OSGeo - User contributions [en]

LIDAR Format Letter

2015-04-23T20:17:09Z

Wiki-Percyd: /* Signed */

=Open Letter of the Need for Open Standards in LiDAR=
April 2015.

We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" '''''proprietary format.''''' This is of grave concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.

We request that:
# The OGC initiate the formalisation of an open standard for storing LiDAR data, and that OGC sponsors help prioritise the development of this open LiDAR standard.
# ESRI support the OGC in their [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision mission] "to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability." In particular, ESRI joins with the OGC in consolidating an Open Standard for use of LiDAR data. This might include proposing ESRI's "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard to remove any technical or legal hurdles in use of "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard. A simple test to determine if "Optimized LAS" can be used as an Open Standard would be if "Optimized LAS" can legally be implemented by Open Source software such as libLAS or LASzip.
# Users and sponsors of LiDAR data, publicly state their preference for the use of an open LiDAR format over proprietary when selecting software and services.
# The custodians of the open LAS format [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)], who are part of [http://www.asprs.org/ American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)], request the term "LAS" not to be included in the name of a proprietary format, as it makes such a proprietary format appear to be an approved derivative of LAS.

=Signed=
Name, Affiliation(s), Optional comment on interest in Open LiDAR format

# Suchith Anand, Geo for All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy.
# Martin Isenburg, founder of [http://rapidlasso.com rapidlasso GmbH] and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools], and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves].
# Cameron Shorter, GeoSpatial Director at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft]. Core contributor and coordinator of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live]. Contributor to numerous OGC testbeds, technical lead on a range of previous Australian and New Zealand Open Government initiatives.
# Stefan Keller, founder and director of [http://www.hsr.ch/geometalab Geometa Lab]; Professor in GIS, databases, open (government) data and interoperability; maintainer of GeoConverter; contributor to open source software (GDAL/OGR, QGIS).
# Patrick Hogan, NASA World Wind Project Manager, committed to the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure principles, one being "to make geographic data more accessible to the public" [http://www.fgdc.gov/nsdi/nsdi.html NSDI]. Open standards are essential for this.
# Lene Fischer, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen. User of Open and free Data from The Danish Geodata Agency - Using LAZ and LAS http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/dhmpunktsky.
# [http://www.ege-como.polimi.it/index.php?content=maria_brovelli Maria Antonia Brovelli], Full Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano. Geo For All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy and to Open Principles in Research.
# Ron Fortunato, President of [http://www.trilliumlearning.com/AmericaBridge/ Trillium Learning] LLC. Committed to open data standards that are necessary for education and all levels of communication.
# [http://www.geodatawiz.com/armin-schmidt Armin Schmidt], Chief Developer at [http://www.GeodataWIZ.com GeodataWIZ Ltd] and Chairman of [http://www.archprospection.org ISAP], committed to better science through Open Data.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/gconti Giuseppe Conti], CTO Trilogis Srl, Italy. Committed to open data standards that maximize opportunity for innovative solutions, unencumbered by artificial obstacles to data exchange.
# [http://pt.linkedin.com/pub/jorge-rocha/1b/560/499 Jorge Gustavo Rocha], Professor, Computer Science Department, University of Minho, Portugal, committed to better science through [http://www.gistam.org/EventChairs.aspx?y=2016 Open Data].
# [http://people.eecs.ku.edu/~miller/ Jim Miller], University of Kansas, Professor, Computer Science. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brandt-melick/22/869/261 Brandt Melick], Information Technology Department Director, Springfield Oregon USA. The need to promote open solutions is paramount.
# Alex Paza Makini, National University Solomon Islands, Natural Resources and Applied Science. Committed to open data standards for education and research, and everything beyond.
# Jorg M. Hacker, Professor, Director/Chief Scientist of [http://www.airborneresearchaustralia.com Airborne Research Australia], Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Open formats have always been a great benefit to airborne LiDAR.
# Didier Richard, Head of IS Training Dept. in Education and Research Directorate of [http://www.ign.fr Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière], France. OGC user, Contributor to OSGeO projects like GDAL.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/adryane-gorayeb/74/517/96a Adryane Gorayeb], [http://www.ufc.br/ Federal University of Ceará Brazil], Geography Department. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/yuryryabov Yury Ryabov], PhD, Senior researcher at [http://www.istc.ru/istc/db/inst.nsf/wsu/i0001823 Russian Scientific-Research Centre for Ecological Safety], [http://www.interacademies.net/Academies/ByRegion/CentralEasternEurope/13383.aspx Russian Academy of Sciences], Saint Petersburg, Russia. Open data formats are essential for successful and reproducible scientific research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/teresa-lamelas-gracia/40/4a7/20b María Teresa Lamelas], [http://cud.unizar.es/ Centro Universitario de la Defensa Zaragoza], [http://geoforest.unizar.es/es/index.php GeoForest-IUCA]. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidherries David Herries], [http://www.interpine.co.nz/SitePages/Home.aspx Using LiDAR for forest yield modelling at Interpine Innovation]. Establishing open data standards provide scope for exponential growth in innovation. This is key to a rapidly developing technology like LiDAR.
# [[User:Ivansanchez|Iván Sánchez Ortega]], [http://www.mazemap.no Mazemap]. OSGeo Charter member and Open Data nerd.
# [[User:AnitaGraser|Anita Graser]], GIS specialist with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, OSGeo Charter member and QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [[User:vehrka|Pedro-Juan Ferrer]], [http://www.geomaticblog.net Geomaticblog]. OSGeo Charter member and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/karl-donert/3/160/571 Professor Karl Donert], President European Association of Geographers (http://www.eurogeo.nl/ EUROGEO)
# Drew Fenton, Boulder Creek, CA [http://www.savetheredwoods.org/redwoods/coast-redwoods/ Countdown to the Last Coast Redwood]. Please protect Open Standards for geospatial data!
# [[User:Bolosig|Wladimir Szczerban]], [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] Geogeek & OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
# [http://vmx.cx Volker Mische], OSGeo Charter member and creator of GeoCouch
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/clquintanilla Carlos López Quintanilla], [http://www.psig.es PSIG] [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] GIS consultant, Spain
# [[User:woodbri|Stephen Woodbridge]], [http://imaptools.com iMaptools], OSGeo Charter member.
# [[User:odoepner|Oliver Doepner]], [http://oliver.doepner.net doepner.net], Software Engineer (Java,Linux), Open Standards and Open Source advocate
# [[User:Lucadelu|Luca Delucchi]], [http://gis.cri.fmach.it Fondazione Edmund Mach], OSGeo Charter member, FOSS4G and Open Data developer, advocate, contributor and user.
# Antoine Cottin, CTO of [http://www.carbomap.com Carbomap Ltd.] and creator of [http://github.com/carbomap/Fleurdelas Fleurdelas], Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
# [http://strk.keybit.net Sandro Santilli], [http://strk.keybit.net/services.html NetLab], Free Software Hacker. There are already too many users slave to their tools, let's stop that!
# [http://www.itopen.it Alessandro Pasotti], [http://www.itopen.it ItOpen], GIS Free Software Developer.
# [http://www.roccatello.com Eduard Roccatello], [http://www.3dgis.it 3DGIS], 3DGIS CTO and co-Founder
# [[User:moovida|Andrea Antonello]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Open Source GIS developer, HydroloGIS co-founder.
# [http://www.associazionegfoss.it Stefano Campus], President of [http://www.associazionegfoss.it GFOSS.it] Association (Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera), Italian Local Chapter of OSGeo Foundation.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Madi Margherita Di Leo], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Sacosta Sergio Acosta y Lara], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin], CEO at NextGIS, OSGeo Charter Member. Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
# [[User:Steko|Stefano Costa]], Soprintendenza Archeologia della Liguria, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Italy
# [http://www.geog.illinois.edu/people/jgrn Jonathan Greenberg], Assistant Professor, [http://publish.illinois.edu/jgrn/ GEARS Laboratory], Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
# Bob Basques, Saint Paul, Mn., Technical Director for SharedGeo.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maning Maning Sambale], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Pcav Paolo Cavallini], QGIS PSC
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Dr Phillip Davis], Member OSGeo Geo For All education advisory board, Director @ GeoAcademy
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Nbozon Nicolas Bozon], Researcher and software developer, OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/ruslanrainis Ruslan Rainis], Professor, Director, [http://www.research.usm.my/default.asp?tag=36 Centre for Research Initiatives in Liberal Arts & Social Sciences](CRI-LASS). Open GeoInformation for a Sustainable Tomorrow and the Bottom Billions.
# [[User:Silli|Silvia Franceschi]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Environmental Engineer Open Source GIS power user, HydroloGIS co-founder.
# Oscar Martinez Rubi [http://esciencecenter.nl Netherlands eScience Center] eScience engineer.
# Werner Macho, QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# Giuseppe Patti, Geologist and Freelance Geospatial Advisor, GFOSS supporter.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Drappo Daniel Rappo], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, School of Business and Engineering Vaud.
# [[User:nachouve|Juan Ignacio Varela]], Freelance Geospatial Advisor and OSGeo Local Chapter Member.
# [[User:dmorissette|Daniel Morissette]], President at [http://mapgears.com Mapgears], OSGeo Charter member.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/raulnanclares Raul Nanclares], RS&GIS Specialist
# [http://www.ing.unitn.it/dica/hp/index_eng.php?user=rigon Riccardo Rigon], Professor at University of Trento (Italy)
# [[User:Siki| Zoltan Siki]] Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary), OSGeo Charter member.
# [http://lefsky.org Michael Lefsky], Professor of Remote Sensing Science, Colorado State University and Director, Center for Ecological Applications of Lidar.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lucas-c-villa-real/7/a0b/b06 Lucas Villa Real], Research software engineer at IBM Research - Brazil.
# [http://terraremote.com Loren Dawe], GIS Manager at Terra Remote Sensing Inc. Lidar Supplier and Open Standards Advocate
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Warmerda Frank Warmerdam], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter member
# [http://ch.linkedin.com/pub/jens-ingensand/0/836/6b0 Jens Ingensand], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, [http://www.heig-vd.ch/international School of Business and Engineering Vaud].
# [http://nsidc.org/research/bios/khalsa.html Siri Jodha Khalsa], Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, [http://cires.colorado.edu/ Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences], University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
# [http://gis.uster.ch/ Andreas Neumann], GIS manager, City of Uster, Kanton Zurich, Switzerland
# [http://www.iwmi.org/ Yann Chemin], Researcher - Remote Sensing, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennebracine Etienne B. Racine], Geomatics and remote sensing project manager, WSP, Canada
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alejandro-hinojosa/7/33b/342 Alejandro Hinojosa], [http://cicese.mx CICESE Research Center], Earth Sciences Division, GIS & Remote Sensing Lab, Ensenada, Mexico
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:epifanio Massimo Di Stefano], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://clas.ucdenver.edu/directory/faculty-staff/Rafael-Moreno Rafael Moreno], University of Colorado Denver, [http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/Departments/ges/Pages/Geography.aspx Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences]. Openness is fundamental to progress.
# Peter Drexel, GIS manager, [http://www.vorarlberg.at/vorarlberg/bauen_wohnen/bauen/vermessung_geoinformation/start.htm State of Vorarlberg (State Survey Office)], Austria
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marco-minghini/a8/3b6/198 Marco Minghini], Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano]. Committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/candan-eyl%C3%BCl-kilsedar/65/380/976 Candan Eylül Kilsedar], WebGIS Developer, Research Fellow at [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano].
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:AlastairMcKinstry Alastair McKinstry], Debian Linux meteorology/GIS developer, Ireland
# [http://people.unibo.it/it/elena.mezzini2 Elena Mezzini], Remote-sensing in forest ecology, Research Fellow, Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=43566064 Mihai A. Tanase], Honorary fellow, Dept. of Forest and Ecosystem Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-murray/10/742/3a2 Dave Murray], GIS Coordinator at [http://www.ci.westminster.co.us/ City of Westminster]
# Ayesa Martínez Serrano, Estudiante de Doctorado en [http://www.ciga.unam.mx/ Geografía del Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental de la UNAM-México]
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-crosby/15/b7/114 Christopher Crosby], co-founder, [http://www.opentopography.org/ OpenTopography]
# [http://sg.linkedin.com/in/sgganesh Shanmugam Ganeshkumar], Vice President - Consulting, [http://www.geoicon.com GeoICON]
# [[User:Chaitanya|Chaitanya Kumar CH]], GIS Developer with [http://www.egis-geoplan.com/ Egis Geoplan - India] and OSGeo Charter member.
# KS Rajan, Associate Professor and Head, [http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/ Lab for Spatial Informatics, IIIT Hyderabad] and Chairman, [http://www.kaiinos.com/ KAIINOS Geospatial Technologies]; Promoter and Supported of Open Source, Open Data, Open Standards and e-Governance in India
# Pericles Nacionales, RS/GIS Specialist and OSGeo Charter member.
# Vasile Crăciunescu, Researcher at Romanian National Meteorological Administration and OSGeo Board member.
# [http://geo.tuwien.ac.at/staff/andreas-roncat/ Andreas Roncat] PostDoc Researcher, Research Groups Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, [http://www.geo.tuwien.ac.at/ Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation], Vienna University of Technology, Austria. In full agreement with [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin]: Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:remanuele Rob Emanuele], Software Developer, Azavea Inc.
# Codrina Ilie, Researcher at the Groundwater Engineering Research Center, Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest and OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Djay Gérald Fenoy], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter Member.
# [http://www.aston.ac.uk/eas/staff/a-z/dr-lucy-bastin/ Lucy Bastin], Software Developer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission / Computer Science lecturer, UncertML developer, Member of OGC SWG on User Feedback.
# Matt Wilkie, Geomatics Analyst at [http://www.gov.yk.ca/ Yukon Government], [http://www.env.gov.yk.ca/geomatics Department of Environment]. A practising GIS Professional for 20+ years. Throughout that time, the process of manipulating data into, through and out of proprietary formats has been the most aggravating source of inefficiency and wasted time. Things are hard enough without adding unnecessary barriers.
# [[User:Annakrat|Anna Petrasova]], OSGeo Charter Member, GRASS GIS developer
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-seibel-gisp/45/517/942 Mark Seibel], Geospatial Hacker. Long live open Geo data & software.
# [http://www.wrsc.org/people/ben-discoe Ben Discoe], [http://vterrain.org/ Virtual Terrain Project] and [http://www.leica-geosystems.us/en/HDS-Laser-Scanners-SW_5570.htm Leica Geosystems HDS], I wrangle point clouds every day. Semi-open E57 is bad enough. No more closed formats!
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ilda-clos/19/21b/391 Ilda Clos], GIS & IWRM specialist
# [[User:Danielkastl|Daniel Kastl]], Founder [http://georepublic.info Georepublic] and OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Geejee Gert-Jan van der Weijden] Chairman of OSGeo.nl (local Dutch chapter)
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:rjhale1971 Randal Hale] Owner of North River Geographic Systems, Inc
# Volker Wichmann, [http://www.saga-gis.org SAGA GIS] and [http://www.laserdata.at LASERDATA LIS] developer
# Eric Theise, Software Developer, San Francisco, CA.
# Darrell Fuhriman, Director of Technology, Renewable Funding/ Adjunct Instructor, Department of Geography, Portland State University
# Ilkka Korpela, Academy Research Fellow, University of Helsinki. Open formats benefit everyone.
# David Percy, Dept of Geology Faculty, Portland State University.

