[OSGeo-Discuss] Call for Abstracts for FOSS4G Africa 2017

[Jeff McKenna]

-------- Forwarded Message --------


SAGTA - FOSS4G Africa 2017

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

20th February 2017

The OSGeo Africa chapter and the QGIS South Africa User Group Conference 
invite you to participate and present at the first regional FOSS4G event 
in Africa and the first national QGIS User Group Conference in South 
Africa to be held at St John’s College, Johannesburg, South Africa from 
25th June to 1 July 2017. We hereby invite papers from GIS 
practitioners, teachers, and academics in the GeoSpatial Sciences. 
Published proceedings of the conference will have both an 
academic/educational as well as a technical/best practice stream. FOSS4G 
represents the gathering of the Open Source Geospatial community with a 
deep focus on free and open source geospatial solutions under the 
auspices of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation – OSGeo (www.osgeo.org).
   Johannesburg, South Africa
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Johannesburg_From_M2_Highway_Looking_North.jpg/800px-Johannesburg_From_M2_Highway_Looking_North.jpg) 

South African GeoSpatial Science and GIS into the future.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is part of the curriculum in 
South African schools, yet schools and teachers are poorly equipped to 
teach it, let alone use it to teach Geography and other subjects. That's 
why we've teamed up with the world of secondary and tertiary education 
to explore challenges teachers and GIS practitioners face and to come up 
with suggested solutions going forward. The Southern African Geography 
Teachers Association (SAGTA) in collaboration with OSGeo, QGIS and 
GeoforAll is hosting the FOSS4G 2017 conference at St John’s College, 
Johannesburg, South Africa. A draft programme and conference information 
are available at: 
https://qgis.org.za/en/events/foss4g-southern-africa-and-qgis-user-group-conference/. 

Extended abstracts for paper and poster presentations are invited and 
should be concise (3500 words excluding references). Abstracts for 
papers will be peer-reviewed (by experts in the field) for presentation 
not exceeding 20 minutes (15 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for 
Q&A). The deadline for submission of abstracts is the 31st March 2017. 
Submit to clinton.vandermerwe at wits.ac.za. Contributions must be original 
and previously unpublished. Author guidelines for the full papers going 
into the conference proceedings or those which are suggested for 
submission to journals for considered review and possible publication 
will be sent out in due course. In terms of copyright, conference 
proceedings will be openly archived on the Web under a Creative Commons 
Attribution License. At least one of the authors of an accepted abstract 
must register for the conference and make an oral presentation at the 
conference.

Final papers of 3500 words excluding references, for publication in the 
Conference Proceedings, are due at the end of July 2017. Papers will be 
reviewed by external reviewers, and if accepted, will be published in 
the official Conference Proceedings. Authors of a selected number of 
high quality abstracts will be invited to submit their papers to JoGESA 
(see http://sagta.org.za/e-journal.php for more details) and the South 
African Geographical Journal (http://www.ssag.co.za) and will go through 
the respective journal’s normal peer-review process, also due at the end 
of July 2017. We do not wish to prescribe topics, but rather encourage 
you to address topics based on your teaching and research experience. 
Examples of topics for paper/poster presentation:

Open Source geospatial use in South Africa
Teaching with FOSS4G in South Africa
Best practice Open Source geospatial software in South Africa

The conference will include pre- and post-conference trips/excursions 
(see the draft programme for details): 
https://foss4g-africa.org/en/programme/
Important dates
Call for abstracts opens:                              	 
	20th February 2017
Abstract submission:     	                                	 
31st March 2017
Notification of acceptance:                                  		 
	30th April 2017
Submission of revised abstracts:                                	 
	15th May 2017
Early Bird Payments for conference:				20th May 2017
Full Conference registration payment for presenters:		6th June 2017
Conference                          			   	        25th June to 1 July 2017
Full Papers for Proceedings or submission to Journals:		31st July 2017

St John’s College, Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa

(Source: 
http://www.isasaschoolfinder.co.za/uploadimages/north_facade_large.jpg)

For further details:
Please contact Pat Jay (secretary at sagta.org.za) or visit our website: 
www.sagta.org.za or Clinton van der Merwe 
(clinton.vandermerwe at wits.ac.za or +27117173173).
Regards
Clinton D. van der Merwe
https://www.wits.ac.za/education/staff/clinton-d-van-der-merwe/

________________________________________