FOSS4G2008 Press Release

Keep to each one <500 words. This is a 'formal' press release to be sent to news agencies and media partners.

1. for release on Sept 8
make this more introductory, informative Cape Town, South Africa, September 8, 2008

Around 800 software programmers, Government officials, business people and technology experts will be converging on Cape Town from 29 September to attend the 2008 Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial conference. Open source is a concept sweeping the software industry, a form of collaborative programming and knowledge sharing that allows a global community of programmers to pool their efforts and build complex systems. The resulting software is often available for free, or at a cost far less than traditional software licensed from large corporations.

The geospatial software users attending this conference work with open source software to process and share maps, build online mapping sites, analyse satellite imagery data, calculate flood zones, gather GPS data, do development planning, and much more.

Conference chair Gavin Fleming sees Cape Town as a hotbed of open source programming. “There are whole categories of software that depend on open source software written right here in Victoria. The provincial and federal governments have been very supportive and helped build a unique local industry over the past five years”, said Fleming.

This year’s conference is sponsored by international industry heavyweights like Autodesk, Google, as well as local firms and Government departments with roots in the open source community.

In addition to a packed schedule of presentations and hands-on classes throughout the week, the Open Street Map project will be having a community mapping session to map Cape Towns's streets on Sunday the 28th, and the software developers will be huddling for an intense day of programming on Saturday 4th.

For more information on FOSS4G 2008, please visit http://www.foss4g2008.org or contact Gavin Fleming at +27-11-7094668 or email gavinf@mintek.co.za.

2. for release on Sept 22
quote numbers and more immediate info

Cape Town, South Africa, September 8, 2008

For more information on FOSS4G 2008, please visit http://www.foss4g2008.org or contact Gavin Fleming at +27-11-7094668 or email gavinf@mintek.co.za.