=Background=
==About LiDAR==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar LiDAR] (Light Detection And Ranging) is a form of high precision range measurement, much like a radar system, that uses laser light instead of electromagnetic waves. The standard LiDAR product is a 3D point cloud that can be conceptualized as a series of point measurements representing distance between the sensor to a returned emission.

For over a decade (since 2003), there has been a common format for storing LiDAR data, the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html “LAS” format], and open source libraries have been developed to read, write and process these LAS files: [http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/liblas_overview.html libLAS] and [http://github.com/LASlib/LASlib LASlib]. These libraries have been incorporated within many LiDAR applications, allowing read/write access to a common exchange format, and resulting in full interoperability between the applications. There is also an open source compression algorithm for the LAS format called [http://laszip.org LASzip] that many LiDAR data portals use to compress LAS into smaller LAZ files for faster download. Many LiDAR software packages have added [http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support native support] for these compressed LAZ files.

==LAS Limitations==

Quoting [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey]:

: LAS format is not without its drawbacks:

:* While it is a binary format and does not waste any space unnecessarily, neither does it apply any compression to the data it stores. That’s not good for archival use.
:* Also, LAS stores points in scan order, so accessing any particular chunk of points involves reading the whole file. That’s not good for random access.
: Clearly there is a little more work to be done. Can LAS be improved? In fact, it already has been:
:* An open source compression library, LASzip can apply 20''':'''1 lossless compression to LAS files, making them great for archival purposes.
:* Other LAS users have experimented with re-ordering points in a LAS or LASzip file to allow random access to internal chunks of the LIDAR point cloud.
: Basically, making LAS smaller and faster is not rocket science, and if the work were incorporated into libLAS then the whole LIDAR community could leverage it together, and the user community would only have one file type to interchange.

=="Optimized LAS" A ''' ''Proprietary'' ESRI Format'''==
ESRI announced, 12 January 2014, the release of an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 "Optimized LAS"] format which is claimed to provide faster access and smaller file sizes (similar to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format). This announcement created a outburst of vocal protest in the LiDAR community [[http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ 1] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ 2] [http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2014/01/15/las-laz-lazzip-zlas-and-you/ 3] [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/lidar-software 4] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars-2/ 5] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/02/lidar-format-wars-3/ 6]].

The implementation of the "Optimized LAS" format is not available as Open Source and the format and algorithm details itself are undocumented, which means nobody can currently create alternate implementations, neither closed nor Open Source. This causes both technical as well as legal barriers for other applications reading and/or writing to this proprietary format. It creates a vendor lock-in scenario which is contrary to the principles of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OSGeo Foundation, and many government IT procurement policies.

One year after releasing the "Optimized LAS" format, ESRI released a Windows only library (DLL) as a free-of-charge (gratis) download that is claimed to convert between LAS and "Optimized LAS". Note there is a distinct difference between a "free-of-charge" binary distribution of DLLs and publishing something as "Open Source". Unless the source code of the library is released as Open Source under an Open Source license, libLAS and related products will be legally prevented from incorporating ESRI's reader/writer code into their codebase, or from fixing any underlying bugs or performance limitations which may exist in ESRI's product.

Ironically, ESRI later placed their '''binary''' library files [http://github.com/Esri/esri-zlas-io-library on github] accompanied by an Apache License, but no source code was published. The distribution of binaries without source code is allowed by Apache License, but very uncommon and misleading, to say the least. The practice goes against the basic idea of “Open Source” and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) even has an FAQ entry on the obvious contradiction of [http://opensource.org/faq#non-distribution “Open Source” without source code].

==OGC's Efforts For An ''' ''Open'' LiDAR Standard'''==

The [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)] has indicated their interest in developing a standard LiDAR format.

Carl Reed (formerly on OGC staff) provided the following information on OGC's previous efforts to work toward enabling Open Standards in LiDAR:

: "Over the last 8 or so years, the OGC approached ASPRS at least twice regarding LAS and worked with ASPRS to bring LAS into the OGC for consideration as both a Best Practice and an OGC standard. OGC member Rick Pearsall worked diligently on this. Rick worked for NGA, was active in the OGC, and was also the Standards Committee chair at ASPRS. Rick and Carl tried and failed. These attempts go back to [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/divisions/ppd/ppd_meetings/2007springppdreport.pdf at least 2007]. More recently, Carl Reed had an email dialogue with Lewis Graham to bring LAS into OGC as an OGC Best Practice. Carl thought progress was being made, but then for some reason all communication stopped."

[http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/staff/ssimmons Scott Simmons] (Executive Director, Standards Program) has explained the OGC's continuing interest in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content.
: The OGC invites interested members who wish to work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org) to register their interest and discuss details. OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at the OGC's next [http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1506tc Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in early June] to bring together all interested parties from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps.

==History: LAS and ESRI's "Optimized LAS"==

Martin Isenburg, one of the leading experts in LIDAR formats, and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools] and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves], explains the history of LAS and "Optimized LAS":

: '''Summary:'''

:* The LAS format has been used successfully for over a decade.
:* Within last couple of years, ESRI has added native LAS support into ESRI products.
:* ESRI discussed embracing the open [http://laszip.org LAZ] format and simultaneously developed a proprietary "Optimized LAS" format.
:* The open geospatial community offered, on numerous occasions, to work with ESRI to avoid format fragmentation.
:* ESRI's proprietary "Optimized LAS" format is very similar in design and performance to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format.

: '''1998: Original LAS format definition'''

: The original development of the LAS format started in 1998 according to [http://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lasroom/zKqchDj1JL4/discussion Lewis Graham]. The effort was at first led by pioneers of the LiDAR industry until the format was donated to the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html ASPRS]. Since then ASPRS's [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)] has been maintaining the LAS format, guiding it from the initial LAS 1.0 version until today's LAS 1.4 version. This effort successfully created an open data exchange format for discrete LiDAR points that is currently supported by practically every LiDAR-related software program.

: '''2011: ESRI joins LAS Working Group'''

: ESRI did not join the LWG of the ASPRS until rather late, the 24th of August in 2011. At that time ESRI was not a significant "player" in the LiDAR market given they did not have much support for LiDAR in any of their products. That was to change soon as they were planning to add LAS as a native data type in ArcGIS 10.1.

: Shortly before that, in June 2011, Martin Isenburg received a personal message from the ESRI development team: "I have a question about LAS compression. I’m evaluating some potential enhancements and support for [LAS and] LAZ is one of them. Compression time and amount is impressive." When inquiring two months later about the status of [http://laszip.org LAZ] integration Martin was told: "We’re in beta and working to finish the current release. I very much doubt LAZ will make it in because it’s too big a change at this time. So, we’ll be considering, for the following release, [for] what we want to do regarding compression and spatial indexing."

: '''June 2012: ArcGIS 10.1 includes [proprietary] LAS Dataset file'''

: In June 2012 ESRI released ArcGIS 10.1 and introduced the proprietary "LAS Dataset file (*.lasd)" that groups collections of files into one logical unit. This format of this useful LAS container file was not shared with others despite several private and eventually [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/jwHpi0efUgA/discussion public] requests.

