III Encontro Nacional de Usuarios MapServer

The III Brazilian MapServer User's Meeting has ended and was a great success.

Dear all,

It is my pleasure to inform that the THIRD BRAZILIAN MAPSERVER USER'S MEETING
was a success. The meeting was held in Brasilia, at the Presidential Auditorium,
as response to the invitation of the Federal Government which has been investing
its efforts on Open Standards and Opensource. Among the most recent initiatives
I should mention the E-PING Commission, which has been establishing official
standards. It means that once a standard is officially adopted by the
government, it becomes a criterion for software development or acquisition. A
sub-commission for geoinformation is already working towards OGC... ;-)

More than 300 people have attended the event. 23 cases were presented by
government officials, as well as universities and private companies.
Surprisingly, the quality of the applications presented has exceeded our
expectation, especially in comparison with the first and second meetings. 6
workshops were available (Principles of Cartography for Developers, MapServer
Basics, MapServer Advanced, PostGIS Basics, Geoserver Basics and OCG) thanks to
the support of several people that have committed their selves to them.

To the growing MapServer community and in face of the success, I would like to
thank Mr. Tyler Mitchell who enlightened the meeting with his speech and
contribution. I would also like to thank Persegona's brothers (Marcelo and
André) and Thammy and Roberta for their commitment to organization and well
being of all participants. Finally, recognize the efforts of Dr. Albuquerque,
Sérgio and Silmara to materialize the meeting at the Presidential Palace.

RELEVANT ASPECTS OF THE MEETING:

* Unofficial organization of the OSGeo Brazilian Chapter;
* We shall transform the BRAZILIAN MAPSERVER USER'S MEETING in to OSGeo
Brazilian Chapter Meeting. For that we will try to bring members from the other
communities (e.g Grass, Geoserver, geonetwork, etc.) to OSGeo-Br;
* OSGeo Brazilian Chapter will submit a proposal to bring FOSS4G 2008 to Brazil
in order to initialize this new "phase" 

Cheers,

Rafael Medeiros Sperb

Invited Representatives

• Tyler Mitchell, Executive Director of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
• Tom Kralidis to introduce OGC concepts

Report

Read Tyler Mitchell's report.

Contact

Rafael Medeiros Sperb, Dr.

Laboratório de Computação Aplicada – G10

Curso de Engenharia Ambiental

Universidade do Vale do Itajaí - Univali