Open Source Geospatial in Spain, SIG Libre event

Earlier this month I had the pleasure to speak at the II Jornadas de SIG Libre (2nd meeting of the Free GIS Days) in Girona, Spain. It was hosted by University of Girona's Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing Service (SIGTE).

The event surpassed my expectations ... it highlighted an interesting, vibrant and growing community of open source geospatial users and developers. As an invited keynote speaker, I introduced OSGeo's goals and activities. I was also asked to speak on a topic of my own interest, so I challenged those who were already familiar with the open source space to consider how to encourage and mentor the next generation of Free GIS users. The rest of the morning after my talk was packed full of interesting topics and people, here are a couple of the ones that I, at least partially, understood.

Alberto Abella introduced a model for assessing the future of open source projects. This was not a geospatial talk but it was important to see their group, CENATIC, represented at the event. They have a mandate to promote and further establish open source technology within Spain. It is a large association with significant momentum from across the corporate and government I.T. spectrum. It will be interesting to see how they can engage the geospatial side of open source in their country. It sounds like they may also be able to support development in other Spanish-speaking countries that they have a relationship with. I am interested in seeing how their organization compares to others elsewhere in the world.

Antonio F. Rodríguez Pascual, introduced some of the open source-based applications that the federal geographic body, Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN), had been developing and using. They have an ambitious commitment to provide open access to their data holdings through the range of available open geospatial web services. Their initiative will be interesting to watch as they not only stand up a couple WMS instances, but try various other methods for sharing their information. While not all of their solutions use open source, many of them do. It will be interesting to watch and see how their example might be adopted by other provincial governments in the future.

The other talk (2.5MB ODP) that made an impression on me was given by Miguel Montesinos and Jorge Sanz from Prodevelop and the gvSIG project. They collected information and statistics about dozens of GFOSS applications and presented it all in half an hour. The presentation was particularly impressive because of the sheer volume of information they handled, yet the clarity with which they presented it. I particularly enjoyed their relationship diagram of how all the projects work together, as well as their graph of GFOSS project search engine ratings and their use of the Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies timeline and how it might relate to the GFOSS domain. Kudos to the projects who provided the information they needed to give the presentation - it was very well used and well received. Way to go guys!

One of particular interest was the OSGeo Spanish local chapter presentation and discussion meeting. Lorenzo Becchi and Jorge Sanz presented further details about OSGeo and the local chapter initiatives. It was also a time for questions and answers about next steps toward forming more officially.

There were many other interesting and first rate presentations and workshops during the week, these were just a few. I also had many one-on-one and group discussions. For example, I met with the Spanish FreeGIS book team, members of the gvSIG and SEXTANTE teams, saw many interesting applications from other presenters and more. It was fascinating to see people meeting and comparing similar applications and ideas, often from different parts of the country or between different levels of public institutions. The event certainly brought together an excellent mix of users, developers and decision-makers - all of whom were obviously looking to work together to further promote SIG Libre in Spain and beyond.

Thank you to the many organizers from SIGTE, including Irene Compte and Llúis Vicens for inviting and hosting me. Also thank you to Jorge, Luis, Lorenzo, Victor, Rosa and others who helped arrange several follow-up meetings during the following week. A special thank you to Lorenzo for hosting me and translating for me through my entire trip. More on the follow-up meetings in another post.

Tyler Mitchell
25-March-2008

p.s. Unfortunately my camera broke during the trip so I have very few pictures. If you have photos from the event, please upload them to flickr and post about them in your blog, or drop me an email.