[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G Buenos Aires 2013

[Adrian Custer]

Hey Cameron, all,


FOSS4G BA 2013 rocked! So much, we are all, totally, beat.


The organizers did an amazing job, pulling off the conference without 
any noticeable hitch. Their friendliness and passion permeated the whole 
event. It was a stellar performance from what appears to be a great 
group of friends.

Attendees came from all over South America, with a few from Europe and 
North America. We were a great mix of technical developers and users, of 
folk working with government agencies, in universities, at companies and 
some simply interested folk. (There was even at least one spy, a 
developer who had never thought about geospatial before but who had been 
sent by a friend to check things out.) We discovered the amazing overlap 
of issues and solutions being developed across the continent. The 
workshop rooms were totally full, standing room only! Some of the great 
talks (for me) were:
   * a talk on a social mapping project helping non-technical communities
     map their land use in order to pressure recognition from local and
     national governments,
   * the presentation of GvSig 2.0, a release which apparently has cost
     a lot of work but is a real new beginning for that project,
   * a talk on HOT (the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team)---the best of
     our crowd-sourced activism,
   * a 30 minute, stopwatch in hand, walk through of building a spatial
     analysis application with processing.js and any WMS,
   * presentations on the amazing work going on in Italy at a
     University in Milan and at the World Food Organization.
Best of all, it was fantastic to hear geospatial discussed in all sorts 
of different flavours of Spanish!

IGN, the argentine national mapping agency, was a great venue. Access 
was really easy, right on a main avenue, next to the subway with tons of 
buses in front. The agency opened up their amphitheater and meeting 
rooms to us, gave us a decent amount of bandwidth (which we proceeded to 
squash, of course), and seemed thrilled to see a new kind of geospatial, 
youthful and full of energy. They also have this great little museum at 
the entrance with the entire history of the instruments they have used 
over the years mapping the country.

And Buenos Aires ... well, the city never stops so when you find 
yourself walking home, yet again, at four in the morning, there are all 
sorts of people around, waiting for the bus, grabbing a bite to eat, 
wandering into and out of clubs, and walking along the side walks.

The only real question of FOSS4G BA is when the next one comes.



However, the conference has only just ended today, really, so don't 
expect updates right away. Officially, FOSS4G BA was Wed (workshops), 
Thur, Friday (talks) but today (Sat) they continued with a State of the 
Map, Ar. That ended up being a fun workshop with Maté (a local tea) 
being passed around and everyone having such a good time we kind of had 
to force ourselves to go to lunch.

Eventually, the organizers plan to upload talks and videos and pictures 
and all sorts of goodies but we need to give them a little while 
yet---as far as I can tell they have not had a decent night sleep or 
regular meals in quite a while.


cheers,
   ~adrian


On 4/27/13 6:07 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> I understand that FOSS4G Buenos Aires completed last week?
>
> I'd encourage organisors, presenters and attendees to share their
> thoughts on how this (first?) South American FOSS4G event went.
>
> I'd also be interested to see metrics on where people travelled from in
> order to attend, and compare to prior foss4g events.
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Al9zh8DjmU_RdEZoOUtSeVZRVWtKQzV6R2N5ekdSdlE#gid=57
>
>
> On 15/11/12 03:48, Mauricio Miranda wrote:
>> Hello everybody,
>>
>> I'm writing on behalf of the FOSS4G conference committee to be held in
>> Buenos Aires next year.
>>
>> The event is being organized by the group "Geoinquietos Buenos Aires"
>> which is a kind of argentinian OSGeo microchapter.
>>
>> Even though this conference is focused on the Spanish-speaking
>> community in Latin America, we would like to invite you all to join us.
>>
>> This will be a great opportunity to share experience, projects and
>> ideas, and of course, it will also help to consolidate the FOSS4G
>> community on these ends.
>>
>> You can get more info about the event at: http://foss4g-ba.org
>>
>> Please, help us to promote the conference between your folks.
>>
>> We look forward to seeing you here!
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mauri
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
>