[Foss4g2009] Draft Press Release, FOSS4G Call for workshops

Sat Jan 31 07:12:32 EST 2009

Finished my first cut at the "Call for Workshops" press release, which 
also outlines the highlights for 2009's FOSS4G. I've covered a lot here. 
I'm hoping to get some hefty reviewing on this, including what is being 
proposed as well as how I'm saying it.

Please insert review comments into an email response.

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009_Press_Release_5

----

  FOSS4G 2009 Call for Workshops and Tutorials

Sydney, Australia. 2 February 2009.

The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference is 
pleased to announce a Call for Workshops and Tutorials for the 2009 
conference, being held 20-23 October, 2009 in Sydney, Australia.

FOSS4G is the international "gathering of tribes" for open source 
geospatial communities, where developers and users show off their latest 
software and projects. 2009's theme of "User Driven" highlights the 
power of Open Source to integrate with existing systems. As such, expect 
to see presentations about Proprietary products integrating with 
Geospatial Open Source, as well as Pure Open Source presentations.

    FOSS4G 2009 Highlights

*The Climate Change Integration Plugfest (CCIP)*: FOSS4G will launch the 
OGC's Climate Change Integration Plugfest (CCIP), which demonstrates 
standards based interoperability between Open Source and Proprietary 
geospatial applications. It consists of a server with multiple virtual 
machines, each installed with geospatial applications offering standards 
based web services. All web services will demonstrate a common dataset, 
and will be accessed by a range of geospatial client applications 
installed on client computers. 
http://external.opengis.org/twiki_public/bin/view/ClimateChallenge2009/WebHome 

Presenters are encouraged (but not mandated) to make use of scenarios 
and onsite data from the Climate Change Integration Plugfest (CCIP). 
This is especially important as demand for access to data over the 
internet is expected to be high, and Australia has notoriously slow 
connections to the outside world.

*FOSS4G Live DVD*: LiveDVDs, based on the Xubuntu operating system, and 
including Geospatial Open Source Software, will be given to all 
delegates. Users can boot a Live DVD on their computer and trial the 
software without installing or effecting the existing system. The DVD 
will be a great marketing tool, and can be incorporated into Tutorials. 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc

*Installfest*: After workshops on the first day, delegates will have the 
opportunity to mingle with presenters, test their LiveDVD, and iron out 
any laptop glitches before Tutorials in the following days.

*Workshops and Tutorials*: Workshops and Tutorials allow presenters to 
lead attendees through applications, integration solutions, or other 
topics in an interactive environment. Half-day workshops (3 hours) will 
be held in computer rooms on the first day. Tutorials (90 minutes) will 
be held in standard presentation rooms, run concurrently with 
presentations during the third and fourth days.

All workshop and tutorial submissions will be considered, but particular 
interest will be shown in the following topics:

    * Practical Introduction to ____
    * Integrating Geospatial Open Source with ____
    * Geospatial Data
    * Spatial Data Privacy and Security

*Presentations*:

*Birds of a Feather*: Rooms have been set aside for semi-organised 
meetings between like minded groups. Some prominant community 
initiatives started in prior FOSS4G Birds of a Feather sessions.

*Code Sprint*: The weekend after FOSS4G is reserved for the Hackers' 
Code Sprint. Hackers will be locked in a basement with lots of 
bandwidth, pizzas and coke. (Well, maybe something better than that, but 
we don't want to spoil the mystical hacker image by describing it any 
differently.)

    Workshops

Workshops are expected to be a hands-on experience with participants 
following along with the instructor, working directly with the 
application under discussion. All workshop rooms will be equipped with 
computers (two students sharing one system) to support this vision. 
Workshop computers will pre-installed with a basic image containing 
standard packages running in a Windows XP environment. Instructors will 
need to discuss pre-installation requirements with the Conference 
Organising Committee if required.

Workshops are expected to require considerable effort to create, with 
past experience showing that three days of preparation per hour of 
presentation are required to produce a high quality workshop. 
Additionally you will be expected to develop material for attendees to 
take home with them, such as handouts, workbook, CD-ROMs etc.

    Tutorials

Tutorial rooms *will not* be equipped with computers, however presenters 
may optionally make use of delegate laptops and the FOSS4G LiveDVD.

At least 80% of delegates are expected to be carrying a laptop and 
FOSS4G LiveDVDs will be given to all delegates.

Preference will be given to hands-on tutorials.

Any hands-on aspects to a tutorial will be the responsibility of the 
presenter and needs to be described in the tutorial description. 
Presenters making use of the Live DVD or CCIP will be expected to 
contribute to testing pre-releases to ensure material and software is 
properly installed.

To discuss your needs for the workshop computer configuration or 
LiveDVD, please contact the organising committee as per 
http://2009.foss4g.org/contacts/.

    Sweeteners

Due to the effort involved in producing and presenting a workshop, 
instructors will receive a single complementary registration to the 
conference for delivering a workshop. Presenters for tutorials will not 
be provided complementary registration.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Submission instructions and templates are available at 
http://2009.foss4g.org/workshops/ and http://2009.foss4g.org/tutorials/.

The deadline for workshop / tutorial submissions is March 2, 2009.

    Upcoming milestones

    * 2 Feb 2009, *Call for Workshops/Tutorials opens*
    * 2 Mar 2009, Call for Workshops/Tutorials closes
    * 9 Mar 2009, *Call for Abstracts opens*
    * 30 Mar 2009, Notification of acceptance for workshops/tutorials
    * 13 Apr 2009, *Registration for conference and tutorials opens*
    * 1 Jun 2009, Abstract submission deadline
    * 13 Jul 2009, Presenters notified of acceptance for talks
    * 31 Jul 2009, *Author/Early registration deadline*
    * 14 Sep 2009, *Completed program available on the wiki*
    * 20 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Workshop
    * 21-23 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Presentations and Tutorials
    * 24-25 Oct 2009, FOSS4G Code Sprint

------------------------------------------------------------------------

For information about this announcement, contact:

FOSS4G Organising Committee: 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009#Contact_Us

or,

Cameron Shorter, Chair of the FOSS4G Organising Committee and Geospatial 
Systems Architect at LISAsoft

tel +61-8570-5050

c a m e r o n . s h o r t e r @ l i s a s o f t . c o m

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Think Globally, Fix Locally
Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
http://www.lisasoft.com