[OSGeo-Announce] FOSS4G 2009 Call for Abstracts

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

The Organising Committee would like to welcome all interested  
participants to submit abstracts for presentations for the Free and  
Open Source Software for Geospatial conference (FOSS4G), being held  
in Sydney, Australia October 20-23. FOSS4G offers participants an  
opportunity to learn from and share your knowledge, experience and  
ideas with a group of like minded individuals representing a wide  
array of industries, governments, technologies and nationalities.

Presentations are open to all those interested and will comprise a 30  
minute slot which includes hand-over, introductions and 5 minutes for  
questions. Presentations will be selected which have a strong "Open  
Geospatial" theme to them. The committee is looking for a mixture of  
technical and non-technical presentations.


In deference to the conference theme of “User Driven,” topics of  
particular interest are:

     * Case Studies: Share your experiences implementing and using  
open source geospatial. What problems were you attempting to solve?  
How successful were you and at what cost? What can others learn from  
your experience?
     * Business Case: Have you had to sell the Open Source concept  
within your organisation? How did you present the concept to  
management? How did you present the cost/benefit scenarios and build  
the business case? What hurdles did you encounter and how did you  
surmount them?
     * Collaboration: Have you faced the trials of collaboration  
between organisations, remote offices or team members scattered to  
the far corners of the globe? What steps have you taken to improve  
the efficiency of your collaboration: open or de facto standards,  
decentralised data collection, or the myriad of solutions that only  
you could describe?
     * Security: Securing you data while ensuring ease of access to  
those select few within your inner circle can be a daunting task.  
Share you successes, and your failures, with others facing their own  
security issues.
     * Developments: Have you created a shiny new widget that is  
about to change the world? Or has your time-honoured project finally  
completed a much requested feature or two? Bring us up to date with  
the new developments in your open source geospatial software products  
with all the latest buzz: what does it do, how are people using it  
and what is in store for the next year.

For more information, visit the FOSS4G site at http://2009.foss4g.org/ 
presentations/

The deadline for presentation submissions is June 1st 2009. See you  
in Sydney.

FOSS4G 2009 Highlights

The Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP): FOSS4G will launch  
the OGC's Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP), which  
demonstrates standards based interoperability between Open Source and  
Proprietary geospatial applications. It consists of a server with  
multiple virtual machines, each installed with geospatial  
applications offering standards based web services. All web services  
will demonstrate a common dataset, and will be accessed by a range of  
geospatial client applications installed on client computers. http:// 
external.opengis.org/twiki_public/bin/view/ClimateChallenge2009/WebHome

Presenters are encouraged (but not mandated) to make use of scenarios  
and on-site data from the Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest  
(CCIP). This is especially important as demand for access to data  
over the internet is expected to be high, and Australia has  
notoriously slow connections to the outside world.

FOSS4G Live DVD: LiveDVDs, based on the Xubuntu operating system and  
including Geospatial Open Source Software, will be given to all  
delegates. Users can boot a Live DVD on their computer and trial the  
software without installing or effecting the existing system. http:// 
wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc

Installfest: The Installfest will give delegates the opportunity to  
meet in a common area and install a wide variety of FOSS software on  
their laptops, EE PC or any other system they care to bring in.  
Community members will be around to assist with any troubles and  
provide help and insight into the software. The install fest will  
take place after workshops on the first day.

Workshops and Tutorials: Workshops and Tutorials allow presenters to  
lead attendees through applications, integration solutions, or other  
topics in an interactive environment. Half-day workshops (3 hours)  
will be held in computer rooms on the first day. Tutorials (90  
minutes) will be held in standard presentation rooms, run  
concurrently with presentations during the third and fourth days.

Presentations: The meat of the conference are it's presentations.  
Drawing on a huge community of local, regional and international  
experts we will discuss some of the most current and poignant topics  
in the industry today.

Demo Theatre: During lunch and coffee breaks the demonstration  
theatre will be showcasing live software. These short demonstrations  
from sponsors, open source projects and the user community show what  
is possible with open source today.

Birds of a Feather: Rooms have been set aside for semi-organised  
meetings between like minded groups. Some prominant community  
initiatives started in prior FOSS4G Birds of a Feather sessions.

Code Sprint: The weekend after FOSS4G is reserved for the Hackers'  
Code Sprint. Hackers will be locked in a basement with lots of  
bandwidth, pizzas and coke. (Well, maybe something better than that,  
but we don't want to spoil the mystical hacker image by describing it  
any differently.)

Upcoming milestones

     * 9 Mar 2009, Call for Abstracts opens
     * 30 Mar 2009, Notification of acceptance for workshops/tutorials
     * 13 Apr 2009, Registration for conference and workshops opens
     * 1 Jun 2009, Abstract submission deadline
     * 13 Jul 2009, Presenters notified of acceptance for talks
     * 31 Jul 2009, Author/Early registration deadline
     * 14 Sep 2009, Completed program available on the wiki
     * 20 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Workshop
     * 21-23 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Presentations and Tutorials
     * 24-25 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Code Sprint

Media Sponsors

     * Position Magazine: http://www.positionmag.com.au
     * Geoconnexions Magazine: http://www.geoconnexion.com/

For information about this announcement, contact:

FOSS4G Organising Committee: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/ 
FOSS4G_2009#Contact_Us

or,

Cameron Shorter, Chair of the FOSS4G Organising Committee and  
Geospatial Systems Architect at LISAsoft

tel +61-8570-5050

c a m e r o n . s h o r t e r @ l i s a s o f t . c o m