workshops
Hands-on, instructive workshops are a significant part of the FOSS4G conference. The Denver LOC hopes to create a Workshop program of great value to all conference attendees—providing the chance for participants to experience the capabilities of FOSS and presenters to share new techniques of successfully utilizing FOSS. Workshops will be scheduled for the day before the official start of the conference (Monday).

Workshop registration will be an extra fee item. Our initial budget is for a morning and afternoon three-hour workshops across seven tracks. In following with the themes of the conference, workshop proposals for successful business applications of FOSS4G and data sharing through FOSS4G will be given preference.

Based on readings of the Lessons Learned of the prior FOSS4G conferences, the Denver LOC realizes the importance of clear leadership and direction for successful workshops. One of the first tasks for the LOC will be to breakout responsibility for workshops into a separate workshop Committee. One LOC member will be selected as the Workshop Coordinator and rescued from other LOC responsibilities. The Workshop Coordinator will select members of the Workshop Committee. The Committee will be clearly organized into leads for proposal/selection, system preparation, and workshop day facilitation. The proposal and selection process for Workshops will be handled separately from presentations. While a community ranking scheme may be used for the presentations, workshops will be selected by the Committee because of the lead time necessary for preparation.

Also based on Lessons Learned, scheduling the workshops for the front-end of the conference allows for the day before (Sunday) to be used for workshop preparation. By scheduling the workshops early, it also allows the Workshop Coordinator to work with a fresh set of volunteers.

Workshop presenters and volunteers will not be expected to work again during the conference and will be compensated with gratis registration. The separate Workshop fee will be used to cover additional venue costs, equipment costs and gratis conference registrations.

A major part of the Workshop Coordinators job will be to help prepare a Workshop LiveSystem distributable (LiveCD or LiveDVD or LiveUSBstick). Although our preliminary budgets include workstation costs for the workshops, we anticipate by Fall 2011 that all attendees will be able to use their own laptops capable of running the LiveSystem. If this is the case, the workshop fee will be appropriately discounted. Producing a LiveSystem distributable would entail more preconference effort on behalf of the Workshop Committee, again evidencing the need to rescue the Workshop Coordinator from other time demands.

Code Sprints
The Denver LOC recognizes that a significant aspect of FOSS4G is to provide an opportunity for FOSS contributors to directly collaborate on software projects. The teams of developers who contribute to FOSS projects tend to be geographically dispersed. We view much of our conference program as providing infrastructure for quality development time. That infrastructure involves low-level technical presentations, productive Birds of a Feather activities and some serious heads-down-coding time. Most significantly, we see the aspects of our program to attract business leaders and non-FOSS users as a way to help underwrite the Code Sprint through expanded conference registration.

Our preliminary schedule provides for two days for the Code Sprint, Friday and Saturday, including a special social event Friday night. We will explore expanding the Code Sprint to three days based on the experiences of the Sydney FOSS4G. The LOC will appoint a Code Sprint Coordinator with past experience in FOSS4G Code Sprints. The Code Sprint Coordinator will be responsible to structuring the Code Sprints and for providing input into the BoF and Presentation program. This programmatic input is designed to ensure presentation tracks that advance developer knowledge entering the Code Sprint.

Social Events
The Denver LOC is excited to propose a suite of social events that complements FOSS4G 2011 in character and nature.

Monday night we will host an evening "Free as in Beer" social at one of the many great brewpubs within walking distance of the conference venue. This social will be open to workshop attendees, presenters and volunteers. A reasonably priced conference add-on will be evaluated to permit non-workshop attendees to attend.

On Tuesday evening, an exhibitor-sponsored social event is planned for the exhibition hall. This social event will be open to all conference attendees and their families.

A Gala Dinner is scheduled for Wednesday evening. The LOC will explore interesting site options for this primary social event near the conference venue, such as the Denver Art Museum. Based on the proposed budget, the Gala Dinner is included in the conference registration fee to encourage maximum participation. Reasonably priced tickets for the dinner will be sold separately to enable registered attendees to include their guests.

Thursday afternoon will feature an array of field trips to sites of significant interest in the region, including the Denver Federal Center, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and more. Modest additional fees will be assessed for those interested in these field trips in order to keep the general conference registration to a minimum.

On Friday evening, the Denver LOC intends to provide a special Code Sprinter Social to allow the hard-working contributors to blow off some steam. The scope of this social will depend highly on the overall budget and conference attendance.

In addition to these planned social events, there will be ample opportunities for socialization over gratis coffee, soft drinks and snacks. Further, both proposed venues are in the heart of Downtown Denver and are surrounded by great number and variety coffee shops, pubs, and restaurants.