[Linux-aus] Sydney selected to host leading international conference for Open Source Geospatial Software

[Jeff Waugh]

Hey all,

Very special announcement today -- the Open Source Geospatial Foundation's
annual conference, FOSS4G, is coming to Sydney in November 2009. This will
be a really great event for the local community and industry, as there is
huge and growing interest in geospatial solutions at the moment (government
and business), and FLOSS is leading the way.

Rock on! :-)

- Jeff

----- Forwarded message from Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com> -----

Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:32:42 +1100
From: Cameron Shorter <cameron.shorter at gmail.com>

http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/FOSS4G_2009_Press_Release_1

Sydney to host FOSS4G conference in 2009

/"User Driven FOSS4G"/

*Sydney (Australia) selected to host the 2009 international conference for 
"Free & Open Source Software for GeoSpatial" (FOSS4G).*

Monday, 18 February 2008

Aust-NZ OSGeo <A u s t - N Z @ l i s t s . o s g e o . o r g>

Cameron Shorter <c s h o r t e r @ l i s a s o f t . c o m>, +61 2  
8570-5050

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sydney has been selected to host the FOSS4G international conference. The 
conference is planned for November 2009, and attracts leading users and 
developers in the open source geospatial community.

Holding this conference in the Asia-Pacific will bring enormous benefit to 
the region and provide the geospatial community with the opportunity to 
discover cutting edge spatial tools through to state of the art enterprise 
deployment.

Jeff McKenna, chairman of the OSGeo conference board summed up Sydney's  
bid. "The conference committee was overwhelmingly in support of Sydney's  
bid. Sydney's professional proposal, breadth of support from Government,  
Spatial and Tourist Industry, Enthusiasts and Academia demonstrated a  
passion that we have come to expect from OSGeo Conferences. Sydney's  
attractiveness and reputation as the gateway into Asia is an added bonus."

Cameron Shorter, System Architect at LISAsoft explained his motivations  
for leading Sydney's bid were not entirely altruistic, "For years I've  
wanted to attend FOSS4G's quality of presentations and meet attendees, but 
I've been held back by family commitments. So if I can't travel to FOSS4G, 
then why not bring it to me?"

The Oceania region has a reputation as being early adopters of Open Source 
as Steve Lime, founder of the mature Mapserver project notes, "Its about 
time FOSS4G came to Australia. Australians have been long time supporters 
of Open Source, including being the first users of Mapserver outside the 
University of Minnesota." Oceania also stands out as the region with 
highest usage of Firefox, the Open Source browser[1].

*About OSGeo*

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation has been created to support and  
build the highest-quality open source geospatial software. The  
foundation's goal is to encourage the use and collaborative development of 
community-led projects, data development and education.[2]

*About OSGeo - Australia/New Zealand*

The Australia/New Zealand chapter of OSGeo apply OSGeo principles locally. 
In particular, we focus on promotion and outreach.

*About FOSS4G*

FOSS4G is the international gathering of open source, geospatial tribes.  
The 2009 theme of "User Driven" reflects the migrating focus on users and 
integration of geospatial components into systems. The spatial industry is 
undergoing rapid innovations and the open source spatial community is one 
of the forces driving the change. From its beginnings the FOSS4G conference 
has been the gathering of the spatial tribes and has a reputation of being 
a melting pot for great ideas in the spatial industry and a catalyst for 
many successful geospatial products, standards and protocols. The 2007 
conference was held in Victoria, BC, Canada and was a huge success[3]. 2008 
conference will be held in Cape Town, South Africa[4]. FOSS4G 2009 Sydney 
will be the seventh "formal" gathering of the open source geospatial 
community and is expected to focus on the increasing importance of FOSS4G 
in the public and private enterprise.

[1] http://www.itwire.com/content/view/16329/53/

[2] http://osgeo.org

[3] http://www.foss4g2007.org

[4] http://www.foss4g2008.org

----- End forwarded message -----