FOSS4G 2009 BirdsOfAFeather

This webpage needs details filled in similar to http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G2007_BOF_Sessions

= Introduction = During the FOSS4G2009 conference in Sydney, Australia, there will be conference rooms available for people to hold Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.

Birds-Of-A-Feather sessions are unstructured timeslots where people can self organise themselves to discuss topics of interest.

This year, Birds of a Feather sessions will be held on Thursday 22nd October.

A number of rooms are available. First ones in get the rooms.

Organising Contact

 * Bruce Bannerman, Tyler Mitchell

Timeslots Available
At this stage, each room is scheduled for one hour between 1615 to 1715.

The rooms will be available for longer, however remember that the FOSS4G Harbour Cruise Dinner starts at 1900.

If we get a lot of demand, we may need to reduce the time that each room is available for. This will allow us to share the resources between more people.

Rooms Available

 * Parkside G01, capacity 70 people
 * Parkside G02, capacity 70 people
 * Parkside G03, capacity 80 people
 * Parkside G04, capacity 170 people
 * Parkside G05, capacity 50 people

Please note:

We are currently looking at additional options for places to run the BOF sessions in.

Rooms will be allocated to BOF sessions closer to the event.

= Timetable = Below is a summary of the BOFs and when/where they will be run. Contact Tyler or Bruce for any questions or changes. Times and rooms may change - changes will be posted on announcement boards during the event.

= BOF organization = You can use this page to organize your BOF session:
 * create a section below for your BOF
 * have people edit this page to indicate they will be attending
 * if you need a bigger room than that which has been assigned to you, let Tyler or Bruce know
 * you must provide a contact person who is managing the meeting
 * also make your description as clear as possible, for many attendees it will be the only thing they read before choosing one

= BOF sessions =

==FOSS4G in Government

To start the ball rolling, seeing that everyone else is sitting back and waiting for everyone else: some potential discussion points:

It would be good to get a UK person to talk to this.
 * [|The UK Government's policy on Open Source.]


 * How can governments exploit open source spatial:


 * Implement based on Open Standards.


 * The GeoNetwork example where we all need a Metadata entry tool and catalogue.


 * We all don't want to pay for the same development, but share / pool resources.


 * how do we coordinate this work, while working sensitively with Open Source communities who own the code base and may not want to go in the same direction that we do. This includes issues relating to working with Project Steering Committees etc.


 * We can't expect communities to do our work for free. Therefore we will need to either engage our own people or consultancies to do the work. The consultancies could come from within the community from anywhere around the world, until we build up our own local communities. This could create procurement problems.


 * The need for governments to engage with Open Source communities at all levels, not just as developers.


 * The need to allow employees to participate within OS Communities as part of their day to day jobs: i.e. we need to build up our technical skills.


 * The need to treat OS on a level playing field with proprietary solutions. That will mean looking at the Solution life cycle (See the new UK OS policy).


 * Experiences in other countries:


 * What is working.


 * What is not working.

=== Please indicate your interest in attending this session below:

Bruce Bannerman