[Aust-NZ] FOSS4G Day 4

[Brian Bishop]

Thanks Chris and Shoaib for taking up the challenge.
I agree that NZ and AU have a lot to be proud of in the Opensource
ecosystem, rsync, samba, moodle, koha are just a few examples. What
has prompted my comment is the number of government and
semi-government organisations from Europe, North and South America,
not only sending representative, but giving presentations at the
conference. For a wealthy democracy, Australian government
representatives are conspicuous by their absence. It has been left to
independent consultants like Tim Bowden and Simon from Melbourne, to
represent Australia at the conference.  Seeing what is happening with
GIS enabled applications at all levels of government in comparable
nations around the world, should help to open up possibilities for
innovation in public administration in AU.

Today was the last day of the conference proper and continuing the
roundup of layers in the GeoFoss SDI,
(for a definition, see this link:
http://geonetwork-opensource.org/documentation/faq/foss-sdi-and-opensdi
)
The hot topic in interfaces were WFS-T and KML.
Mapserver is the mature and robust server with Geoserver being used
for Transactional WFS and KML. Would like to prototype a visualisation
application for time series data, using PostGIS, Geoserver and Google
Earth.
Geonetwork Opensource is moving forward with a code sprint scheduled
for tomorrow.
The database layer is dominated by Postgres/PostGIS, with an
interesting extension by the pgRouting team.

Thats it from me, will attend the Geonetwork code sprint tomorrow
before going back to warm days and smiling faces.

Enjoy







On 27/09/2007, shoaib <saburq at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brian - great roundups thanks -- love the "good night & good luck"
>
> I agree with Chris we have some big names in OSS in OZ/NZ but the distance
> doesn't help. I'm a bit of a rebel though and have attended every conference
> since 2005 except this one coz I had be at RailsConf Europe.
>
> - shoaib burq
>
>
> On 9/27/07, Chris Tweedie <chris at narx.net> wrote:
> > Thanks for the updates Brian. I do not agree with the comment about
> > Australia missing out on the opensource GIS / concepts. In my experience
> we
> > are very much at the front of the pack, but for some reason we often shy
> > away from the spotlight and lurk in the community instead. This is my hope
> > that OSGEO-Au will bring a lot of these people (you know who you are) out
> > from the shadows. Its not just individuals either, a lot of corporate
> types
> > are actively using OSGEO projects but for whatever reason, don't advertise
> > this very much.
> >
> > Attendance comes down to cost and distance ... Canada is just as
> prohibitive
> > as Switzerland in this respect, times by about 100 for Government approval
> > for international travel. South Africa i have already pencil'ed in and
> > fingers crossed that our Sydney bid gets across the line so we can get
> more
> > people in attendance for future conferences.
> >
> > Keep updates flowing !
> >
> > Chris Tweedie
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: aust-nz-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
> > [mailto:aust-nz-bounces at lists.osgeo.org ] On Behalf Of Brian Bishop
> > Sent: Thursday, 27 September 2007 4:50 PM
> > To: FOSS Mail List; aust-nz at lists.osgeo.org
> > Subject: [Aust-NZ] FOSS4G Day 3
> >
> > Managed to survive the conference dinner tonight, held in the BC
> > Museum. Great venue and talked to 2 of the 3 NZers at the conference.
> > Apart from Tim Bowden and a couple of others, have not met many
> > Aussies at the conference. This indicates that the Australian public
> > are missing out on a lot of innovative concepts in spatial systems and
> > public participation. (Any Aussie at the conference with a different
> > view?)
> > Learnt last night that my colleague Liz, had travel problems and could
> > not make the conference. It would be really useful to be part of a
> > team covering the interesting presentations. For example tomorrow
> > morning, the first half hour session has 5 presentations, 3 of them
> > are my priority areas. Again I probably will miss the fun one.
> >
> > An important question for me is, now that I have some understanding of
> > the components for a robust Spatial Data Infrastructure, where is the
> > glue to tie these components together. Proprietary tools like FME have
> > been suggested, however the team at Camptocamp demonstrated a toolset
> > that looks promising. Being Opensource, can start experimenting
> > straight away.
> >
> > Openlayers is the talk of the web presentation clients, however
> > Mapbuilder and Ka-Map  are being used for some cool applications also.
> > Adding analysis muscle to the newer desktop clients is a theme, with
> > uDig, gzSIG and Qgis all featuring analysis extensions. Grass is still
> > there and gaining more of everything you would expect from a mature
> > high end GIS. Check out JGrass.org if you are interested in this area.
> > The Qgis team needs C++ programmers to help with bug squashing. This
> > is a great way for programmers to start helping with an opensource
> > project.
> >
> > Goodnight and goodluck.
> > Brian
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Aust-NZ at lists.osgeo.org
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/aust-nz
> >
> >
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