FOSS4G – after the dust settles

Olympics of Geo?

FOSS4G 2013 has been and gone. What can i say, it seemed to go well. It is is hard to tell when you are so involved in organising an event as you notice all the little things that didn’t quite go as intended and you tend to be trying to do a hundred things at the same time. Archaeogeek has written an excellent post about the event from an organisers point of view so i wont repeat that here. Highlights. There are so many to choose from, seeing 200 people make, and then wear, Robin Hood hat at the ice breaker or seeing delegates sitting cross-legged on the floor when all the seats and stairs had already been filled. But here are my top 3:

  • OpenLayers 3 showcase – OpenLayers is awesome and version 3 looks like it will reinforce OpenLayers place as one of the best open source web mapping out there.  New features include map rotation with tilt features “in the pipeline”.
  • QGIS 2.0 Dufour – Quantum GIS is dead, long live QGIS.  The latest version is slicker and packs more features than before. Download it now and start exploring it. You can see some of the cool stuff in this slideshare.
  • Paul Ramsey – the man behind PostGIS did more talks than anyone else, re-running one that was so popular that we couldn’t squeeze everyone in.  His closing Plenary was a call for us to become “open source citizens”.  Certainly one of the most inspirational presentations i have seen in a long time.
  • OK, so this makes it a top 4, but it is a worthy inclusion.  Arnulf Christl winning the Sol Katz award.  Long overdue and a true hero of the OSGeo world.

and the winner is…….

So what’s next?  Well, I hope to post a number of short “reviews” written by people who attended the event which will have their own top 3 lists.  We, the organisers, hope to make all the talks available through EloGeo so that anyone can see what was presented at FOSS4G.  In the meantime, you can scroll through the 4500 tweets from the event if you have the stamina.

FOSS4G 2014 will be held in Portland. Looking forward to it already, just have to work out how to get there……

Other write-ups of the event:

A big thanks to everyone who made this possible, all the LOC team, you know who you are, the volunteers and the staff at the East Midlands Conference Centre. 

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