[OSGeo-Discuss] FOSS4G 2013 Nottingham Update

[Barry Rowlingson]

Another of the irregular updates of the conference team!

We have our first sponsors - Ordnance Survey (yes, another 'OS')
Google, Edina, MapGears, and Metaspatial have all got in with our
early-bird 10% discount sponsor deal. The rest of you have until the
end of the month, then it goes up to full rate.

Wall-of-sponsors page is here:

http://2013.foss4g.org/sponsors/

We also have our first accepted keynote speaker, a major open-source
geospatial figure - I'm not sure if its public knowledge yet, so I'll
not give any names away.

The first papers have been submitted to the Academic Track section. We
expect many more, most of which will undoubtedly come in on the last
day!

The call for presentations and workshops is nearly done, the programme
subcommittee are finalising the submissions process.

We've also started to investigate entertainment options for our
evening dinner spectacular, and I've been in touch with agents to try
and get a really top-class comedy/musical act with broad appeal to our
community. If that fails we'll give our committee chair a microphone
and make him sing karaoke.

The announcement of FOSS4G-NA's harassment policy has sparked some
discussion on the committee, and we will be producing a code of
conduct document to cover everything from harassment to dress code and
timeliness. The dress code will insist everyone brings their t-shirts
from previous FOSS4Gs!

With the countdown clock on the web site now under 8 months expect
many more exciting announcements soon.


Barry