: '''2012/2013: Collaboration Discussions'''

: There were encouraging follow-ups from the ESRI team about adopting the open LAZ format in January 2012: "I would be interested in having a more in depth meeting with you to better understand the great work you are doing with LAS and how we can possibly better partner on this." and again in December 2012: "If you have time, I'd like to set some time aside Tuesday afternoon to meet with <an important person> at the ESRI booth. Does 2pm sound okay?" The meeting went well and it looked as if ESRI was going to embrace the LAZ format because shortly after the meeting Martin got word that: "I hear from <an important person> that it was a success and that he had a good meeting with you. I wanted to see if we can have a telephone discussion on Wednesday or Thursday this week related to the potential of incorporating LAZ into ArcGIS."

: Then the first signs of hesitation showed. First there were legal issues raised in February 2013: "Currently the legal aspects are being reviewed. They were having some issues separating the LPGL aspects from LASzip from the remainder of LAStools etc." and then in April 2013 concerns about the code were made: "We have started to look into the integration of LAZ, but came across some issues. We don’t want to copy files from the other package, mix and match or hack around. We were hoping for an API to stream points out of a LAZ file as well as write LAZ files. There should be a simple code sample for that?" and - following up on that - in June 2013 Martin was told "I see value in LASzip becoming a de-facto standard that provides compression to the LAS format. If this is to happen then it needs to be bundled together with appropriate reference implementations, examples and documentation as a standard and so ensure that issues as defined earlier in email do not occur."

: '''June 2013: ESRI asked to sponsor clean LASzip DLL'''

: At that time [http://laszip.org LASzip] was an open source project without sponsorship. The original funding from [http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Locations/ColdRegionsResearchandEngineeringLaboratory.aspx USACE] that had turned [http://laszip.org LASzip] from an academic prototype into an industry strength compression engine had long run out. So Martin asked ESRI to become a sponsor to create the clean [http://laszip.org LASzip] API that ESRI was after. The answer was: "ESRI often helps in the financing of Open Source projects and I could foresee ESRI possibly helping in LASzip. [...] If you are interested in promoting LASzip as such a standard and doing the required work then I would recommend you put together a proposal and I can look to get ESRI as a sponsor."

: Immediately Martin proposed to ESRI: "I hereby propose to write an easy to use open source DLL wrapper for LASzip that will make it easier to integrate LASzip in a standardized manner into other software products such as ArcGIS, LP 360, or Terrasolid. This will come with example code on how to use the DLL for reading and writing LAZ files and include a few compressed example files. I hereby ask ESRI to provide funding for this effort without imposing any limitations on the produced DLL API."

: '''July 2013: ArcGIS 10.2 includes [proprietary] LAS indexing '''

: With the release of ArcGIS 10.2 in July 2013, ESRI introduced spatial indexing to speed up area-of-interest queries. Their new proprietary *.lasx files were seemingly identical in functionality to the open *.lax files that had been [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/j0qA8NBMHJs/discussion announced] two years earlier - in May 2011 - and were [http://rapidlasso.com/2012/12/03/lasindex-spatial-indexing-of-lidar-data/ presented] at ELMF in November 2012.

: '''July 2013: Open LASzip API released'''

: After more requests for an easier interface to [http://laszip.org LASzip] (in particular for [http://forsys.cfr.washington.edu/fusion/fusionlatest.html USDA's FUSION]), Martin [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/oplsDhhnhDQ/discussion released] a clean, well-documented, and easy-to-use LASzip DLL (without ESRI funding). Martin expected that developers at ESRI would now use it to add read and write support for [http://laszip.org LAZ] to their next release of ArcGIS.

: '''December 2013 : ESRI discovered to be secretly developing proprietary LAS format'''

: In December of 2013, several LAStools users contacted Martin with suspicions that ESRI may be creating a proprietary LAS compression. Martin [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ broke the news] as soon as it became evident that ESRI had used the time it needed to resolve "legal issues" and "code problems" to put together their own proprietary compressed format with near-identical performance and functionality to [http://laszip.org LASzip]. A few days later ESRI released an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214/ official FAQ] to confirming this was the case.

: From day one, Martin has worked with stakeholders, including ESRI, to avoid format fragmentation. Martin's core argument for resolving this to everybody's benefit was that - coincidentally - a natural break was happening in the LAS format with the introduction of the new LAS 1.4 point types. Martin outlined a detailed plan for how a joint development of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for LAS 1.4 between rapidlasso and ESRI could exploit this natural break in the LAS format to accomplish two things at once:
:# Add the unspecified technical additions that ESRI had hinted at desiring, and
:# Extend the [http://laszip.org LASzip] compression scheme to handle the new point types introduced with the LAS 1.4 specification. As there was no pressing need at the time to handle LAS 1.4 Martin had delayed the extension of [http://laszip.org LASzip] to the new LAS 1.4 point types to make sure a cooperation with ESRI would remain a viable option.

: '''1 April 2014: Positive reception to "Optimized LAS" / LASzip collaboration April Fools announcement'''

: In an attempt to convince ESRI management of the community desire for an open standard, Martin released an April Fools' Day [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ prank press release] pretending that ESRI had already agreed to the envisioned collaboration to develop a joint LiDAR compressor. Community [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ jubilant reactions (see comments)] left no doubt about the sentiment on this issue within the LiDAR community.

: '''October 2014: Announcement of [open] LAS Compatibility mode'''

: [http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/ Digital Coast, NOAA Coastal Services Center] became a Gold Sponsor of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for the development of the [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/10/06/rapidlasso-announces-laszip-compatibility-mode-for-las-1-4/ LAS 1.4 compatibility mode] that was [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/nUFMkKSz53g/discussion beta-released] in November 2014. This allowed support for the new point types in [http://laszip.org LASzip] without closing the door on a potential cooperation with ESRI for a joint LAS 1.4 compressor.

: '''November 2014: ESRI announces proprietary extension to LAS 1.4'''

: In November 2014 [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated ESRI announced] that they had added their [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated own extension] for the new LAS 1.4 point types to "Optimized LAS", dismissing the opportunity to develop a joint compressor and avoid format fragmentation by exploiting this "natural break" in the LAS format as Martin had suggested.

: Since then, ESRI has been [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ promoting] "Optimized LAS". By including the term "LAS" in "Optimized LAS" and "zLAS", the distinction between the open LAS format and proprietary format is blurred. This is likely to mislead novice and future users, thereby endangering many years of standardization work. To date, [April 2014], the [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/committees/standards/LAS_1_4_r13.pdf custodians of the LAS format], the LAS Working Group (LWG) of the ASPRS has [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ yet to make an official statement] regarding use of the "LAS" name in promoting a proprietary LiDAR format.

=Value of Standards=

The importance of Open Standards is described in most government IT policies. For instance, the United Kingdom policy states:
: … Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological or supplier lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and business. This should also lower barriers to entry for more diverse sources of IT services, including citizens and SMEs. <ref>All about Open Source – [http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78959/All_About_Open_Source_v2_0.pdf An Introduction to Open Source Software for Government IT], Version 2.0, United Kingdom Cabinet Office</ref>

The value of Open Standards has been described in numerous national studies on the effects of standards on economic growth.

: ... the national studies demonstrate that standards have a positive influence on economic growth due to the resulting improved diffusion of knowledge. The contribution of standards to the growth rate in each country is equivalent to 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in 0.3% in the UK and 0.2% in Canada. <ref>Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Prof. Dr. Andre Jungmittag, Dr. Axel Mangelsdorf [http://www.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/2896/DIN_GNN_2011_engl_akt_neu.pdf "The Economic Benefits of Standardization"], ''DINN, 2000''. Retrieved March 2015.</ref>

=Further Reading=

# [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey provides background to LAS vs Optimised LAS]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ Running commentary by Martin Isenburg, author of LASlib]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ Earlier comment from Martin Isenburg]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ First call-to-action by Martin Isenburg]
# [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-las-compression/ ESRI Announces "Optimised LAS"]
# [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 ESRI description of "Optimised LAS"]
# [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-March/001225.html Discussion background on this topic at Geo for All list]
# [http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/esris-claim-at-being-good-standards.html Refuting ESRI's response and claim to be good Open Standards citizens]

News coverage:
# [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/402914,open-source-devs-in-uproar-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans.aspx IT News]
# [http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/04/21/1624219/osgeo-foundation-up-in-arms-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans Slashdot]
# [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/LIDAR-offenes-Dateiformat-LAS-in-Bedraengnis-2609710.html Heise Online] - German speaking IT news.
# [http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2015/04/21/os-developers-concerned-over-new-esri-lidar-format/ Spatial Source]

=References=

<references />

[[Category: Standards]]

LIDAR Format Letter

2015-04-23T20:16:17Z

Wiki-Percyd: /* Signed */

=Open Letter of the Need for Open Standards in LiDAR=
April 2015.

We, the undersigned, are concerned that the current interoperability between LiDAR applications, through use of the open "LAS" format, is being threatened by ESRI's introduction and promotion of an alternative "Optimized LAS" '''''proprietary format.''''' This is of grave concern given that fragmentation of the LAS format will reduce interoperability between applications and organisations, and introduce vendor lock-in.

We request that:
# The OGC initiate the formalisation of an open standard for storing LiDAR data, and that OGC sponsors help prioritise the development of this open LiDAR standard.
# ESRI support the OGC in their [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision mission] "to advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability." In particular, ESRI joins with the OGC in consolidating an Open Standard for use of LiDAR data. This might include proposing ESRI's "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard to remove any technical or legal hurdles in use of "Optimized LAS" as an Open Standard. A simple test to determine if "Optimized LAS" can be used as an Open Standard would be if "Optimized LAS" can legally be implemented by Open Source software such as libLAS or LASzip.
# Users and sponsors of LiDAR data, publicly state their preference for the use of an open LiDAR format over proprietary when selecting software and services.
# The custodians of the open LAS format [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)], who are part of [http://www.asprs.org/ American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS)], request the term "LAS" not to be included in the name of a proprietary format, as it makes such a proprietary format appear to be an approved derivative of LAS.

