[OSGeo-Discuss] 10th Italian GRASS/GFOSS meeting (and 2nd Italian Chapter annual meeting)

[massimo di stefano]

On February 25-27, 2009 the 10th Italian GRASS/GFOSS meeting took  
place in
Cagliari, Sardinia. This was also the venue for the 2nd Italian Chapter.
As every year the conference is a collector to present news about the
GFOSS world and its circulation in public and scientific world.
Approximately 120 attendees were registered.

Some of the highlights, which you may already have picked up from
other communication channels:


- we saw sqlite  now providing integration with raster data [1] and
with QGIS [2]
- another great surprise came from the Scientific visualization group at
CRS4.  The meeting was the occasion to release under GPL their RATMAN  
3D [3]
visualization application, boasting extremely advanced rendering  
algorithms,
currently used by the Sardinian Regional Government as their official 3D
viewer.

  For more information please refer to this wiki page [4].  Various  
linux
distros are under preparation, and if you are interested in 3D  
visualization
you are welcome to check this out.

During the conference,  gfoss.it , the Italian OSGEO chapter, also had  
its
second annual meeting.

In addition to a review of activities conducted in 2008 (which you may  
also
find summarized in the annual report page of the OSGEO wiki), some
brainstorming took place in terms of confirmation of 2009 planning,  
budgets
and strategies to further promote free geographic software (and data)..

We have also been discussing the possibility of funding through the  
local
chapter activities such as participation to hack meetings, and similar  
actions.

Another live topic remains, after substantial collaboration in Italy in
2008, the relationship to the OpenStreetMap community. Several GFOSS.it
members are also active "open mappers", and we are trying to understand
if/how  the release of the new license for OSM data [5][6] will impact  
other
efforts ongoing in the advocacy of free geographic data in general.

A report on the 10th GRASS-GFOSS user meeting will also be available
in the press, in the Geomedia Magazine
(http://www.rivistageomedia.it/), in April.

[1] - http://www.gaia-gis.it/spatialite/index.html
[2] - http://www.gaia-gis.it/QGisJanus/
[3] - http://ratman.sourceforge.net/
[4] - http://wiki.gfoss.it/index.php/Ratman
[5] - http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/
[6] - http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2009-February/001958.html



Massimo Di Stefano
massimodisasha at yahoo.it

epifanio on   irc.freenode.net  /join gfoss







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