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Long travel due to Brussel attacks...
See [1] for some more background info.
OSGeo was invited as a guest of SAF [2] a military department of the Airforce of Chile.
They prepared an agenda an I had to 'visit' the show. I had visits on several boots from the AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES (KAI) to a couple of local universities.
No clue who arranged this meeting, no clue who I had to contact. This was a strange experience for me. There where different Korean Pavilions, but nobody had a clue what we should talk about. So I introduced OSGeo and the projects, and asked if they had need for Geo software. And we talked about IPR and protection and how to do business with open source.
I also had an interesting meeting with the "Centro de information de recursos naturales" - CiREN [3]. I presented OSGeo, the vision and the mission, and they where particualary interested in using OSGeo software as an alternative for proprietary solutions. Software development on FOSS projects (the software industry in general) is in Chile not yet very active yet. But a program such as G4A could help here to outreach to students to start with. Maybe within a couple of years new developers will stand up.
The invitation for the presentation came from Jaime Hernando, a professor of the university of Chile. There was a seminar of one day about open source and remote sensing, but due a loaded agenda put together by SAF, I only attended the time slot before my own presentation.
Jaime is interested to start with a local working of OSGeo.
I had the chance to talk to Rodrigo Villarroel, From the Universitad Tecnica Deferico Santa Maria. I met also some other people from Brasil (from a university, also active in OSGeo)
I visited the boot of different universities from Chile presenting their work based on astronomy and geo-physica.
At the universities: open source is already used. For geo they almost all use qGIS, but OSGeo is not know, although they are interested to know more about it. The GeoForAll concept sells well as well.
I 've wrote an email to Jorge Sanz, to connect the Spanish speaking contacts with the Spanish speaking community.
On Friday, I attended the conference and had the opportunity to meet Barbary Ryan, Director of the GEO Secretariat. GEO is a non-for-profit organisation To realise a future wherin decisions and actions, for the benifit of humankind, are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations and information.
GEO could be an organisation to partner with from a perspective of OSGeo.
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.earthobservations.org/contribute.php">https://www.earthobservations.org/contribute.php</a>)
Today, there are 95 partnering organisations, amongst onr of them is OGC.
Our role could be to act as a liaison towards open source reference projects for the activities held by the members of the organisation. I will look up what the role of OGC is, and we should play the same role, but from a perspective of software i.s.o. standards.
To discuss on the next board meeting if I should proceed to set up a partnership.
Their next global activity is the 2016 Work Programme symposium. 2-4 May, Geneva, Switzerland. (<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.earthobservations.org/me_201605_geo_wps.php">https://www.earthobservations.org/me_201605_geo_wps.php</a>)
Do we know if there are there already OSGeo members attending the conference and if so, can they report on the symposium?
Conclusion:
- OSGeo is not (yet) a well known mark in Chile.
- There are not a lot of software developers in Chile (or they are not known by the people of the universitis and the government.
- they are working with expenige ESRI licensed software solutions, but are interesting to know the OSS alternatives.
- There is certainly an interest in coöperating with GeoForAll to spread the word of OSGeo OSS to the educational system. There is certainly an interest in cooperating and the translation of documentation to the Spanish version from the English.
As there is not yet a developer community, I think OSGeo should work on helping to construct one. This can be done by developing projects with local people and OSGeo experts, to help create solutions for their local needs.
Action points:
- discuss potential partnership with GEO on the next board meeting
[1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.frigne.be/extra-security-measures-at-the-liege-airport">http://www.frigne.be/extra-security-measures-at-the-liege-airport</a>
[2] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.saf.cl/">http://www.saf.cl/</a>
[3] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ciren.cl">http://www.ciren.cl</a><title></title><meta name="generator" content="LibreOffice 4.2.8.2 (Linux)"><style type="text/css">
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--
Yours sincerely,
ir. Dirk Frigne
CEO @geosparc
Geosparc n.v.
Brugsesteenweg 587
B-9030 Ghent
Tel: +32 9 236 60 18
GSM: +32 495 508 799
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.geomajas.org">http://www.geomajas.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.geosparc.com">http://www.geosparc.com</a>
@DFrigne
be.linkedin.com/in/frigne
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