Archive for the Advocacy Category
Today, about 24 people gathered in two offices for a videoconference to kick off the Open Source Geospatial Foundation BC Local Chapter (In-Waiting.. we still have to apply for official recognition by OSGeo)
I was really impressed by the number of people who showed up to help us get started, and by the level of energy. We had attendees from all three levels of government, private industry, and geospatial consultants. The official minutes, goals, and objectives will be posted shortly, but my impression is that we are going to be working on regional advocacy and acting as a local support group for sharing ideas and solutions around open source software and data, and open standards.
Bright shiny future, etc, etc… Come join us 
-J
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Just a quick note about the formative OSGeo British Columbia Local Chapter
If you are in BC and interested in the promotion or use of open source geospatial (and I haven’t already hit you with the flood of spam to my frequent hangouts), make sure you get signed up and plan to attend our first meeting on November 15 between 11:00am and 2:00pm. For this first session, we will be meeting simultaneously in Victoria and Vancouver, with videoconferencing connecting the sites. A tentative agenda has been drafted in the wiki, but if you have strong feelings one way or another, speak up on the mailing list.
I am extremely happy with the interest in this organisation from all levels of government (with a strong showing by local government - yay team!), private industry, and consulting agencies. I believe that this shows two things. First, that hosting FOSS4G in your region helps to build an awareness of the capabilities of open source geospatial software, and second, that open source geospatial is now at the level that it merits serious consideration as part of any enterprise geospatial strategy.
Even if you cannot attend the initial meeting, I would strongly encourage you to sign up for the mailing list (or its web-based shadow at Nabble) and spark up a conversation.
-J
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For geospatial consultants, the business case for open source is easy. Your clients have fixed budgets; with open source software you get a larger portion of their budgets for customisation, and they get software that is better-tailored to their business needs and has lower ongoing costs because of a lack of “maintenance” fees. These benefits are covered very well in an article by Dirk Riehle. All you have to do is sell them to your customers.
The case has not been quite as clearly documented for proprietary geospatial software development. Autodesk has talked about the value of open-source for MapGuide, but beyond that there has not been much discussion. Within the last week two articles have been published which connect the dots very well. First, Dale Lutz posted on Safe Software’s use of open source geospatial components, with some interesting follow-on commentary by Paul Ramsey on how this works even though the open source components that Safe is using are “competing” with FME. Second, the OSGeo Journal v2 includes a very clear article by Matthew Fleagle and Michael P Gerlek on how LizardTech benefits (pdf - 171KB) from both the use of and contributions towards open source geospatial projects. This is a highly-recommended read… as is the entire journal.
It is clear that there is value in open source geospatial even for proprietary companies, and those who realize this first will gain an advantage over their slower-moving competitors. I would be interested in hearing how other proprietary companies are using open source geospatial to provide greater value to their customers and to allow greater focus on their core competencies.
-J
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We (meaning Paul) have just published a set of ten excellent presentations that have been given early acceptance through a democratic process.
It’s clear from the quality and diversity of presentations that FOSS4G is the one conference you need to attend this year if you want to understand how Open Source Geospatial is disrupting the traditional GIS marketplace and leading innovation in previously unimagined areas. Make sure you check out the great hands-on workshops and labs, and subscribe to the presentation submissions RSS feed for some interesting reading.
If you’re thinking about coming, make sure to register and arrange your accomodations/travel soon. Victoria has lots of rooms, but you might not get one in your preferred price range if you don’t book early.
-J
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GeoTec Event is a relatively large geospatial conference held in Canada. The show is fortunate to have a couple geobloggers attending: Ed Parsons is doing the opening keynote and Peter Batty (along with Ed and a couple other luminaries) is going to be on the opening panel. Hope I get a chance to talk with them. If any other geobloggers (even low-output ones like me) are going to be there, drop me a line…
Traditionally, GeoTec has alternated between BC and Ontario, but this year the western show is stopping in Calgary and co-locating with GeoAlberta. It’s not as technical as the vendor shows or events like Where 2.0, but it’s a great chance for traditional GIS folks to connect and learn from others.
This year I’m going to be part of two presentations.
The first is an “Introduction to Open Source” full day lab, where I’ll be working with Bob Bray from Autodesk, Paul Spencer from DM Solutions, and Samuel Smith from Refractions Research to introduce users to one of many potential open source software stacks. In this case: PostGIS, uDig, MapGuide Open Source, and DM Solutions’ Fusion (not yet released).
The second is an integrated case study entitled “City of Nanaimo Chooses Open Source Geospatial and Finds Success,” which is pretty long-winded, but sounded good at the time. Again, working with Samuel Smith and Paul Spencer, we’ll show how the City of Nanaimo is making use of open source tools (PostGIS, FDO, MapGuide Open Source, and Fusion) to deliver user-friendly services to our staff and residents. This will show integration points between traditional proprietary tools and the open source tools that we have implemented where it makes sense. Because most of the audience will probably not be familiar with open source geospatial, we’ll also be doing an introduction to OSGeo and the tools that the City of Nanaimo is using.
As much work as I put into getting ready for these conferences, I always find myself getting my slides finished off the weekend before, so it’s time to stop procrastinating and get back to work
-J
