FOSS4G Day 3

The first day of the conference had a smooth start, orderly checking - and a nice touch of offering a self-serve table for grab-bag items (which should keep waste to a minimum).

GeoServer Feature Frenzy

A team effort with Andrea covering a little bit of what makes GeoServer amazing.

GeoServer Feature Frenzy from Jody Garnett

A vimeo video is available, since a lot of the fun is in the delivery (and Q&A).

OSGeo Incubation / Programming in Public

I had the privilege of doing one talk close to my heart: What makes OSGeo amazing and how we can help new developers put the software in our software foundation.

Osgeo incubation from Jody Garnett

There is a vimeo video, sorry about the audio (I was taller then the microphone).

OSGeo Live Case Study

Great to meet Alex Mandel who puts so much work in to OSGeo-Live. This talk covers his thesis work, which looked at how OSGeo gets out the message using tools such as OSGeo Live.
OSGeo Live lets you try out almost everything open source and geospatial:

• Quickstart gives enough detail to try it out
• Takes the installation barrier out of trying out our software. (Glad the feature frenzy indicated GeoServer is actually easy to install and configure).
• Watching the gap between contributors and translators change over time
• Points for adjusting downloads by country / population size etc...

A vimeo video of this talk is now available, there were some good questions. If your project is on Source Forge contact Alex and see if he can run the same analysis on your project.

Other Presentations

I managed to catch a few more presentations/discussions in the afternoon:

• Arnulf got a good discussion on certification, which was continued as a Geo4All BOF in the evening. There is a vimeo video of the discussion.
• Kathleen had a good down to earth talk and open source and avoiding burnout, worth watching the vimeo video when you get a chance.

Attend a workshop at FOSS4G

I am having a great time going over workshop material for FOSS4G.  I have two workshops on the go and am totally looking forward to seeing everyone next week in Portland.

FOSS4G workshops - sign up now!

Time and time again workshops are listed as the highlight of the foss4g experience. One of the key advantages of open source is a chance to follow up that key hands-on experience with the opportunity  to take the software home to show your friends.

There has been some experimentation with offering lightweight labs (read: no additional cost) in parallel with the main program. While a fun idea, it is kinder to all involved to keep the number of conference tracks to a minimum to avoid that feeling of "missing out" no matter what room you are in.

Why not make workshops the highlight of your foss4g?

• If you have not signed up for FOSS4G what are you waiting for! The workshops on offer are incredible and represents some of the best value in open source training available. The registration page appears to still be open :)
• If you already made your plans and were skipping the workshops to save some money - don't! The workshops are cheap-as-chips. Come a day early as there is no substitute for the hands-on goodness of a workshop.

As a final plea: you are going to come back (bruised and battered) from a week of the most amazing geospatial software, friendly community, and buzz of ideas and enthusiasm. As you crawl into work on Monday and are asked "how was it?" - make sure to attend a workshop so you have something to show.

If you cannot make the trip I would be remiss if I did not mention the online training/certification offered by Boundless. The material is extensive and Mike and Ben have done a great job introducing each section with videos.

GeoServer Cartography and Styling

I have had the privilege of teaching GeoServer previously - and the one consistent request is for more on mapping and styling! One day introduction course - more mapping and styling. Two day intensive course for web developers - more mapping and styling. Five day course with a day devoted to Styling? More mapping and styling please ...

With this workshop I can finally answer this request! The use of the CSS extension (to generate SLD files) finally allows a workshop to cover enough ground!

Dynamic Symbology Example

For everyone attending this workshop you are in for a real treat.  Thanks to David Winslow for the CSS extension, and thanks to Boundless for the time and inspiration to pull this course together.

As indicated in the course description lab machines are provided, show up, have fun and learn a ton.

GeoTools DataStore Workshop

I am thankful for the opportunity to teach a GeoTools workshop (programming workshops are occasionally a hard sell next to running applications like GeoServer). And this is not any GeoTools workshop, it is an intermediate workshop on how to create a DataStore from scratch.

ContentDataStore and Friends

A lot of work has gone into ContentDataStore (shown above). This really is the underpinnings of the "next-generation" database, shapefile and the recently announced wfs-ng client.

This workshop marked as BYOD, meaning you can relax in the comfort of your own development environment.