Greek Language Chapter Report 2009

Greek Language Chapter

Period covered by report: Jan-Dec 2009
Contact name: Dimitris Kotzinos
The OSGeo Greek Local Chapter was initiated only in November 2007. During 2009 membership grew and a new mailing list under OSGeo (thanks Arnulf and Tyler) was initiated.

Two main events were planned and successfully carried out:
- Interoperability in Geographic Information Day
  - When: April 3rd, 2009
  - Where: Ledra Marriott Hotel, Athens, Greece
  - Co-organized: OGC (www.opengeospatial.org), HellasGI (www.hellasgi.gr)
  - The event was highly successful with over 90 participants who stayed for the whole duration of the event. Many Greek and internation experts presented issues evolving around the main theme. The repetition of th event was highly suggested by all participants.
- Open Source Web Mapping Workshop
  - When: June 20th, 2009
  - Where: NTUA, Athens, Greece
  - Co-organized: HellasGI (www.hellasgi.gr)
  - Organized during the Greek Open Source Developers Conference. Arnulf Christl was the invited speaker. The wealth of Open Source solution including MapServer, Mapbender and PostGIS. About 30 people attended the workshop.
Greek Local Chapter Mailing List initiated. Info available at: http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/greek

We still do not have the participation in OSGeo we expected. We need to intensify the efforts to increase the membership and the overall awareness.

In the future we will definitely need some speakers for national FOSS or just simple GIS events.
We would also like to demonstrate some cases of successful use of FOSS GIS by the public sector to local government officials.
We would like to plan some demo classes on FOSS GIS for students in universities and how these can be integrated in their curricula in order to show that we can achieve the exact same educational result.

We should plan three (3) or more national events this year, depending on availability and funding.
We would also be very interested in having the ability to apply for funding as a chapter/organization and we would like to seek help/information from other local chapters that do or plan to do the same.