FOSS4G - Some Things to Look Out For

FOSS4G is coming up next week in Victoria BC. FOSS4G has always been a good place to see some exciting innovations by the open source community, and this year is no exception. There will be a lot of presentations, workshops and new software to test out, so I thought that I could suggest some things you should try to take in.

For those of you interested in the MapGuide Open Source and FDO projects, here are some interesting sessions I would recommend:
•    W-08: Developing MapGuide Applications with PHP, Bob Bray, Monday, 1:00-4:00 p.m.
•    L-10: Defining and Using Custom Cartographic Symbols in MapGuide, Bob Bray, Tuesday, 2:00-4:30 p.m.
•    MapGuide Open Source Birds of a Feather, Tuesday, 4:45-7:00 p.m.
•    L-05: Introduction to FDO and the FDO API, Greg Boone, Wednesday, 2:00-3:30 p.m.
•    Fusion: Advanced Application Development Toolkit for Web Mapping, Paul Spencer and Jason Fournier, Wednesday, 3:30-4:00 p.m.
•    Developing Web 2.0 Applications Using FDO and Open Source RDBMS Data Providers, Haris Kurtagic (SL-King), Wednesday, 4:00-4:30 p.m.
•    Google Earth Powered by MapGuide, Bob Bray, Thursday, 10:30-11:00 a.m.

The OSGeo community has continued to grow and expand over the past year. Several projects have been added and updated. Tyler Mitchell will be talking about where OSGeo has been and where it is headed in the future:
•    Open plenary session: Keynotes by Tyler Mitchell, OSGeo, Tuesday, 9:00-10:40 a.m.
•    OSGeo: A community of communities, Tyler Mitchell, OSGeo, Thursday, 10:30-11:00 a.m.

In addition to one of the keynote addresses, I’ll be presenting on the always interesting topic of intellectual property rights, in this case in the context of spatial data.  For geospatial software developers access to spatial data is essential for their customers, so an important question is how does the availability of spatial data affect their business. Governments around the world offer differing degrees of access to their spatial data, but low cost GPSs and the web mapping phenomenon initiated by Google Earth is dramatically democratizing the availability of spatial data.

Also, throughout the week, DM Solutions Group will be previewing Fusion, at the Autodesk booth (#31). Fusion is a new Web interface that offers a more flexible way to build mapping applications in MapGuide Open Source. Paul Spencer and Jason Fournier will be giving an introduction to Fusion workshop on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, 9-11 a.m., Bob Bray, Liam Speden, Peter Rieks, Jim Farley, Amber Bieg and I will all be at the Autodesk booth to answer questions, preview Fusion and to chat. Feel free to come by, take a look at Fusion, check out the San Francisco Urban Forest Mapping Project and speak with any of us about the direction of open source geospatial software. We’d love to hear what you think about what’s going on in the geospatial open source community, where it is headed and the cool applications being shared at FOSS4G!