FOSS4G 2009 Press Release 7

= FOSS4G 2009 Call for Abstracts =

The Organising Committee would like to welcome all interested participants to submit abstracts for presentations for the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial conference (FOSS4G), being held in Sydney, Australia October 20-23. FOSS4G offers participants an opportunity to learn from and share your knowledge, experience and ideas with a group of like minded individuals representing a wide array of industries, governments, technologies and nationalities.

Presentations are open to all those interested and will comprise a 30 minute slot which includes hand-over, introductions and 5 minutes for questions. All selected presentations will cover the use or development of open source geospatial software. The committee is looking for a mixture of technical and non-technical presentations.

In deference to the conference theme of “User Driven,” topics of particular interest are:
 * Case Studies: Share your experiences implementing and using open source geospatial. What problems were you attempting to solve?  How successful were you and at what cost?  What can others learn from your experience?  How did you sell the Open Source concept to management? How did you present the cost/benefit scenarios and build the business case?
 * Collaboration: Have you faced the trials of collaboration between organisations, remote offices or team members scattered to the far corners of the globe (come on, we all know it isn't a sphere)? What steps have you taken to improve the efficiency of your collaboration: open or de facto standards, decentralised data collection, or the myriad of solutions that only you could describe?
 * Security: Securing you data while ensuring ease of access to those select few within your inner circle can be a daunting task. Share you successes, and your failures, with others facing their own security issues.
 * Developments: Have you created a shiny new widget that is about to change the world? Or has your time-honoured project finally completed a much requested feature or two?  Bring us up to date with the new developments in your open source geospatial software products with all the latest buzz: what does it do, how are people using it and what is in store for the next year.

For more information, visit the FOSS4G site at http://2009.foss4g.org/presentations/

The deadline for presentation submissions is June 1st 2009. See you in Sydney.

FOSS4G 2009 Highlights
The Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP): FOSS4G will launch the OGC's Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP), which demonstrates standards based interoperability between Open Source and Proprietary geospatial applications. It consists of a server with multiple virtual machines, each installed with geospatial applications offering standards based web services. All web services will demonstrate a common dataset, and will be accessed by a range of geospatial client applications installed on client computers. http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/bin/view/ClimateChallenge2009/WebHome

Presenters are encouraged (but not mandated) to make use of scenarios and on-site data from the Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP). This is especially important as demand for access to data over the internet is expected to be high, and Australia has notoriously slow connections to the outside world.

FOSS4G Live DVD: LiveDVDs, based on the Xubuntu operating system and including Geospatial Open Source Software, will be given to all delegates. Users can boot a Live DVD on their computer and trial the software without installing or effecting the existing system. http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc

Installfest: The Installfest will give delegates the opportunity to meet in a common area and install a wide variety of FOSS software on their laptops, EEPC or any other system they care to bring in. Community members will be around to assist with any troubles and provide help and insight into the software. The install fest will take place after workshops on the first day.

Workshops and Tutorials: Workshops and Tutorials allow presenters to lead attendees through applications, integration solutions, or other topics in an interactive environment. Half-day workshops (3 hours) will be held in computer rooms on the first day. Tutorials (90 minutes) will be held in standard presentation rooms, run concurrently with presentations during the third and fourth days.

Presentations: The meat of the conference are it's presentations. Drawing on a huge community of local, regional and international experts we will discuss some of the most current and poignant topics in the industry today.

Birds of a Feather: Rooms have been set aside for semi-organised meetings between like minded groups. Some prominant community initiatives started in prior FOSS4G Birds of a Feather sessions.

Code Sprint: The weekend after FOSS4G is reserved for the Hackers' Code Sprint. Hackers will be locked in a basement with lots of bandwidth, pizzas and coke. (Well, maybe something better than that, but we don't want to spoil the mystical hacker image by describing it any differently.)

Upcoming milestones

 * 9 Mar 2009, Call for Abstracts opens
 * 30 Mar 2009, Notification of acceptance for workshops/tutorials
 * 13 Apr 2009, Registration for conference and tutorials opens
 * 1 Jun 2009, Abstract submission deadline
 * 13 Jul 2009, Presenters notified of acceptance for talks
 * 31 Jul 2009, Author/Early registration deadline
 * 14 Sep 2009, Completed program available on the wiki
 * 20 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Workshop
 * 21-23 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Presentations and Tutorials
 * 24-25 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Code Sprint

For information about this announcement, contact:

FOSS4G Organising Committee: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009#Contact_Us

or,

Cameron Shorter, Chair of the FOSS4G Organising Committee and Geospatial Systems Architect at LISAsoft

tel +61-8570-5050

c a m e r o n. s h o r t e r @ l i s a s o f t. c o m