3rd Annual MapServer Users Meeting, Brasilia

Last week I spoke at the 3rd annual MapServer User Meeting, May 9-11. This year's event was held in the country's capital city and kindly hosted by the Brasilian Government Presidential Auditorium.

It was impressive to see the success of the meeting, with over 300 attendees and speakers all coming to talk about case studies using MapServer. Many of the solutions were also using other open source projects, but they generally kept their focus on MapServer. I had the sense that there were at least twice as many Brazilians who might attend a broader meeting (i.e. not just about MapServer).

I was an invited keynote speaker for the event and presented the importance of open source in the geospatial software arena and I provided an overview of OSGeo activies. I also helped with some particular meetings regarding Brasilian involvement in OSGeo. Rafael Sperb and I helped guide a group of more than 20 attendees who gathered to consider the development of a Brasilian OSGeo Local Chapter. While some work on this has been started in the past - this was the first time many sat face-to-face to discuss the ideas and commit to working together.

The other topic that was discussed at length was whether or not those present thought they should submit a proposal to host the OSGeo FOSS4G 2008 event. There will be more on this as the group seeks input from others and starts to write up notes for a potential proposal.

Many presenters were showing new projects and data for the first time to the public. For example, government mapping agency data cataloguing and publishing efforts are in the works -- many attendees learned about this only after watching their presentations. This was engaging, to say the least, as many have been desperately waiting for more movement toward open standards for data access and a more open development platform within the public sector.

I believe there is a lot that can be learned from other countries who have already been going down the road of more open applications and data. I encouraged the government representatives to consider how they could learn from countries, like Canada, that are addressing similar needs and tackling similar issues. I highlighted FOSS4G as a good venue for some international brainstorming and problem solving.

Congratulations to the conference planning team for being able to lead such a successful event. They were excellent hosts and everyone was very friendly. I look forward to seeing what they plan for next year -- regardless of whether they host the FOSS4G event I'm sure it will be another sell-out event.

Thank you for the opportunity to participate.

Tyler Mitchell
15-May-2007