As a conservationist attending software based conference I was worried a lot of the presentations would be way above my head, being more comfortable with the Burmese sort of python than the script type. However with a number of talks being highlighted for ‘newbies’ such as myself and a range of excellent keynote talks I found I was often rushing around trying to get all of the talks I had ear-marked.

There were a few talks that really stood out for me, largely because of their engaging speakers but also due to the topic matter which I found fascinating and relevant to my interests. Saying that there was such a broad range of topics covered at FOSS4G – from guiding natural disaster recover to mapping the freshest powder snow –it was difficult to pick just three!

The first presentation that I went to at FOSS4G was ‘An Introduction to Open Source Geospatial’, by Arnulf Christl; which for me set the tone for the whole conference and provided an excellent and balanced introduction to the current state of affairs within the open source world. It was also great to be introduced to FOSS4G by one of the key players and this year’s winner of the Sol Katz award.

Another highlight for me followed shortly afterward with Michelle Walker’s talk ‘A Toe In The Water – Using Open Source Software To Support Catchment Management’; which provided an excellent overview of how open source geospatial data and software is being used on a practical level by The Rivers Trust, in order to identify likely sources of river pollution as well as other tools allowing the identification of problematic barriers to migratory fish. I found this talk especially interesting as it not only highlighted the more technical aspects of the data processing and management, but also provided a great insight into how to practically use the vast amount of data that is becoming increasingly available.

My third and final top pick from this year’s FOSS4G was the keynote talk by Kate Chapman – the Acting Director from the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). This talk was especially inspiring as I found it touched upon on all of the great strengths of the open source community – with HOT providing a service that is fast, responsive and most importantly, useful. Making geospatial data and software internationally relevant and perhaps even being the difference between life and death.

These three presentations, plus the many, many others which I have not mentioned, provided a great depth and breadth of information on the cutting edge work currently occurring within the open source geospatial world. What struck me throughout all the events I attended was the great desire and ability for collaboration, a characteristics which is all too often only considered superficially in the wider world; and one which I think all participants of FOSS4G should be proud of.

I am Marco Minghini and I am currently studying for a PhD in Environmental and Infrastructures Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy.  As it was my second FOSS4G after the one in Denver (2011), I was sure it would have been a great experience but I have to say it turned out to be even better. First of all I must describe the conference organization: everything was in place, everything well-scheduled and everything went fine. An applause for the LOC is more than deserved!

Marco

What really stood out at the event?

Presentations at FOSS4G 2013 were all very good and choosing the best one(s) would mean somehow depreciating the others. What I can do is to list the ones that stuck in my memory for teaching me something.

1. First presentation of the list is Paul Ramsey’s  closing plenary.  I will always remember his motto “be an open source citizen” and his impressive and exciting talk! Inspirational.
2. The second presentation I would like to mention is the one given by Tim Sutton during the plenary session on Friday, September 20th, where he presented the new QGIS 2.0. I was astonished, not just because a new version of a software package I regularly use is available, but because I just didn’t expect it to be announced at the conference. This will be a great memory for me.
3. Third presentation is “Open Data for Real” given by Arnulf Christl, who is first of all a great person and communicator – a real FOSS4G hero!

FOSS4G 2013 taught me a lot.

• it updates my knowledge about the state of the art software/libraries and provides insight to their development path.  It also allows me to find out about new packages or ones that I have not considered using for a while.
• It provides tips and hints on how to get the most out of software.  Having core developers on hand is amazing to help you exploit advanced functionality
• I learnt once again, that one of the key factors for the success of FOSS4G is its community.  FOSS4G projects continue to grow, both in terms of quantity and quality and that means more people working together for a common goal.
• I also have to say that FOSS4G people are incredibly funny! This conference has been unique in terms of the entertainment one can experience just listening to the presentations. Just to remember one of them, the Robin Hood-based welcome session was amazing!
• And the last thing I learnt at FOSS4G was that… well, Nottingham beer was delicious!!

What do you intend to do after FOSS4G?

Now that I’m back, I pledge to do at least three things. First, to be (even more) part of the community, for instance by finding some time to spend helping some projects – “why not translate QGIS2.0 into my native language?”. Then, starting from what I heard during presentations and what I can find on the new OSGeo Live, I pledge to expand my FOSS4G knowledge by learning to use some more software, maybe the newest ones. Last but not least, I pledge to maintain and grow the friendships with the people I met, and to look forward for future collaborations with them. This is the way FOSS4G community grows!