=Signed=
Name, Affiliation(s), Optional comment on interest in Open LiDAR format

# Suchith Anand, Geo for All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy.
# Martin Isenburg, founder of [http://rapidlasso.com rapidlasso GmbH] and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools], and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves].
# Cameron Shorter, GeoSpatial Director at [http://lisasoft.com LISAsoft]. Core contributor and coordinator of [http://live.osgeo.org OSGeo-Live]. Contributor to numerous OGC testbeds, technical lead on a range of previous Australian and New Zealand Open Government initiatives.
# Stefan Keller, founder and director of [http://www.hsr.ch/geometalab Geometa Lab]; Professor in GIS, databases, open (government) data and interoperability; maintainer of GeoConverter; contributor to open source software (GDAL/OGR, QGIS).
# Patrick Hogan, NASA World Wind Project Manager, committed to the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure principles, one being "to make geographic data more accessible to the public" [http://www.fgdc.gov/nsdi/nsdi.html NSDI]. Open standards are essential for this.
# Lene Fischer, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen. User of Open and free Data from The Danish Geodata Agency - Using LAZ and LAS http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/dhmpunktsky.
# [http://www.ege-como.polimi.it/index.php?content=maria_brovelli Maria Antonia Brovelli], Full Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Politecnico di Milano. Geo For All, committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Policy and to Open Principles in Research.
# Ron Fortunato, President of [http://www.trilliumlearning.com/AmericaBridge/ Trillium Learning] LLC. Committed to open data standards that are necessary for education and all levels of communication.
# [http://www.geodatawiz.com/armin-schmidt Armin Schmidt], Chief Developer at [http://www.GeodataWIZ.com GeodataWIZ Ltd] and Chairman of [http://www.archprospection.org ISAP], committed to better science through Open Data.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/gconti Giuseppe Conti], CTO Trilogis Srl, Italy. Committed to open data standards that maximize opportunity for innovative solutions, unencumbered by artificial obstacles to data exchange.
# [http://pt.linkedin.com/pub/jorge-rocha/1b/560/499 Jorge Gustavo Rocha], Professor, Computer Science Department, University of Minho, Portugal, committed to better science through [http://www.gistam.org/EventChairs.aspx?y=2016 Open Data].
# [http://people.eecs.ku.edu/~miller/ Jim Miller], University of Kansas, Professor, Computer Science. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/brandt-melick/22/869/261 Brandt Melick], Information Technology Department Director, Springfield Oregon USA. The need to promote open solutions is paramount.
# Alex Paza Makini, National University Solomon Islands, Natural Resources and Applied Science. Committed to open data standards for education and research, and everything beyond.
# Jorg M. Hacker, Professor, Director/Chief Scientist of [http://www.airborneresearchaustralia.com Airborne Research Australia], Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Open formats have always been a great benefit to airborne LiDAR.
# Didier Richard, Head of IS Training Dept. in Education and Research Directorate of [http://www.ign.fr Institut National de l'Information Géographique et Forestière], France. OGC user, Contributor to OSGeO projects like GDAL.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/adryane-gorayeb/74/517/96a Adryane Gorayeb], [http://www.ufc.br/ Federal University of Ceará Brazil], Geography Department. Open standards for data exchange are essential for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/yuryryabov Yury Ryabov], PhD, Senior researcher at [http://www.istc.ru/istc/db/inst.nsf/wsu/i0001823 Russian Scientific-Research Centre for Ecological Safety], [http://www.interacademies.net/Academies/ByRegion/CentralEasternEurope/13383.aspx Russian Academy of Sciences], Saint Petersburg, Russia. Open data formats are essential for successful and reproducible scientific research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/teresa-lamelas-gracia/40/4a7/20b María Teresa Lamelas], [http://cud.unizar.es/ Centro Universitario de la Defensa Zaragoza], [http://geoforest.unizar.es/es/index.php GeoForest-IUCA]. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidherries David Herries], [http://www.interpine.co.nz/SitePages/Home.aspx Using LiDAR for forest yield modelling at Interpine Innovation]. Establishing open data standards provide scope for exponential growth in innovation. This is key to a rapidly developing technology like LiDAR.
# [[User:Ivansanchez|Iván Sánchez Ortega]], [http://www.mazemap.no Mazemap]. OSGeo Charter member and Open Data nerd.
# [[User:AnitaGraser|Anita Graser]], GIS specialist with AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, OSGeo Charter member and QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# [[User:vehrka|Pedro-Juan Ferrer]], [http://www.geomaticblog.net Geomaticblog]. OSGeo Charter member and member of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/karl-donert/3/160/571 Professor Karl Donert], President European Association of Geographers (http://www.eurogeo.nl/ EUROGEO)
# Drew Fenton, Boulder Creek, CA [http://www.savetheredwoods.org/redwoods/coast-redwoods/ Countdown to the Last Coast Redwood]. Please protect Open Standards for geospatial data!
# [[User:Bolosig|Wladimir Szczerban]], [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] Geogeek & OSGeo Spanish Local Chapter Member, Spain
# [http://vmx.cx Volker Mische], OSGeo Charter member and creator of GeoCouch
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/clquintanilla Carlos López Quintanilla], [http://www.psig.es PSIG] [http://www.geoinquiets.cat Geoinquiets] GIS consultant, Spain
# [[User:woodbri|Stephen Woodbridge]], [http://imaptools.com iMaptools], OSGeo Charter member.
# [[User:odoepner|Oliver Doepner]], [http://oliver.doepner.net doepner.net], Software Engineer (Java,Linux), Open Standards and Open Source advocate
# [[User:Lucadelu|Luca Delucchi]], [http://gis.cri.fmach.it Fondazione Edmund Mach], OSGeo Charter member, FOSS4G and Open Data developer, advocate, contributor and user.
# Antoine Cottin, CTO of [http://www.carbomap.com Carbomap Ltd.] and creator of [http://github.com/carbomap/Fleurdelas Fleurdelas], Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
# [http://strk.keybit.net Sandro Santilli], [http://strk.keybit.net/services.html NetLab], Free Software Hacker. There are already too many users slave to their tools, let's stop that!
# [http://www.itopen.it Alessandro Pasotti], [http://www.itopen.it ItOpen], GIS Free Software Developer.
# [http://www.roccatello.com Eduard Roccatello], [http://www.3dgis.it 3DGIS], 3DGIS CTO and co-Founder
# [[User:moovida|Andrea Antonello]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Open Source GIS developer, HydroloGIS co-founder.
# [http://www.associazionegfoss.it Stefano Campus], President of [http://www.associazionegfoss.it GFOSS.it] Association (Associazione Italiana per l'Informazione Geografica Libera), Italian Local Chapter of OSGeo Foundation.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Madi Margherita Di Leo], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Sacosta Sergio Acosta y Lara], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin], CEO at NextGIS, OSGeo Charter Member. Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
# [[User:Steko|Stefano Costa]], Soprintendenza Archeologia della Liguria, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo, Italy
# [http://www.geog.illinois.edu/people/jgrn Jonathan Greenberg], Assistant Professor, [http://publish.illinois.edu/jgrn/ GEARS Laboratory], Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
# Bob Basques, Saint Paul, Mn., Technical Director for SharedGeo.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maning Maning Sambale], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Pcav Paolo Cavallini], QGIS PSC
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Dr Phillip Davis], Member OSGeo Geo For All education advisory board, Director @ GeoAcademy
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Nbozon Nicolas Bozon], Researcher and software developer, OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/ruslanrainis Ruslan Rainis], Professor, Director, [http://www.research.usm.my/default.asp?tag=36 Centre for Research Initiatives in Liberal Arts & Social Sciences](CRI-LASS). Open GeoInformation for a Sustainable Tomorrow and the Bottom Billions.
# [[User:Silli|Silvia Franceschi]], [http://www.hydrologis.com HydroloGIS], OSGeo Charter member, Environmental Engineer Open Source GIS power user, HydroloGIS co-founder.
# Oscar Martinez Rubi [http://esciencecenter.nl Netherlands eScience Center] eScience engineer.
# Werner Macho, QGIS team member. Committed to open data standards for education and research.
# Giuseppe Patti, Geologist and Freelance Geospatial Advisor, GFOSS supporter.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Drappo Daniel Rappo], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, School of Business and Engineering Vaud.
# [[User:nachouve|Juan Ignacio Varela]], Freelance Geospatial Advisor and OSGeo Local Chapter Member.
# [[User:dmorissette|Daniel Morissette]], President at [http://mapgears.com Mapgears], OSGeo Charter member.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/raulnanclares Raul Nanclares], RS&GIS Specialist
# [http://www.ing.unitn.it/dica/hp/index_eng.php?user=rigon Riccardo Rigon], Professor at University of Trento (Italy)
# [[User:Siki| Zoltan Siki]] Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary), OSGeo Charter member.
# [http://lefsky.org Michael Lefsky], Professor of Remote Sensing Science, Colorado State University and Director, Center for Ecological Applications of Lidar.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/lucas-c-villa-real/7/a0b/b06 Lucas Villa Real], Research software engineer at IBM Research - Brazil.
# [http://terraremote.com Loren Dawe], GIS Manager at Terra Remote Sensing Inc. Lidar Supplier and Open Standards Advocate
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Warmerda Frank Warmerdam], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter member
# [http://ch.linkedin.com/pub/jens-ingensand/0/836/6b0 Jens Ingensand], Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland, [http://www.heig-vd.ch/international School of Business and Engineering Vaud].
# [http://nsidc.org/research/bios/khalsa.html Siri Jodha Khalsa], Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, [http://cires.colorado.edu/ Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences], University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
# [http://gis.uster.ch/ Andreas Neumann], GIS manager, City of Uster, Kanton Zurich, Switzerland
# [http://www.iwmi.org/ Yann Chemin], Researcher - Remote Sensing, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka
# [http://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennebracine Etienne B. Racine], Geomatics and remote sensing project manager, WSP, Canada
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alejandro-hinojosa/7/33b/342 Alejandro Hinojosa], [http://cicese.mx CICESE Research Center], Earth Sciences Division, GIS & Remote Sensing Lab, Ensenada, Mexico
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:epifanio Massimo Di Stefano], OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://clas.ucdenver.edu/directory/faculty-staff/Rafael-Moreno Rafael Moreno], University of Colorado Denver, [http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/Departments/ges/Pages/Geography.aspx Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences]. Openness is fundamental to progress.
# Peter Drexel, GIS manager, [http://www.vorarlberg.at/vorarlberg/bauen_wohnen/bauen/vermessung_geoinformation/start.htm State of Vorarlberg (State Survey Office)], Austria
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marco-minghini/a8/3b6/198 Marco Minghini], Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano]. Committed to Open Principles in Geo Education and Research.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/candan-eyl%C3%BCl-kilsedar/65/380/976 Candan Eylül Kilsedar], WebGIS Developer, Research Fellow at [http://www.polimi.it Politecnico di Milano].
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:AlastairMcKinstry Alastair McKinstry], Debian Linux meteorology/GIS developer, Ireland
# [http://people.unibo.it/it/elena.mezzini2 Elena Mezzini], Remote-sensing in forest ecology, Research Fellow, Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy.
# [http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=43566064 Mihai A. Tanase], Honorary fellow, Dept. of Forest and Ecosystem Science, The University of Melbourne, Australia
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-murray/10/742/3a2 Dave Murray], GIS Coordinator at [http://www.ci.westminster.co.us/ City of Westminster]
# Ayesa Martínez Serrano, Estudiante de Doctorado en [http://www.ciga.unam.mx/ Geografía del Centro de Investigaciones en Geografía Ambiental de la UNAM-México]
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-crosby/15/b7/114 Christopher Crosby], co-founder, [http://www.opentopography.org/ OpenTopography]
# [http://sg.linkedin.com/in/sgganesh Shanmugam Ganeshkumar], Vice President - Consulting, [http://www.geoicon.com GeoICON]
# [[User:Chaitanya|Chaitanya Kumar CH]], GIS Developer with [http://www.egis-geoplan.com/ Egis Geoplan - India] and OSGeo Charter member.
# KS Rajan, Associate Professor and Head, [http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/ Lab for Spatial Informatics, IIIT Hyderabad] and Chairman, [http://www.kaiinos.com/ KAIINOS Geospatial Technologies]; Promoter and Supported of Open Source, Open Data, Open Standards and e-Governance in India
# Pericles Nacionales, RS/GIS Specialist and OSGeo Charter member.
# Vasile Crăciunescu, Researcher at Romanian National Meteorological Administration and OSGeo Board member.
# [http://geo.tuwien.ac.at/staff/andreas-roncat/ Andreas Roncat] PostDoc Researcher, Research Groups Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, [http://www.geo.tuwien.ac.at/ Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation], Vienna University of Technology, Austria. In full agreement with [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Maximdubinin Maxim Dubinin]: Another 'standard' proprietary format? No, thank you.
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:remanuele Rob Emanuele], Software Developer, Azavea Inc.
# Codrina Ilie, Researcher at the Groundwater Engineering Research Center, Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest and OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Djay Gérald Fenoy], Software Developer, OSGeo Charter Member.
# [http://www.aston.ac.uk/eas/staff/a-z/dr-lucy-bastin/ Lucy Bastin], Software Developer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission / Computer Science lecturer, UncertML developer, Member of OGC SWG on User Feedback.
# Matt Wilkie, Geomatics Analyst at [http://www.gov.yk.ca/ Yukon Government], [http://www.env.gov.yk.ca/geomatics Department of Environment]. A practising GIS Professional for 20+ years. Throughout that time, the process of manipulating data into, through and out of proprietary formats has been the most aggravating source of inefficiency and wasted time. Things are hard enough without adding unnecessary barriers.
# [[User:Annakrat|Anna Petrasova]], OSGeo Charter Member, GRASS GIS developer
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-seibel-gisp/45/517/942 Mark Seibel], Geospatial Hacker. Long live open Geo data & software.
# [http://www.wrsc.org/people/ben-discoe Ben Discoe], [http://vterrain.org/ Virtual Terrain Project] and [http://www.leica-geosystems.us/en/HDS-Laser-Scanners-SW_5570.htm Leica Geosystems HDS], I wrangle point clouds every day. Semi-open E57 is bad enough. No more closed formats!
# [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ilda-clos/19/21b/391 Ilda Clos], GIS & IWRM specialist
# [[User:Danielkastl|Daniel Kastl]], Founder [http://georepublic.info Georepublic] and OSGeo Charter Member
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:Geejee Gert-Jan van der Weijden] Chairman of OSGeo.nl (local Dutch chapter)
# [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/User:rjhale1971 Randal Hale] Owner of North River Geographic Systems, Inc
# Volker Wichmann, [http://www.saga-gis.org SAGA GIS] and [http://www.laserdata.at LASERDATA LIS] developer
# Eric Theise, Software Developer, San Francisco, CA.
# Darrell Fuhriman, Director of Technology, Renewable Funding/ Adjunct Instructor, Department of Geography, Portland State University
# Ilkka Korpela, Academy Research Fellow, University of Helsinki. Open formats benefit everyone.
# David Percy, Faculty, Portland State University.

