Press Release 25th June 2013

FOSS4G puts out a call for GeoHackers and Mappers

There is an incredible amount happening not just within the FOSS4G programme; which itself is spanning nine steams over three days and five days of workshops; but ‘around’ FOSS4G as well. The Local Organising Committee (LOC) are particularly pleased to be able announce the GeoHack: funded by the UK Met Office, the aim of the hack is too tackle truly global environmental and humanitarian issues with the use of the OSGeo/Open Source stack (in particular the OS Geo Live 7.0 DVD) and OpenData including Met Office DataPoint and Ordnance Survey Open Data as well as others.

We are putting the shout out to software and hardware hackers, graphic designers, innovative thinkers, story tellers, translators, well anyone really who would like to contribute. GeoHack runs 17th and 18th September within the ‘geo-tent’ being erected at the conference venue. It’s FREE, but spaces will be limited, so sign up early at  the GeoHack page to register your interest.

If working in such an intense manner is not quite your thing, perhaps the Call for Maps is more interesting. For the first time FOSS4G will be hosting a digital gallery of cartographic output. The gallery is being curated by Dr Kenneth Field, Editor of the British Cartographic Society’s ‘The Cartographic Journal’. So if you think you’ve got something suitable to submit, then why not share your work and enter your creation into one of the prize categories?

Notes to the Editor:

About FOSS4G (2013.foss4g.org): FOSS4G is the global conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, hosted by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and organised by a Local Organising Committee. FOSS4G will be held in the United Kingdom for the first time in 2013, at the East Midlands Conference Centre (http://www.nottinghamconferences.co.uk/emcc/) in Nottingham, from 17th to 21st September. FOSS4G 2013 will follow on from the Association for Geospatial Information (www.agi.org.uk) annual GeoCommunity event held in the same venue. These two conferences form a part of the geospatial focused events happening across the UK in September (www.maptember.org).

About OSGeo (www.osgeo.org): The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software, and promote its widespread use. The foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit. OSGeo also serves as an outreach and advocacy organization for the open source geospatial community, and provides a common forum and shared infrastructure for improving cross-project collaboration. The foundation’s projects are all freely available and useable under an OSI-certified open source license http://www.opensource.org/licenses/.

Media Sponsorship: FOSS4G would welcome the support and encouragement of media sponsors. Full details are available at http://2013.foss4g.org/media-sponsorship-package/.

Logo: The FOSS4G logo can be downloaded from: http://2013.foss4g.org/Style/.