Tobias Kohr

This Academic bursary event review is by Tobias Kohr who is a Research Associate at the Institute for Spatial Information and Surveying Technology (i3mainz) at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz.

So FOSS4G 2013 Nottingham is over and I want to reflect on the event.  My FOSS4G started with workshops on Wednesday, which gave me the chance to meet some of the core developers of my favorite FOSS4G project (GeoNode) and taught me how to develop a QGIS plug-in. The next day the main conference started.  My write up is going to be a bit different from the ones that have already been posted.  I want to highlight some of the talks beyond the main keynote which have already seen quite a lot of discussion.

Thursday

Oops, i am actually going to start discussing a keynote, but rules are there to be broken, right?  MapStory is a project that approaches crowd sourcing from a storytelling standpoint. Story tellers who are in the center of this application are able to present their concerns in a spatiotemporal frame. This frame covers most data and enables to share information in a way that can be easily interpreted. MapStory is based on GeoNode.

While QGIS 2.0 doesn’t seem to present any completely new innovations, a broad range of its features have been improved considerably or extended. One example would be the printing functions (Atlas/Mapbook, Snapping, HTML labeling, scalebar flexibility, etc.). Besides a new raster engine for better performance, a Model-Builder-like widget was integrated for easier processing.

As “the World’s leading open-source data portal platform”, ckan increasingly supports spatial capabilities like a CSW interface (pycsw), map widgets for visualization and spatial searches (based on Solr). Future challenges for the developersinclude the plan to merge data.gov and geo.data.gov into one portal.

Friday

It is difficult to keep track with all the emerging cloud solutions in the Web GIS world. The creator of Mango gave a handy overview of ArcGIS online, CartoDB, geocommons, GIScloud, MapBox and his own invention. More information can be found in his free book.

The quite impressive cloud solution of CartoDB is based on technologies such as PostGIS, nodejs and ruby. Beyond the quick formatting and configuration of web map applications, it offers developers various APIs (CartoCSS, MapAPI, SQLAPI).

Cartaro tries to leverage common functionalities of the widely used and powerful CMS Drupal, like user administration, internationalization, versioning, layout, templates and editorial workflow and extend it with spatial capabilities to create a framework that can build “websites with a map” and “business apps with some GIS”.

While current Web GIS application can be very powerful, often they are not very intuitive. A rework of map.geo.admin.ch tries to overcome this shortcoming by simplifying the GUI and supporting the user with layer previews. The application is based on OpenLayers 3.

Geo-processing in spatial databases is faster than in programming code, so why not use it in WPS? This idea is pursued by GeoSolutions who have enabled their GeoServer WPS to pass SQL queries directly to the database for execution.

Saturday

The vision of OL3 is to converge 2D (OpenLayers 2/Leaflet) and 3D (Cesium/OpenWebGlobe) web capabilities within one library. OL3 sees maps as graphics and puts a focus on client-side rendering. It follows the design principles of separation of concerns (map layers vs. data sources, interactions vs. controls) and high performance. Different to OL2, OL3 doesn’t include any GUI components itself, but is designed to work with other libraries, CSS and Bootstrap, which many responsive web applications tend to use nowadays. To get a feel, how to work with OL3 have a look at Tim Schaub’s presentation.

Just before the closing plenary, Christopher Helm turned out to give one of the most entertaining presentations of the conference, in my opinion. While he neglected the JavaScript loaded program of Saturday a little bit, he was asking for more and more and more of it, telling the audience about D3, topojson, node.js, walkshed.js, shapefile.js, shapely.js and Esri’s koop and terraformer. So why don’t we process geodata in JavaScript? In Helm’s opinion we should do and should also consider using technologies like Web RTC, Web sockets and Web workers.

Thank you so much to the LOC, the bursary sponsors and my institute for making my first FOSS4G visit possible!

FOSS4G 2013 academic bursaries were sponsored by EDINA. EDINA supports the use of spatial data in higher and further education in the UK.  EDINA relies heavily on free and open software to deliver its service and is proud to support FOSS4G 2013.

For me, it was an outstanding and enriching experience to participate in FOSS4G 2013. The combination of great people, amazing technology and the open source spirit made my five days in Nottingham something special, far more than a usual business-conference.

What really stood out?