=Background=
==About LiDAR==

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar LiDAR] (Light Detection And Ranging) is a form of high precision range measurement, much like a radar system, that uses laser light instead of electromagnetic waves. The standard LiDAR product is a 3D point cloud that can be conceptualized as a series of point measurements representing distance between the sensor to a returned emission.

For over a decade (since 2003), there has been a common format for storing LiDAR data, the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html “LAS” format], and open source libraries have been developed to read, write and process these LAS files: [http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/liblas_overview.html libLAS] and [http://github.com/LASlib/LASlib LASlib]. These libraries have been incorporated within many LiDAR applications, allowing read/write access to a common exchange format, and resulting in full interoperability between the applications. There is also an open source compression algorithm for the LAS format called [http://laszip.org LASzip] that many LiDAR data portals use to compress LAS into smaller LAZ files for faster download. Many LiDAR software packages have added [http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support native support] for these compressed LAZ files.

==LAS Limitations==

Quoting [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey]:

: LAS format is not without its drawbacks:

:* While it is a binary format and does not waste any space unnecessarily, neither does it apply any compression to the data it stores. That’s not good for archival use.
:* Also, LAS stores points in scan order, so accessing any particular chunk of points involves reading the whole file. That’s not good for random access.
: Clearly there is a little more work to be done. Can LAS be improved? In fact, it already has been:
:* An open source compression library, LASzip can apply 20''':'''1 lossless compression to LAS files, making them great for archival purposes.
:* Other LAS users have experimented with re-ordering points in a LAS or LASzip file to allow random access to internal chunks of the LIDAR point cloud.
: Basically, making LAS smaller and faster is not rocket science, and if the work were incorporated into libLAS then the whole LIDAR community could leverage it together, and the user community would only have one file type to interchange.

=="Optimized LAS" A ''' ''Proprietary'' ESRI Format'''==
ESRI announced, 12 January 2014, the release of an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 "Optimized LAS"] format which is claimed to provide faster access and smaller file sizes (similar to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format). This announcement created a outburst of vocal protest in the LiDAR community [[http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ 1] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ 2] [http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2014/01/15/las-laz-lazzip-zlas-and-you/ 3] [http://www.northrivergeographic.com/archives/lidar-software 4] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars-2/ 5] [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/02/lidar-format-wars-3/ 6]].

The implementation of the "Optimized LAS" format is not available as Open Source and the format and algorithm details itself are undocumented, which means nobody can currently create alternate implementations, neither closed nor Open Source. This causes both technical as well as legal barriers for other applications reading and/or writing to this proprietary format. It creates a vendor lock-in scenario which is contrary to the principles of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the OSGeo Foundation, and many government IT procurement policies.

One year after releasing the "Optimized LAS" format, ESRI released a Windows only library (DLL) as a free-of-charge (gratis) download that is claimed to convert between LAS and "Optimized LAS". Note there is a distinct difference between a "free-of-charge" binary distribution of DLLs and publishing something as "Open Source". Unless the source code of the library is released as Open Source under an Open Source license, libLAS and related products will be legally prevented from incorporating ESRI's reader/writer code into their codebase, or from fixing any underlying bugs or performance limitations which may exist in ESRI's product.

Ironically, ESRI later placed their '''binary''' library files [http://github.com/Esri/esri-zlas-io-library on github] accompanied by an Apache License, but no source code was published. The distribution of binaries without source code is allowed by Apache License, but very uncommon and misleading, to say the least. The practice goes against the basic idea of “Open Source” and the Open Source Initiative (OSI) even has an FAQ entry on the obvious contradiction of [http://opensource.org/faq#non-distribution “Open Source” without source code].

==OGC's Efforts For An ''' ''Open'' LiDAR Standard'''==

The [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)] has indicated their interest in developing a standard LiDAR format.

Carl Reed (formerly on OGC staff) provided the following information on OGC's previous efforts to work toward enabling Open Standards in LiDAR:

: "Over the last 8 or so years, the OGC approached ASPRS at least twice regarding LAS and worked with ASPRS to bring LAS into the OGC for consideration as both a Best Practice and an OGC standard. OGC member Rick Pearsall worked diligently on this. Rick worked for NGA, was active in the OGC, and was also the Standards Committee chair at ASPRS. Rick and Carl tried and failed. These attempts go back to [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/divisions/ppd/ppd_meetings/2007springppdreport.pdf at least 2007]. More recently, Carl Reed had an email dialogue with Lewis Graham to bring LAS into OGC as an OGC Best Practice. Carl thought progress was being made, but then for some reason all communication stopped."

[http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/staff/ssimmons Scott Simmons] (Executive Director, Standards Program) has explained the OGC's continuing interest in pursuing point cloud encoding standards, including a member-initiated mechanism to extend LAS data with OGC-standard XML content.
: The OGC invites interested members who wish to work on this effort to please contact Scott Simmons (Executive Director, Standards Program E-mail : ssimmons@opengeospatial.org) to register their interest and discuss details. OGC will also be holding an ad hoc session at the OGC's next [http://www.opengeospatial.org/event/1506tc Technical Committee meeting in Boulder, CO, USA in early June] to bring together all interested parties from all sectors (government, industry, academia) for this and plan next steps.

==History: LAS and ESRI's "Optimized LAS"==

Martin Isenburg, one of the leading experts in LIDAR formats, and creator of [http://rapidlasso.com/LASzip LASzip], [http://rapidlasso.com/LAStools LAStools] and [http://rapidlasso.com/PulseWaves PulseWaves], explains the history of LAS and "Optimized LAS":

: '''Summary:'''

:* The LAS format has been used successfully for over a decade.
:* Within last couple of years, ESRI has added native LAS support into ESRI products.
:* ESRI discussed embracing the open [http://laszip.org LAZ] format and simultaneously developed a proprietary "Optimized LAS" format.
:* The open geospatial community offered, on numerous occasions, to work with ESRI to avoid format fragmentation.
:* ESRI's proprietary "Optimized LAS" format is very similar in design and performance to the open [http://laszip.org LASzip] format.

: '''1998: Original LAS format definition'''

: The original development of the LAS format started in 1998 according to [http://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lasroom/zKqchDj1JL4/discussion Lewis Graham]. The effort was at first led by pioneers of the LiDAR industry until the format was donated to the [http://www.asprs.org/Committee-General/LASer-LAS-File-Format-Exchange-Activities.html ASPRS]. Since then ASPRS's [http://www.asprs.org/LD-Division/LAS-Working-Group.html LAS Working Group (LWG)] has been maintaining the LAS format, guiding it from the initial LAS 1.0 version until today's LAS 1.4 version. This effort successfully created an open data exchange format for discrete LiDAR points that is currently supported by practically every LiDAR-related software program.

: '''2011: ESRI joins LAS Working Group'''

: ESRI did not join the LWG of the ASPRS until rather late, the 24th of August in 2011. At that time ESRI was not a significant "player" in the LiDAR market given they did not have much support for LiDAR in any of their products. That was to change soon as they were planning to add LAS as a native data type in ArcGIS 10.1.

: Shortly before that, in June 2011, Martin Isenburg received a personal message from the ESRI development team: "I have a question about LAS compression. I’m evaluating some potential enhancements and support for [LAS and] LAZ is one of them. Compression time and amount is impressive." When inquiring two months later about the status of [http://laszip.org LAZ] integration Martin was told: "We’re in beta and working to finish the current release. I very much doubt LAZ will make it in because it’s too big a change at this time. So, we’ll be considering, for the following release, [for] what we want to do regarding compression and spatial indexing."

: '''June 2012: ArcGIS 10.1 includes [proprietary] LAS Dataset file'''

: In June 2012 ESRI released ArcGIS 10.1 and introduced the proprietary "LAS Dataset file (*.lasd)" that groups collections of files into one logical unit. This format of this useful LAS container file was not shared with others despite several private and eventually [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/jwHpi0efUgA/discussion public] requests.

: '''2012/2013: Collaboration Discussions'''

: There were encouraging follow-ups from the ESRI team about adopting the open LAZ format in January 2012: "I would be interested in having a more in depth meeting with you to better understand the great work you are doing with LAS and how we can possibly better partner on this." and again in December 2012: "If you have time, I'd like to set some time aside Tuesday afternoon to meet with <an important person> at the ESRI booth. Does 2pm sound okay?" The meeting went well and it looked as if ESRI was going to embrace the LAZ format because shortly after the meeting Martin got word that: "I hear from <an important person> that it was a success and that he had a good meeting with you. I wanted to see if we can have a telephone discussion on Wednesday or Thursday this week related to the potential of incorporating LAZ into ArcGIS."

: Then the first signs of hesitation showed. First there were legal issues raised in February 2013: "Currently the legal aspects are being reviewed. They were having some issues separating the LPGL aspects from LASzip from the remainder of LAStools etc." and then in April 2013 concerns about the code were made: "We have started to look into the integration of LAZ, but came across some issues. We don’t want to copy files from the other package, mix and match or hack around. We were hoping for an API to stream points out of a LAZ file as well as write LAZ files. There should be a simple code sample for that?" and - following up on that - in June 2013 Martin was told "I see value in LASzip becoming a de-facto standard that provides compression to the LAS format. If this is to happen then it needs to be bundled together with appropriate reference implementations, examples and documentation as a standard and so ensure that issues as defined earlier in email do not occur."

