SOTM and FOSS4G Conferences 2011 Denver
What a great time it was in Denver, Colorado, USA ! Attended both the OpenStreetMap State Of The Map (OSM SOTM) and the OSGeo Free and Open Source for Geo (FOSS4G) conferences between september 9 and 16, 2011. Went hiking in between in the Rocky Mountains (State Park and Indian Peaks Wilderness ) where I saw a live bear the first time of my life.
At my first SOTM I was impressed how strong and vibrant the OSM community is, how an ecosystem of tools, data, people and businesses is continuously expanding and how far “The Map” has progressed. The FOSS4G at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Denver was very well-organized with high technical/social value. FOSS4G is a must-go conference if you are into FOSS Geo.
Denver is a real city but with a country-like, mellow atmosphere. Socializing among the participants went smoothly, also since all major pubs were all directly near the Sheraton. The opening social night on tuesday at the “Wynkoop Brewery” was an immediate hit. Many also went there on friday to close off. At FOSS4G I gave a talk on “OpenStreetMap and INSPIRE, Can the Twain Meet?” . You can find my slides in HTML or PDF . I prefer staying in Bed & Breakfasts these days: they are in general cheaper, cleaner and cozy compared to regular Hotels/Motels. I had a real pleasant stay at the Holiday Chalet on East Colfax, run by fashion designer Crystal Sharp with her Labrador Clementine . Getting around in Denver was easy and healthy using the Denver B-Cycle public bicycle sharing . As I had no dataplan on my Android phone, I hacked out the B-Cycle station locations from the B-Cycle website and loaded them into my Garmin eTrex Legend HCx handheld GPS. The bicycle station locations are also available on GeoCommons another great geo-sharing site (from a.o. Andrew Turner ) I knew about but never had used before. In the Rocky Mountains I stayed in a lovely studio treehouse found through AirBnB in the tiny place Nederland, Colorado .
Stay tuned to the SOTM , FOSS4G and FOSSLC websites, since all sessions were recorded and will be made available there. Below some photo’s I made. Hikes with photo’s, video’s and GPX will become available on my GeoRambling website . I should talk more on SOTM and FOSS4G session content but you can find also lots on the mentioned sites and tweets tagged with #foss4g and #sotm .
Next year FOSS4G will be in Beijing, China ! Will SOTM also be held there ?