Intergeo 2006 Report
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Impressions from the Intergeo 2006
The OSGeo Foundation operated the Open Source Park of the Intergeo 2006 together with the Hinte-Messe GmbH, organizer of the Intergeo trade fair and conference. Read more about the organization on the Intergeo 2006 page. It includes the floor plan with the list of the FOSS projects and businesses appearing on the OSGeo Open Source Park.
With an exhibition area of 29 by 16 meters (95 by 50 feet) and two additional surrounding 10 by 5 meter (30 by 15 feet) rest areas the OSGeo Open Source Park was one of the largest booths. The focus of the trade show is clearly business and end customer oriented, the on and off hacker could be seen lurking around to get hooked up to the internet but mostly it was suits and users. Several thousand people came to the booth to pick up OSGeo flyers and listen to the presentations. Those who wanted to get more detailed information talked to the booth staff of roundabout 20 people from all areas of IT and FOSS GIS business. In short - it was a great success.
Open Source Park Infrastructure
This picture is taken from the perspective of guests coming to the OSGeo Open Source Park down the main aisle. The rotunda above the exhibition area could be seen from anywhere down the hall. It shows the OSGeo compass logo, and the caption "OSGeo.org" and "Open Source Park".
A large screen, projector, internet connection and conference speaker system was provided by the exhibiting businesses who presented their FOSS projects and services. Just like at the FOSSGIS 2006 conference a lot of users presented their productive solutions. These comprise city map services and application interfaces, state wide spatial data infrastructures or more specialized applications like the geothermal hot spot information system implemented by MapMedia with UMN MapServer technology.
The forum hosted 60 presentations in three days, a well attended event with a broad mixture of technology, Foundation issues, businesses and many productive applications that were presented by the corresponding users. Due to the FIG event, the meeting of the Federacion International de Geoinformatique held every three years, international attendance was very high, approximately one third of the presentations therefore was held in English language.
OSGeo Booth and Community Area
In the middle of the Free Community Area right beside the presentation forum was the main OSGeo booth.
Several FOSS projects had representatives present their software and discuss with people.
The left half of the OSGeo booth was dedicated to OSGeo and FOSS projects (including presentation space and internet connectivity for free as in "free beer") and gave visitors the opportunity to talk about OSGeo in general or individual projects in detail.
The other half of the booth was commited to the physical well-being of the guests and booth staff with coffee, water, snacks etc. The consumption of (insert number) cups of coffee by visitors (staff not counted) can be taken as an approximation of the number of people taking more time than to just pick up (several thousand) flyers.
Even with a good loadful of coffee some could not (or wanted to) follow all presentations.
Geospatial FOSS Business Exhibitors
Ten service providers and businesses presented their services on the OSGeo Open Source Park. Their fianncial contribution allowed OSGeo to have a booth and provide space and connectivity to Geospatial FOSS projects. All kinds of companies were represented. Some of them into core software development, others focused on training and education, one ASP (application service provider) vendor and as global player Autodesk gave a thorough insight on how diverse FOSS business can be.
People
In the name of the OSGeo and all participating companies a big Thank You to all volunteers and activists who helped make the OSGeo Open Source Park this successful! A special thanks goes to Torsten Brassat and Athina Trakas who made this possible in the first place.
Focus and Interests
The focus of the OSGeo booth at the Intergeo was on FOSS business and service providers. Interest in the software and developemt processes was far less than at the LinuxTag 2006 which makes sense considering the different focus of the events.
Still by far most questions asked by normal folk focused on availability, licensing and complaints about not getting an geospatial data.
Next Year
It would be cool to get more developers involved and have an area for them to meet and collaborate face to face as it happened a lot at FOSS4G (especially GeoTools).
Possibly some international folk would consider to come and talk or even have their own booth there. Geospatial Free and Open Source Software is a big thing in Europe and growing. No, it is not a hype anymore it is business as usual but growing. A healthy business has evolved and is prepared to grow.