: '''June 2013: ESRI asked to sponsor clean LASzip DLL'''

: At that time [http://laszip.org LASzip] was an open source project without sponsorship. The original funding from [http://www.erdc.usace.army.mil/Locations/ColdRegionsResearchandEngineeringLaboratory.aspx USACE] that had turned [http://laszip.org LASzip] from an academic prototype into an industry strength compression engine had long run out. So Martin asked ESRI to become a sponsor to create the clean [http://laszip.org LASzip] API that ESRI was after. The answer was: "ESRI often helps in the financing of Open Source projects and I could foresee ESRI possibly helping in LASzip. [...] If you are interested in promoting LASzip as such a standard and doing the required work then I would recommend you put together a proposal and I can look to get ESRI as a sponsor."

: Immediately Martin proposed to ESRI: "I hereby propose to write an easy to use open source DLL wrapper for LASzip that will make it easier to integrate LASzip in a standardized manner into other software products such as ArcGIS, LP 360, or Terrasolid. This will come with example code on how to use the DLL for reading and writing LAZ files and include a few compressed example files. I hereby ask ESRI to provide funding for this effort without imposing any limitations on the produced DLL API."

: '''July 2013: ArcGIS 10.2 includes [proprietary] LAS indexing '''

: With the release of ArcGIS 10.2 in July 2013, ESRI introduced spatial indexing to speed up area-of-interest queries. Their new proprietary *.lasx files were seemingly identical in functionality to the open *.lax files that had been [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/j0qA8NBMHJs/discussion announced] two years earlier - in May 2011 - and were [http://rapidlasso.com/2012/12/03/lasindex-spatial-indexing-of-lidar-data/ presented] at ELMF in November 2012.

: '''July 2013: Open LASzip API released'''

: After more requests for an easier interface to [http://laszip.org LASzip] (in particular for [http://forsys.cfr.washington.edu/fusion/fusionlatest.html USDA's FUSION]), Martin [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/oplsDhhnhDQ/discussion released] a clean, well-documented, and easy-to-use LASzip DLL (without ESRI funding). Martin expected that developers at ESRI would now use it to add read and write support for [http://laszip.org LAZ] to their next release of ArcGIS.

: '''December 2013 : ESRI discovered to be secretly developing proprietary LAS format'''

: In December of 2013, several LAStools users contacted Martin with suspicions that ESRI may be creating a proprietary LAS compression. Martin [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ broke the news] as soon as it became evident that ESRI had used the time it needed to resolve "legal issues" and "code problems" to put together their own proprietary compressed format with near-identical performance and functionality to [http://laszip.org LASzip]. A few days later ESRI released an [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214/ official FAQ] to confirming this was the case.

: From day one, Martin has worked with stakeholders, including ESRI, to avoid format fragmentation. Martin's core argument for resolving this to everybody's benefit was that - coincidentally - a natural break was happening in the LAS format with the introduction of the new LAS 1.4 point types. Martin outlined a detailed plan for how a joint development of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for LAS 1.4 between rapidlasso and ESRI could exploit this natural break in the LAS format to accomplish two things at once:
:# Add the unspecified technical additions that ESRI had hinted at desiring, and
:# Extend the [http://laszip.org LASzip] compression scheme to handle the new point types introduced with the LAS 1.4 specification. As there was no pressing need at the time to handle LAS 1.4 Martin had delayed the extension of [http://laszip.org LASzip] to the new LAS 1.4 point types to make sure a cooperation with ESRI would remain a viable option.

: '''1 April 2014: Positive reception to "Optimized LAS" / LASzip collaboration April Fools announcement'''

: In an attempt to convince ESRI management of the community desire for an open standard, Martin released an April Fools' Day [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ prank press release] pretending that ESRI had already agreed to the envisioned collaboration to develop a joint LiDAR compressor. Community [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/04/01/esri-and-rapidlasso-develop-joint-lidar-compressor/ jubilant reactions (see comments)] left no doubt about the sentiment on this issue within the LiDAR community.

: '''October 2014: Announcement of [open] LAS Compatibility mode'''

: [http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/ Digital Coast, NOAA Coastal Services Center] became a Gold Sponsor of [http://laszip.org LASzip] for the development of the [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/10/06/rapidlasso-announces-laszip-compatibility-mode-for-las-1-4/ LAS 1.4 compatibility mode] that was [http://groups.google.com/d/topic/lastools/nUFMkKSz53g/discussion beta-released] in November 2014. This allowed support for the new point types in [http://laszip.org LASzip] without closing the door on a potential cooperation with ESRI for a joint LAS 1.4 compressor.

: '''November 2014: ESRI announces proprietary extension to LAS 1.4'''

: In November 2014 [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated ESRI announced] that they had added their [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-las-optimizer-updated own extension] for the new LAS 1.4 point types to "Optimized LAS", dismissing the opportunity to develop a joint compressor and avoid format fragmentation by exploiting this "natural break" in the LAS format as Martin had suggested.

: Since then, ESRI has been [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ promoting] "Optimized LAS". By including the term "LAS" in "Optimized LAS" and "zLAS", the distinction between the open LAS format and proprietary format is blurred. This is likely to mislead novice and future users, thereby endangering many years of standardization work. To date, [April 2014], the [http://www.asprs.org/a/society/committees/standards/LAS_1_4_r13.pdf custodians of the LAS format], the LAS Working Group (LWG) of the ASPRS has [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ yet to make an official statement] regarding use of the "LAS" name in promoting a proprietary LiDAR format.

=Value of Standards=

The importance of Open Standards is described in most government IT policies. For instance, the United Kingdom policy states:
: … Government assets should be interoperable and open for re-use in order to maximise return on investment, avoid technological or supplier lock-in, reduce operational risk in ICT projects and provide responsive services for citizens and business. This should also lower barriers to entry for more diverse sources of IT services, including citizens and SMEs. <ref>All about Open Source – [http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78959/All_About_Open_Source_v2_0.pdf An Introduction to Open Source Software for Government IT], Version 2.0, United Kingdom Cabinet Office</ref>

The value of Open Standards has been described in numerous national studies on the effects of standards on economic growth.

: ... the national studies demonstrate that standards have a positive influence on economic growth due to the resulting improved diffusion of knowledge. The contribution of standards to the growth rate in each country is equivalent to 0.9% in Germany, 0.8% in 0.3% in the UK and 0.2% in Canada. <ref>Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Prof. Dr. Andre Jungmittag, Dr. Axel Mangelsdorf [http://www.din.de/sixcms_upload/media/2896/DIN_GNN_2011_engl_akt_neu.pdf "The Economic Benefits of Standardization"], ''DINN, 2000''. Retrieved March 2015.</ref>

=Further Reading=

# [http://boundlessgeo.com/2014/01/lidar-format-wars/ Paul Ramsey provides background to LAS vs Optimised LAS]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2015/02/22/lidar-las-asprs-esri-and-the-laz-clone/ Running commentary by Martin Isenburg, author of LASlib]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2014/11/06/keeping-esri-honest/ Earlier comment from Martin Isenburg]
# [http://rapidlasso.com/2013/12/30/new-compressed-las-format-by-esri/ First call-to-action by Martin Isenburg]
# [http://blog.lidarnews.com/esri-announces-las-compression/ ESRI Announces "Optimised LAS"]
# [http://www.lidarnews.com/content/view/10214 ESRI description of "Optimised LAS"]
# [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-March/001225.html Discussion background on this topic at Geo for All list]
# [http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/esris-claim-at-being-good-standards.html Refuting ESRI's response and claim to be good Open Standards citizens]

News coverage:
# [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/402914,open-source-devs-in-uproar-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans.aspx IT News]
# [http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/04/21/1624219/osgeo-foundation-up-in-arms-over-esri-las-lock-in-plans Slashdot]
# [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/LIDAR-offenes-Dateiformat-LAS-in-Bedraengnis-2609710.html Heise Online] - German speaking IT news.
# [http://www.spatialsource.com.au/2015/04/21/os-developers-concerned-over-new-esri-lidar-format/ Spatial Source]

=References=

<references />

[[Category: Standards]]

Conference Committee

2015-01-19T08:00:59Z

Wiki-Percyd: /* Current Members */

The Conference Committee is the official committee of OSGeo responsible for operating the annual [[FOSS4G]] conferences.

= Noteworthy Documents =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference OSGeo Conference Committee main page] (includes RFP, proposals, and archived files from past conferences)
* http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev - Conference Committee email list
* [[Motion to form Conference Committee]]
* [[Conference website management]]

= Goals =

* facilitate the hosting application/decision process
* assist the conference local organizing committees in planning
* make sure OSGeo foundation principles exist in all conferences
* possibly support other affiliated conferences

== Other Responsibilities ==

* [[Sol Katz Award]]

= Current Members =

* Eli Adam
* Thierry Badard
* Peter Batty
* David Bitner
* Jachym Cepicky
* Vasile Craciunescu
* David Fawcett
* Steven Feldman
* Gavin Fleming
* Darrell Fuhrman
* Dave McIlhagga
* Helena Mitasova
* Claude Philipona
* Venkatesh Raghavan
* Paul Ramsey
* Cameron Shorter
* Jeroen Ticheler
* Frank Warmerdam (chair)

= Past Members =

* Lorenzo Becchi
* Allan Doyle
* Olivier Ertz
* Alain Grignon
* Luc Maurer
* Daniel Rappo
* Dave Patton
* Rafael Medeiros Sperb
* [[Jeff McKenna]]
* Arnulf Christl
* [[Markus Neteler]]
* Steve Lime

= Meetings =

* Meetings occur in IRC in the #foss4g channel (on irc.freenode.net)
* See the [[Conference_Committee_Meetings | Conference Committee Meetings]] page for information about the committee's meetings.

= 2016 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp/ 2016 RFP schedule]

= 2015 Pages =

* [[FOSS4G 2015 Bid Process]]

= 2014 Pages =

* [[FOSS4G 2014 Bid Process]]
* [[FOSS4G 2014]]
* [[FOSS4G Europe 2014]]
* [[FOSS4G Handbook]] (provides guidance to future FOSS4G and FOSS4G related events, based upon the collective wisdom gained during prior events)

= 2013 Pages =

* Main page: [[FOSS4G_2013]]
* [http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/2013/documents/FOSS4G_2013_UK_Proposal-Final_version.pdf 2013 Proposal]
* Reflections on the event by the LOC (includes lessons learnt and supersedes the old Lessons Learned page): [[FOSS4G2013_Reflections_by_the_LOC]]

= 2012 Pages =
Main page: [[FOSS4G 2012]]
* RFP ([http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/rfp/2012/osgeo-conference-2012-request-for-proposal.odt OpenOffice], [http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/rfp/2012/osgeo-conference-2012-request-for-proposal.pdf pdf])
* budget template ([http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/rfp/2012/osgeo-conference-budget-template.ods OpenOffice])
* Important dates:
** Letters of Intent (Stage 1) due: 2011-06-30 ([http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2011&month=06&day=30&hour=23&min=0&sec=0 23:00 UTC])
** Stage 1 question period: 2011-06-30 to 2011-07-07
** Stage 1 decision: 2011-07-07
** Proposals (Stage 2) due: 2011-08-01 ([http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2011&month=08&day=01&hour=23&min=0&sec=0 23:00 UTC])
** Stage 2 question period: 2011-08-01 to 2011-08-05
** Final decision: 2011-08-05

= 2011 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp RFP and Letters of Intent]
* [[FOSS4G_2011_Bid_Process | 2011 Bid Process]]
* [[FOSS4G Reboot 2011 | Initial thoughts on 2011 required changes]]

= 2010 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp RFP and Proposals]
* [[Conference_Committee_2010_Bid_Questions | Bid Questions]]
* [[Conference_Committee_2010_Voting_Process | Voting Process]]

= 2009 Pages =

* [[FOSS4G 2009 Governance]]
* All [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:FOSS4G2009 FOSS4G 2009] pages.

