[postgis-users] FOSS4G 2009 Call for Abstracts

[Mark Leslie]

The Organising Committee would like to welcome all interested 
participants to submit abstracts for presentations for the Free and Open 
Source Software for Geospatial conference (FOSS4G), being held in 
Sydney, Australia October 20-23. FOSS4G offers participants an 
opportunity to learn from and share your knowledge, experience and ideas 
with a group of like minded individuals representing a wide array of 
industries, governments, technologies and nationalities.

Presentations are open to all those interested and will comprise a 30 
minute slot which includes hand-over, introductions and 5 minutes for 
questions. Presentations will be selected which have a strong "Open 
Geospatial" theme to them. The committee is looking for a mixture of 
technical and non-technical presentations.


In deference to the conference theme of “User Driven,” topics of 
particular interest are:

     * Case Studies: Share your experiences implementing and using open 
source geospatial. What problems were you attempting to solve? How 
successful were you and at what cost? What can others learn from your 
experience?
     * Business Case: Have you had to sell the Open Source concept 
within your organisation? How did you present the concept to management? 
How did you present the cost/benefit scenarios and build the business 
case? What hurdles did you encounter and how did you surmount them?
     * Collaboration: Have you faced the trials of collaboration between 
organisations, remote offices or team members scattered to the far 
corners of the globe? What steps have you taken to improve the 
efficiency of your collaboration: open or de facto standards, 
decentralised data collection, or the myriad of solutions that only you 
could describe?
     * Security: Securing you data while ensuring ease of access to 
those select few within your inner circle can be a daunting task. Share 
you successes, and your failures, with others facing their own security 
issues.
     * Developments: Have you created a shiny new widget that is about 
to change the world? Or has your time-honoured project finally completed 
a much requested feature or two? Bring us up to date with the new 
developments in your open source geospatial software products with all 
the latest buzz: what does it do, how are people using it and what is in 
store for the next year.

For more information, visit the FOSS4G site at 
http://2009.foss4g.org/presentations/

The deadline for presentation submissions is June 1st 2009. See you in 
Sydney.
[edit] FOSS4G 2009 Highlights

The Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest (CCIP): FOSS4G will launch 
the OGC's Climate Challenge 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 on-site data from the Climate Challenge 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. 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc

Installfest: The Installfest will give delegates the opportunity to meet 
in a common area and install a wide variety of FOSS software on their 
laptops, EE PC or any other system they care to bring in. Community 
members will be around to assist with any troubles and provide help and 
insight into the software. The install fest will take place after 
workshops on the first day.

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.

Presentations: The meat of the conference are it's presentations. 
Drawing on a huge community of local, regional and international experts 
we will discuss some of the most current and poignant topics in the 
industry today.

Demo Theatre: During lunch and coffee breaks the demonstration theatre 
will be showcasing live software. These short demonstrations from 
sponsors, open source projects and the user community show what is 
possible with open source today.

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.)
[edit] Upcoming milestones

     * 9 Mar 2009, Call for Abstracts opens
     * 30 Mar 2009, Notification of acceptance for workshops/tutorials
     * 13 Apr 2009, Registration for conference and workshops 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

[edit] Media Sponsors

     * Position Magazine: http://www.positionmag.com.au
     * Geoconnexions Magazine: http://www.geoconnexion.com/

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