[OSGeo-Conf] Organizing local FOSS4G Bulgaria 2025

[Ivan Ivanov]

Hello, all,

I am Ivan, a.k.a. suricactus, you may know me with my contributions in QGIS, QField and QFieldCloud, and the maintainer of [BG] https://qgis.bg website.

Not sure if this is the best mailing list to write, but hope you don't mind my message here.

I always had great experiences at the global and European FOSS4G event, so I was missing this my own country, Bulgaria.

Last year with a group of enthusiasts we organized a conference "Open GIS conference" focused on open source geospatial software and data, we had more than 160 attendees and 17 speakers and lecturers. It was the first independent event like this here, and I think it was a great success. You can check the event page here [BG] https://qgisbg.github.io/docs/events/2024_foss4g_bg/ and coverage here [BG] https://www.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/novini/novini_i_s_bitiya/otvorena_gis_konferenciya_se_provede_v_sofijskiya_universitet .

This year we are organizing a similar event on 7th-8th March 2025 with 7th being the day with workshops and 8th the main conference with talks. As an organizing committee, we decided we would love to brand it as FOSS4G, so the official name of the event is FOSS4G:BG: Open GIS conference.The idea is to raise awareness about the global community around OSGeo. The local landscape is dominated by some proprietary software companies and people are not aware about OSGeo and it's mission, the community and how this whole thing works. We want to keep this even annual with similar name.

You can check the event's page here [BG] https://foss4g.qgis.bg/ .

Even though we already decided to use the FOSS4G in our event, I feel obliged to inform you this event is happening and using the FOSS4G brand.

It was not entirely clear whether we can use the FOSS4G naming, who should we inform, but my understanding is if we stay aligned with the core values and spirit of OSGeo and FOSS4G, it should be fine. Let me know if I misunderstood something. Some documents I went through are:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G#Using_the_Name_FOSS4G
[https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook](https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Handbook#About_FOSS4G)
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_Manifesto

Please let us know if we are doing something wrong, we are learning by experience so far. We never officially aligned with the OSGeo organization as we are not a officially recognized chapter (yet).

Hopefully later this year we have an official local OSGeo chapter and QGIS user group, it will be part of the discussions during the conference days.

Other than that, I want to invite everyone to our local event. Even though it is in Bulgarian, there is a good portion of people who speak good English. If someone is really interested in giving a presentation in English, or just saying hi!, you are welcome!

Best wishes,Ivan
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