= 2008 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp RFP and Proposals]
* [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/2007-July/000355.html Voting Process]
* [[FOSS4G 2008 Governance]]
* [[FOSS4GLOC matters]]
* [http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p6mc38S7PA8lHWRQuIgExDA Workshop and lab evaluations]

= 2007 Pages =

* [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Category:FOSS4G2007 Pages in category "FOSS4G2007"]
* [[FOSS4G2007]] - wiki page
* http://www.foss4g2007.org/ - Conference Site
* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp Proposals and RFP]
* [[OSGeo_Conference_RFP_2007#RFP_Response_Requirements | requirements Wiki page]]
* [[OSGeo_Conference_Naming_Results | Naming results]]
* [http://www.foss4g2007.org/bid_site/ Victoria 2007 Proposal]
* [[FOSS4G 2007 Governance]]
* [[FOSS4G2007 Lessons Learned]]

= 2006 Pages =

* [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Category:FOSS4G2006 Pages in category "FOSS4G2006"]
* http://www.foss4g2006.org/ - Conference Site
* [[FOSS4G2006]] information

= Event Policy Pages =

* [[Official_OSGeo_Event_Policy | OSGeo Event policy]] (in review)
* [[OSGeo_Conference_Policy | Board notes]] regarding event policy

[[Category:FOSS4G]]
[[Category:Committees]]
[[Category:Conference Committee]]

Conference Committee

2015-01-19T07:59:46Z

Wiki-Percyd: /* Current Members */

The Conference Committee is the official committee of OSGeo responsible for operating the annual [[FOSS4G]] conferences.

= Noteworthy Documents =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference OSGeo Conference Committee main page] (includes RFP, proposals, and archived files from past conferences)
* http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/conference_dev - Conference Committee email list
* [[Motion to form Conference Committee]]
* [[Conference website management]]

= Goals =

* facilitate the hosting application/decision process
* assist the conference local organizing committees in planning
* make sure OSGeo foundation principles exist in all conferences
* possibly support other affiliated conferences

== Other Responsibilities ==

* [[Sol Katz Award]]

= Current Members =

* Thierry Badard
* Peter Batty
* David Bitner
* Jachym Cepicky
* Vasile Craciunescu
* David Fawcett
* Steven Feldman
* Gavin Fleming
* Darrell Fuhrman
* Dave McIlhagga
* Helena Mitasova
* Claude Philipona
* Venkatesh Raghavan
* Paul Ramsey
* Cameron Shorter
* Jeroen Ticheler
* Frank Warmerdam (chair)

= Past Members =

* Lorenzo Becchi
* Allan Doyle
* Olivier Ertz
* Alain Grignon
* Luc Maurer
* Daniel Rappo
* Dave Patton
* Rafael Medeiros Sperb
* [[Jeff McKenna]]
* Arnulf Christl
* [[Markus Neteler]]
* Steve Lime

= Meetings =

* Meetings occur in IRC in the #foss4g channel (on irc.freenode.net)
* See the [[Conference_Committee_Meetings | Conference Committee Meetings]] page for information about the committee's meetings.

= 2016 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp/ 2016 RFP schedule]

= 2015 Pages =

* [[FOSS4G 2015 Bid Process]]

= 2014 Pages =

* [[FOSS4G 2014 Bid Process]]
* [[FOSS4G 2014]]
* [[FOSS4G Europe 2014]]
* [[FOSS4G Handbook]] (provides guidance to future FOSS4G and FOSS4G related events, based upon the collective wisdom gained during prior events)

= 2013 Pages =

* Main page: [[FOSS4G_2013]]
* [http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/2013/documents/FOSS4G_2013_UK_Proposal-Final_version.pdf 2013 Proposal]
* Reflections on the event by the LOC (includes lessons learnt and supersedes the old Lessons Learned page): [[FOSS4G2013_Reflections_by_the_LOC]]

= 2012 Pages =
Main page: [[FOSS4G 2012]]
* RFP ([http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/rfp/2012/osgeo-conference-2012-request-for-proposal.odt OpenOffice], [http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/rfp/2012/osgeo-conference-2012-request-for-proposal.pdf pdf])
* budget template ([http://svn.osgeo.org/osgeo/foss4g/rfp/2012/osgeo-conference-budget-template.ods OpenOffice])
* Important dates:
** Letters of Intent (Stage 1) due: 2011-06-30 ([http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2011&month=06&day=30&hour=23&min=0&sec=0 23:00 UTC])
** Stage 1 question period: 2011-06-30 to 2011-07-07
** Stage 1 decision: 2011-07-07
** Proposals (Stage 2) due: 2011-08-01 ([http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2011&month=08&day=01&hour=23&min=0&sec=0 23:00 UTC])
** Stage 2 question period: 2011-08-01 to 2011-08-05
** Final decision: 2011-08-05

= 2011 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp RFP and Letters of Intent]
* [[FOSS4G_2011_Bid_Process | 2011 Bid Process]]
* [[FOSS4G Reboot 2011 | Initial thoughts on 2011 required changes]]

= 2010 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp RFP and Proposals]
* [[Conference_Committee_2010_Bid_Questions | Bid Questions]]
* [[Conference_Committee_2010_Voting_Process | Voting Process]]

= 2009 Pages =

* [[FOSS4G 2009 Governance]]
* All [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Category:FOSS4G2009 FOSS4G 2009] pages.

= 2008 Pages =

* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp RFP and Proposals]
* [http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/conference_dev/2007-July/000355.html Voting Process]
* [[FOSS4G 2008 Governance]]
* [[FOSS4GLOC matters]]
* [http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p6mc38S7PA8lHWRQuIgExDA Workshop and lab evaluations]

= 2007 Pages =

* [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Category:FOSS4G2007 Pages in category "FOSS4G2007"]
* [[FOSS4G2007]] - wiki page
* http://www.foss4g2007.org/ - Conference Site
* [http://www.osgeo.org/conference/rfp Proposals and RFP]
* [[OSGeo_Conference_RFP_2007#RFP_Response_Requirements | requirements Wiki page]]
* [[OSGeo_Conference_Naming_Results | Naming results]]
* [http://www.foss4g2007.org/bid_site/ Victoria 2007 Proposal]
* [[FOSS4G 2007 Governance]]
* [[FOSS4G2007 Lessons Learned]]

= 2006 Pages =

* [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Category:FOSS4G2006 Pages in category "FOSS4G2006"]
* http://www.foss4g2006.org/ - Conference Site
* [[FOSS4G2006]] information

= Event Policy Pages =

* [[Official_OSGeo_Event_Policy | OSGeo Event policy]] (in review)
* [[OSGeo_Conference_Policy | Board notes]] regarding event policy

[[Category:FOSS4G]]
[[Category:Committees]]
[[Category:Conference Committee]]

Edu current initiatives

2014-02-22T00:04:01Z

Wiki-Percyd: /* 2) Continue to expand the ICA-OSGeo Network */

== 2013-2014 OSGeo Education and Curriculum Current Initiatives ==

'''The official website is online at ''http://www.geoforall.org'''''

=== 1) Continue to build up our educational material federated content databases ===

[http://www.osgeo.org/educational_content OSGeo edu's educational content metadatabase] -- a place for metadata and links to external material we are posting on our own websites 
[http://elogeo.nottingham.ac.uk/xmlui/ University of Nottingham's educational content database] (ELOGeo) -- a place for us to store education content (the source code) to share

[[Webinar Series ]]

===2) Continue to expand the ICA-OSGeo Network ===

This effort is led by Suchith Anand at the University of Nottingham, UK.

In September 2011, the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and the International Cartographic Association (ICA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the aim of developing on a global basis collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organizations in open source GIS software and data. The MoU aims to provide expertise and support for the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Laboratories and Research Centres across the world for supporting development of open-source geospatial software technologies, training and expertise. It also aims to provide support for building-up and supporting development of open source GIS teaching and training materials, joint organization of open source GIS events, workshops through the ICA network for wider participation globally etc. Details at [[MOU_ICA]].


It is really good to see our rapidly expanding global spread.

Feel free to join the mailing list http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ica-osgeo-labs to follow the discussions among the participants of this initiative.

The current members of the ICA-OSGeo Network are (please add '''WGS84 decimal coordinates longitude,latitude''', if you don't add the coordinate following this simple rules your institution will not show on the ICA-OSGeo Map) :