There were so many outstanding presentations, that it is almost impossible to pick a top three.  Nevertheless, here is what I would select:

• I have been working with PostGIS for several years and was interested to see Paul Ramsey’s “PostGIS Feature Frenzy”. Showing established as well as new functionality, this presentation has inspired me to continue  exploring this software.
• ‘State of Geoserver‘ (Andrea Aime and Jody Garnett) because of the impressive bunch of features that are included in the new release version. It was nice to see that Geoserver is now shipped with many tools that we have missed in the past, like NetCDF support. The security enhancement was another import topic.
• The Keynote about QGIS 2.0 by Tim Sutton was another highlight, not only because of the great new capabilities of the new version, but also because it provided a potted history of QGIS that I was not fully aware of.

The World at FOSS4G

As soon as I am back at my desk, I will check out some of the interesting software projects I have seen. I am hoping to utilise some of them in my upcoming study projects, such as:

• in the next semester we have to build a software environment for automatic object recognition within point clouds. I will try to use the new PostgreSQL-extension Pointcloud as back end and figure out how it works. The related presentations have been very promising.
• I also want to use OpenLayers3 to build a front end for an ongoing SDI-project to benefit from the nice look and feel of the new version of this popular library.
• Using Git for source code management as a matter of course, I am very interested in playing around with GeoGIT. Inspired by Git, this project aims to enhance and simplify versioning of geospatial data. I will examine how this works, especially with large datasets.

Reflection

All in all, the FOSS4G was a perfect complement to my studies in the fields of geo-informatics, software development, and geodesy. It was very interesting to meet the people who are developing and working on great open source projects that I use in my studies. It was this mix of people from all over the world with various backgrounds from business and  academia as well as the open source enthusiasts that created the friendly and exceptional atmosphere. I am very grateful to be given opportunity to attend the FOSS4G 2013 in Nottingham. I can definitely say that attending FOSS4G was an unforgettable experience for me. As a result I feel strong connected to the FOSS4G-community and I am eager to spread the word about open source geospatial software in my professional future. “I pledge to be a responsible Open Source Citizen.”

FOSS4G 2013 academic bursaries were sponsored by EDINA. EDINA supports the use of spatial data in higher and further education in the UK.  EDINA relies heavily on free and open software to deliver its service and is proud to support FOSS4G 2013.

My name is Sizwe Mabaso and I am from Swaziland. I am currently studying for a PhD at the University of Aberystwyth looking at “Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) for Tanzanian forests using space and airborne remote sensing data”.  Through this I have started using open source software.  Prior to starting my PhD I was involved in teaching undergraduates and research at the University of Swaziland. During this time I became aware of the expensive nature of some software packages which can act to exclude users in developing countries.

The long-awaited month of Maptember 2013 came without fail, and over 800 delegates converged at Mappingham, oops, I mean Nottingham.

What things really stood out?

1. Range of presentations – The programme was rich and packed with amazing presentations, keynote talks, workshops and entertainment. Some presentations were quite complex, but there were also loads that accommodated beginners like myself.
2. GDAL/OGR talks by Frank - In my research, I work with massive datasets that need a lot of translation, especially to enable their integration.  I have been using GDAL and OGR libraries, together with my research group’s library (RSGISLib). I was therefore very curious to go to GDAL/OGR project presentations. I hadn’t appreciated that the talk would be delivered by Frank Warmerdam, the man behind GDAL. This was one of the highlights of the conference.
3. QGIS 2.0 Dufour -   The new version of this ‘cutting edge’ software boasts of a wide range of either newly introduced or improved functions. The user interface, layout of side tabs, navigation, symbology, map composer, programmability, plugins, analysis tools and browser functions have all been massively improved, while the whole labelling system has been overhauled. Well, gone are the days of confusion caused by the ‘quantum’ aspect of the software. With effect from this release, it was announced that Quantum GIS shall be known as QGIS. This is a great open source software and tool that is not just desktop software, but as it was highlighted during the conference, is also a GIS platform.

Reflection

FOSS4G 2013 has come and gone so quick, but has left me with a great insight on open source software. Even a book is not enough to record the endless experiences and lessons learnt from FOSS4G 2013. Besides learning and getting updates on the work of professionals and experts in open source software development, I got a lifetime opportunity to network with lots of people from diverse professions and background. Some of these are developers of software and codes’ libraries that are useful in my studies.

I am forever indebted to FOSS4G for awarding me the academic bursary that enabled me to be part of such a great event. Special thanks to the whole FOSS4G Organising Team for the wonderful organisation of a very educational conference, loaded with endless entertainment, ensuring great time and opportunities for networking.

FOSS4G 2013 academic bursaries were sponsored by EDINA. EDINA supports the use of spatial data in higher and further education in the UK.  EDINA relies heavily on free and open software to deliver its service and is proud to support FOSS4G 2013.