30 Jun 2007
“The prospect of one’s eminent demise wonderfully clarifies the mind’s focus.”
– Samuel Johnson
The FOSS4G 2007 call for presentations deadline has now come and gone, and never have I seen such a large and varied population of procrastinators assembling in one place. Check out the profile of submissions by day:
2 | 2007-06-24
2 | 2007-06-25
8 | 2007-06-26
13 | 2007-06-27
39 | 2007-06-28
73 | 2007-06-29
Way to plan ahead guys! Half the presentations submitted in the last two days if the call.
The final tally of submissions was 213, which we will have to winnow down to 120 oral presentations and N posters. You can see the list of submissions as a KML file or an RSS feed.
25 Jun 2007
I am way, way, way too amused by this:
http://2007.foss4g.org/presentations/abstracts.kml
24 Jun 2007
I think we have a great set of submissions this year, so I have my fingers crossed that lots of them make the cut.
- Mapserver Performance: PostGIS vs Shape Files, Brock Anderson
- The open source history of an operational system: 6 years of the BC Digital Road Atlas, Graeme Leeming
- Spatial object models using PostGIS, Hibernate, and the Java Topology Suite, Chris Hodgson
- Tips for the PostGIS Power User, Kevin Neufeld
- Hectares BC: Spatial Analysis using Open Source Business Intelligence Tools, Emily Gouge
- Secrets of the JTS Topology Suite, Martin Davis
- Automatic watershed delineation using open source Java, Martin Davis
- PostGIS Spatial Database: Introduction and Case Studies, Paul Ramsey
- uDig Case Studies, Jesse Eichar
Less than a week left until the close of the Call for Presentations and then we move on to the community program review process.
21 Jun 2007
Here’s a fun Google nugget. This query:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=foss4g
Returns FOSS4G 2007 as the top result (yay!) when I execute it while logged into my Google account, but as the second result when I execute it while logged off.
20 Jun 2007
Two weeks ago, we sent out a physical postcard invitation to a list of about 10,000 potential FOSS4G attendees in the local region (BC, ALTA, WA, OR, CA) and GIS hotspots (VA, CO).


On Sunday, I sent out a mass email to about 1,000 addresses culled from my personal mail box, web searches, and magazine mailing list purchases.
Monday and Tuesday, the FOSS4G web site recorded the highest number of visitors to date, about a 50% increase over the medium term weekday average. It’s almost like advertising has a purpose. I feel my universe crumbling.