[OSGeo-Discuss] Will there be an OSGeo Desktop shootout at FOSS4G 2010?

[Cameron Shorter]

Delegates who voted for the FOSS4G 2009 presentations ranked the OSGeo 
comparison projects very highly, which is something I suggest hopeful 
FOSS4G 2010 presenters take note of, because competition for speaking 
slots will be fierce.

At FOSS4G 2009, 183 quality presentations were submitted, and there was 
only 85 speaking slots. In 2010 it is likely to be much harder, as there 
is expected to be 2 to 3 times more delegates and many more hopeful 
presenters.

In 2009 the community ranked potential presentations, and some of the 
highest ranked presentations targeted the comparison of popular 
packages. Unfortunately, there were only a few of these types of 
presentations.

The presentations were:

* Ranked 2: The WMS Performance Shootout
* Ranked 8: PostGIS and Oracle Spatial
* Ranked 9: There is no alternative to Openlayers...? (discussing 
OpenLayers vs other AJAX clients)

The moral to the story is that delegates want to see how different 
projects compare, and to date we have had a shortage of such 
presentations (partly because they are a lot of work to set up).

However, I strongly suggest that projects start teaming together to put 
together such presentations for 2010.

In particular, I'd love to see comparisons between:
* Geospatial Desktop applications
* Geospatial Browser based applications
* Geospatial Servers (WMS, WFS, Tiled Services at the very least)

The comparisons could cover some or all of:
* performance
* robustness
* features
* ease of setup or use

The tests should not be restricted to Open Source, but be open to 
proprietary vendors too. (ESRI and ERDAS were invited to participate in 
the 2009 WMS shootout, and it seems likely they will participate in 2010).

So who wants to participate?

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
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