Belgium/FOSS4GEducation

Academic reflection on free open source software in geomatics

face2face meeting – Brussels February 16, 2017 – (ULB- Solbosch Campus -)

Present

Bart De Wit (UGent), Eléonore Wolff (ULB), Frederik Priem (VUB), Julien Minet (ULg-Arlon), Julien Radoux (UCL), Maëlle Vercauteren Drubbel (ULB) and Moritz Lennert (ULB)

Activities to attend/organize

Special Session on "Free Open Source Software in Geo Education" at FOSS4G.be 2017 (“FOSS4GEducation” ) : Thursday October 26, 2017

• Duration

2 hours

• Speakers

Having one representative from each university would be the best ! But until now no feedback from Gembloux and UMons

• Topics

1. Overview of Free Software in the academic and in the research environment with data from a survey on what is existing in the global context in Belgium Universities (status – inventory)
2. Talk about Geo4all (http://www.geoforall.org/) & OSGeo-Live (https://live.osgeo.org/fr/ - overview of FOSStools & demos)
3. Round table about experiences we had with training and teaching FOSS4G : moving to FOSS, what we have as new open data, new FOSS tools, what are the needs for education to developers, what are the resources we have (which materials already exist and how to enhance new material using FOSS in the existing flow)

Creation of a "platform-hackathon"

The ways to continually / sustainably update and improve our publicly available teaching materials using FOSS for re-use by assistants and teachers (and why not afterwards self-learners and other members of the GIS community)

• Platform where we could share teaching material
• Some f2f meetings/year to dedicate one or two day sessions to share information + one day of hackathon

Communication

List of contacts from the universities

https://framacalc.org/Contact_Belg_Univ

• Creation of a ML (OSGeo ML for teaching FOSS4G) ?

Face2face meeting + hackathon / years

• Best time for next f2f meeting (June/August/September) :

https://framadate.org/xPSyfSXqi4rBia14

Launch the survey with a save the date of the session “FOSS4GeoEducation”

• Survey : https://framacalc.org/FOSS4G_University

Talk about this idea in other events to give some inspiration to other people

• BeGeo (MARCH 16th, Brussels ) : http://www.begeo.be/
• National Mapathon (MARCH 25th, Belgium interuniversity) : http://sciences.ulb.ac.be/printemps/events/mapathon-interuniversitaire/
• FOSS4G-Europe (JULY 18th-22nd, France) : https://europe.foss4g.org/2017/
• FOSS4G (AUGUST14th-19th, Boston) : http://2017.foss4g.org/