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Press Release 29th July 2013

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Jo

Five New Key Note Presenters Announced!

It is with great pleasure that FOSS4G’13 Local Organising Committee (LOC) is able to announce an additional five keynote speakers to the September (or should that be Maptember?) conference programme.

Chris Tucker is the creator of MapStory which is a new take on the global data commons designed to empower user communities to self-organise. Chris might be more widely known as the former CEO and President of ERDAS and the founding CSO of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s Venture Fund.

Ben Hennig (University of Sheffield) is one of the leading lights of the WorldMapper.org project, which is working on mapping the social dimensions of the world. He is continuing his work at the University of Oxford on understanding social inequalities, humanity’s impact on Earth, global sustainability and new concepts for the visualisation of these issues: which can all be seen at www.viewsoftheworld.net

Emer Coleman (Technology Strategy Board) is a familiar face to anyone working with Open Data within the UK, as she is one of the principal shapers of UK policy through her involvement in the London Data Store and as Deputy Director for Digital Engagement in the Government Digital Service (Cabinet Office). Emer has presented on her work globally including at Code for America Summit 2012 in San Francisco.

Jason Davies is the co-author of D3.js, the popular open-source visualisation library, as well implementing the largest number of map projections you’re ever likely to need!

Jason is joined finally by Nathan Woodrow from Australia, one of the principal contributing developers to QGIS. With the anticipated launch of the latest version of QGIS anticipated in the very near future, we’re expecting people to be hanging on Nathan’s every word!

Ben Hennig, Chris Tucker, Emer Coleman, Jason Davies and Nathan Woodrow.

These speakers will join the list of world renowned speakers already confirmed from the open source community: Paul Ramsey (PostGIS co-founder), Kate Chapman (Executive Director of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team), Ian James (Chief Architect at Ordnance Survey) and Edward Anderson (Open Development Technology Alliance at the World Bank).

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/.

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Thanks to everyone who helped make FOSS4G 2013 a success!