[Qgis-psc] Report back from Open GIS! conference in Moscow

[Alexander Bruy]

Hi all,

in 17-18 November in Moscow we have first Russian Open GIS
conference. This two days event was completely devoted to opensource
GIS and open data. Here is some info:
 - 230 attenders from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus
 - about 50 (or even more, didn't count yet) organizations
 - three parallel sections: classical GIS, OSM and web-GIS, workshops
 - two discussions: Future of the opensource GIS in Russia and
   Opensource GIS in Education

The event was very interesting, inspiring and informal, but in same
time with good organization and strict schedule, so all presentations
and workshops were run in time.

There is big interest in open GIS, especially QGIS, here. There are many QGIS users in different organizations and universities (some of them use it as corporate GIS or main GIS in educational process). But
unfortunately all of them prefer to be only users and don't support
development in any way (sharing their own docs and tutorials,
translating, writing plugins or sponsoring/donating).

It is very sad that only Victor Olaya was only the one developer (I mean not only QGIS but all other projects, we invited many peoples)
from Western Europe who attend this conference. He was very popular here :-). Many peoples want to meet him and talk with him. Victor and
me run workshop about using SEXTANTE in QGIS and friend of mine run
another one about developing simple QGIS plugin. Both workshops were successful.

Also I have talk about upcoming QGIS 2.0 and it's features. Now
peoples know QGIS and its community a bit better. Hope this will raise
interest and as result more active participation in development
process.

-- 
Alexander Bruy