This year’s Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial conference (FOSS4G) took place in Seoul, South Korea. FOSS4G is an annual recurring global event that brings together developers, decision-makers and users from a broad spectrum of organizations and fields of operation to focus on open source geospatial solutions. During a week of workshops, presentations, discussions and code sprints, FOSS4G participants create effective and relevant geospatial products, standards, human networks and business opportunities.

With regards to COBWEB, this year’s conference highlighted a growing interest in crowd data and how to reuse it. COBWEB hosted a ‘Birds of a Feather’ session on the subject of crowdsourcing that was well attended. Discussions centred on the distinction between VGI (volunteered geographic information) and non-VGI data and how these data are treated, as well as how to adapt to the increase in VGI, crowdsourcing and citizen science data. Topics such as quality assurance, data conflation, interoperability and privacy were also touched on.

For more information about the conference, please visit the website: http://2015.foss4g.org/