{|class="wikitable sortable" border="2" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6" rules="all" style="margin:1em 1em 1em 0; border:solid 1px #AAAAAAAA; border-collapse:collapse; background-color:#edf9c7; font-size:95%; empty-cells:show;"
!
! Laboratory name and institution
! City
! Country
! Continent
! Coordinates (longitude, latitude)
! Application recieved / Announced
! Notes (collaborations, etc)
! Contact names
! Contact emails
|-
| 1.
| [http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ngi/research/geospatial-science/geospatial-science.aspx University of Nottingham]
| Nottingham
| UK
| Europe
| -1.250296, 52.831497
|
|
| Jeremy Morley
| Jeremy dot Morley at nottingham.ac.uk
|-
| 2.
| [http://www.sigte.udg.edu/ University of Girona]
| Girona
| Spain
| Europe
| 2.837305, 41.967426
| 2012-09-10
|
| Lluís Vicens
| lluis at sigte.udg.edu
|-
| 3.
| [http://www.osgl.soton.ac.uk/ University of Southampton]
| Southampton
| UK
| Europe
| -1.396873, 50.936974
| 2013-04-30
|
| Jason Sadler
| osgl at geodata.soton.ac.uk
|-
| 4.
| [http://geo.fsv.cvut.cz/gwiki/osgeorel Czech Technical University in Prague]
| Prague
| Czech Republic
| Europe
| 14.390363, 50.10183
| 2012-11-23
|
| Martin Landa
| martin.landa at fsv.cvut.cz
|-
| 5.
| [http://research.ncl.ac.uk/osgeolab/ Newcastle University]
| Newcastle
| UK
| Europe
| -1.611536, 54.980656
| 2013-01-17
|
| Philip James
| philip.james at ncl.ac.uk (please use subject: OSGeoLab)
|-
| 6.
| [http://geomatica.como.polimi.it/ Politecnico di Milano - Polo Territoriale di Como]
| Como
| Italy
| Europe
| 9.095939, 45.803516
| 2013-02-25
|
| Maria Brovelli
| geowb at geomatica.como.polimi.it
|-
| 7.
| [http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/research/facilities/geolab/ University of Warwick]
| Warwick
| UK
| Europe
| -1.56273, 52.380531
| 2013-03-23
|
| Nataliya Tkachenko
| geolab at warwick.ac.uk
|-
| 8.
| [http://www.gridw.pl UNEP/GRID-Warsaw Centre]
| Warsaw
| Poland
| Europe
| 21.039473, 52.198849
| 2013-03-18
|
| Ela Woloszynska-Wisniewska
| ela at gridw.pl
|-
| 9.
| [http://www.supsi.ch/ist_en/settori-attivita/geomatica.html University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland] (SUPSI)
| Lugano
| Switzerland
| Europe
| 8.961098, 46.028362
| 2013-09-03
| Institute of Earth Sciences
| Massimiliano Cannata
| geomatica at supsi.ch
|-
| 10.
| [http://karlinapp.ethz.ch/osgl/ ETH Zurich]
| Zurich
| Switzerland
| Europe
| 8.5481, 47.3764
| 2013-09-20
| [http://www.ikg.ethz.ch/about/index_EN Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation, ETH Zurich]
| Ionu? Iosifescu
| iosifescu at ethz.ch
|-
| 11.
| University of Molise
| Molise
| Italy
| Europe
| 14.493651, 41.630815
|
| in process of being established
| Rosella Nocera
|
|-
| 12.
| [http://www.igik.edu.pl/en Institute of Geodesy and Cartography] (IGiK)
| Warsaw
| Poland
| Europe
| 52.178478, 21.013407
|
| in process of being established
| Agata Ciołkosz-Styk
|
|-
| 13.
| [http://opengis.unibuc.ro/ Faculty of Geography, University of Bucharest]
| Bucharest
| Romania
| Europe
| 26.103889, 44.432500
|
| new website under development
| Andreea Marin
| andreea dot marin09 at yahoo dot com
|-
| 14.
| [http://www.geo.info.hu/english/index.php Faculty of Geoinformatics,University of West Hungary]
| Székesfehérvár
| Hungary
| Europe
| 18.418833, 47.188778
|
| in process of being established
| Andrea Podör
|
|-
| 15.
| [http://www.hft-stuttgart.de/Studienbereiche/Vermessung/Master-Photogrammetry-Geoinformatics/Labs/ICA-OSGeo-Labor/index.html/en Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences]
| Stuttgart
| Germany
| Europe
| 9.17370, 48.77996
| 2013-10-14
|
| Franz-Josef Behr
| franz-josef.behr at hft-stuttgart.de
|-
| 16.
| [http://www.geomatica.ufpr.br/index.html Federal University of Paraná]
| Paraná
| Brazil
| South America
| -49.26141, -25.427074
| 2012-05-23
|
| Silvana Camboim
|
|-
| 17.
| [http://www.unesp.br/ São Paulo State University] (UNESP)
| São Paulo
| Brazil
| South America
| -46.654129, -23.576574
|
|
|
|
|-
| 18.
| National Amazonian University of Madre de Dios (UNAMAD)
| Puerto Maldonado
| Peru
| South America
| -73.245789, -3.745845
| 2013-02-01
| in process of being established
| Andrea Birgit Chavez
|
|-
| 19.
| [http://ltaat.fcien.edu.uy Universidad de la República]
| Montevideo
| Uruguay
| South America
| -56.176441, -34.902405
| 2013-03-01
| new website under development
| Virginia Fernandez
| vfernandez at presidencia.gub.uy
|-
| 20.
| University of Campinas
| Campinas
| Brazil
| South America
| -47.063239, -22.907105
|
| in process of being established
|
|
|-
| 21.
| Federal University of Alagoas
| Maceió
| Brazil
| South America
| -35.735098, -9.666251
|
| in process of being established
|
|
|-
| 22.
| [http://gis.ncsu.edu/osgeorel/ Center for Earth Observation, North Carolina State University]
| Raleigh, NC
| USA
| North America
| -78.6764, 35.7818
| 2012-10-18
|Geospatial analysis, modeling and visualization, [http://grass.osgeo.org GRASS GIS] development
| Helena Mitasova
| hmitaso at ncsu.edu
|-
| 23.
| [http://www.umass.edu/opensource University of Massachusetts Amherst]
| Amherst
| USA
| North America
| -72.524696, 42.393578
| 2012-10-18
|
| Charlie Schweik
| cschweik at pubpol dot umass dot edu
|-
| 24.
| [https://sites.google.com/site/foss4gku/ University of Kansas]
| Lawrence, KS
| USA
| North America
| -95.251311, 38.958578
| 2013-08-23
|
| Xingong Li
| lixi at ku.edu
|-
| 25.
| [https://geospatial.ucdavis.edu/resources/open-source University of California, Davis]
| Davis
| USA
| North America
| -121.766945, 38.548801
| 2013-02-04
|
| Alex Mandel
| aimandel at ucdavis.edu
|-
| 26.
| [http://www.cozcyt.gob.mx/labsol/ Laboratorio de Software Libre]
| Zacatecas
| Mexico
| North America
| -102.5791, 22.7608
| 2013-04-05
| in process of being established
| Manual Haro
| manuel.haro at zacatecas.gob.mx
|-
| 27.
| Kent State University
| Kent, Ohio
| USA
| North America
| -81.357886,41.153667
| 2013-08-30
|
| Xinyue Ye
| xye5 at kent.edu
|-
| 28.
| [https://gis.uncc.edu/osgl Center for Applied GIScience, University of North Carolina, Charlotte ]
| Charlotte, NC
| USA
| North America
| -80.730000, 35.306944
| 2013-09-05
|
| Wenwu Tang
| WenwuTang at uncc.edu
|-
| 29.
| [http://www.nottingham.edu.my/Geography/Newsitems/Establishing-Open-Source-Geospatial-Lab.aspx University of Nottingham, Malaysia campus]
| Semenyih
| Malaysia
| Asia
| 101.721298, 3.172932
| 2012-01-09
| website in development
| Tuong Thuy Vu
| Tuongthuy.Vu at nottingham.edu.my
|-
| 30.
| [http://www.utm.my/ Universiti Teknologi Malaysia] (UTM)
| Johor Bahru
| Malaysia
| Asia
| 101.874222, 2.943748
|
| in process of being established
|
|
|-
| 31.
| National College of Public Administration and Governance(NCPAG), University of the Philippines
| Manila
| Philippines
| Asia
| 121.059875, 14.656005
|
| in process of being established
| Noriel Christopher Tiglao
|
|-
| 32.
| Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC)
| Quezon City
| Philippines
| Asia
| 121.062241, 14.64372
|
| in process of being established
| Maning Sambale
|
|-
| 33.
| [http://lsi.iiit.ac.in/labinfo/ Lab for Spatial Informatics], IIIT Hyderabad
| Hyderabad
| India
| Asia
| 78.3503, 17.4454
| 2011-08-22
|
| Dr K S Rajan
|
|-
| 34.
| [http://grel.ist.edu.pk/ Geospatial Research and Education Lab](GREL), Institute of Space Technology (IST)
| Islamabad
| Pakistan
| Asia
| 73.175045, 33.520060
|
|
|Rizwan Bulbul
|bulbul(dot)rizwan(at)gmail(dot)com
|-
| 35.
| [http://www.up.ac.za/cgis University of Pretoria]
| Pretoria
| South Africa
| Africa
| 28.22847, -25.75429
| 2012-05-15
|
| Serena Coetzee
| serena dot coetzee at up dot ac dot za
|-
| 36.
| [http://www.rcmrd.org/ Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development] (RCMRD)
| Nairobi
| Kenya
| Africa
| 36.858574, -1.249038
|
| in process of being established
| Hussein Farah
| farah at rcmrd.org
|-
| 37.
| University of Ghana
| Accra
| Ghana
| Africa
| -0.191617, 5.650366
|
| in process of being established
| Foster Mensah
|
|-
| 38.
| The University of Melbourne
| Melbourne
| Australia
| Australia
| 144.962006, -37.797932
| 2013-07-22
|
| Chris Pettit
|
|-
| 39.
| [http://cbi.tamucc.edu/Geospatial-Computing/ Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi]
| Corpus Christi
| USA
| North America
| -97.328799, 27.714506
| 2013-09-09
| in process of being established/website under construction
| Rick Smith
| Richard.Smith at tamucc.edu
|-
| 40.
| [http://www.geomaticsindia-cept.org/ CEPT University]
| Ahmedabad
| India
| Asia
| 72.566004,23.039568
| 2012-07-18
| in process of being established
| Prof. Anjana Vyas & Ms. Darshana Rawal
| anjanavyas at cept.ac.in rawalnet at cept.ac.in
|-
| 41.
| National University of San Juan
| San Juan
| Argentina
| South America
| -68.521408, -31.527273
| 2012-06-15
| in process of being established
| Agustin Arroqui
| aarroqui at unsj.edu.ar
|-
| 42.
| [http://geodacenter.asu.edu GeoDa Center for Geospatial Analysis and Computation, Arizona State University]
| Tempe, AZ
| USA
| North America
| -111.940005, 33.425510
| 2013-09-27
| Spatial econometrics, geocomputation, spatial optimization - [https://geodacenter.asu.edu/software/downloads GeoDa], [http://pysal.org PySAL], [https://geodacenter.asu.edu/software/downloads/geodaspace GeoDaSpace]
| [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Anselin Luc Anselin]
| geodacenter at asu.edu
|-
| 43.
| National Technical University of Athens
| Athens
| Greece
| Europe
| 23.729310, 37.983716
| 2013-09-26
| in process of being established
|
|
|-
| 44.
| IGN- France
| Paris
| France
| Europe
| 2.352222, 48.856614
| 2013-09-26
| in process of being established
| Benedicte Bucher
|
|-
| 45.
| Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
| Barcelona
| Spain
| Europe
| 2.173403, 41.385064
| 2013-09-27
| in process of being established
| Dr. Antoni Pérez Navarro
| aperezn at uoc.edu
|-
| 46.
| [http://www.isric.org ISRIC - World Soil Information foundation]
| Wageningen
| The Netherlands
| Europe
| 5.665662,51.9875
|2013-10-02
|website in construction
| Jorge de Jesus
| jorge.mendesdejesus at wur.nl
|-
| 47.
| Universidade da Coruña
| A Coruña (España)
| Spain
| Europe
| -8.411540, 43.362344
| 2013-10-15
| in process of being established
| Alberto Varela García
|
|-
| 48.
| Universiti Sains Malaysia
| Penang
| Malaysia
| Asia
| 100.484623, 5.263234
|2013-10-16
|in process of being established
| Ruslan Rainis
|
|-
| 49.
| Kathmandu University
| Dhulikhel
| Nepal
| Asia
| 85.550000, 27.616667
|2012-12-24
|https://sites.google.com/a/ku.edu.np/opensourcegeospatial/
| Shashish Maharjan
|
|-
| 50
| [http://gis.cri.fmach.it/ GIS and Remote Sensing Unit, Fondazione Edmund Mach ]
| San Michele all'Adige (Trento)
| Italy
| Europe
| 11.133042,46.187865
|2013-10-16
|
| Luca Delucchi
| luca.delucchi at fmach.it
|-
| 51.
| [http://gis.research.southwales.ac.uk/ University of South Wales ]
| Cardiff
| United Kingdom
| Europe
| -3.179090,51.481581
|2013-10-31
|
| Dr Mark Ware
| mark.ware at southwales.ac.uk
|-
| 52.
| [http://gisgeek.pdx.edu/wordpress/open-source-gis/ Portland State University]
| Portland, Oregon
| USA
| North America
| -122.676207,45.523452
| 2013-10-22
| Warming up
| David Percy
| percy at pdx.edu
|-
| 53.
| [http://www.icpac.net/ IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Center]
| Nairobi
| Kenya
| Africa
| 36.821946,-1.292066
| 2013-10-29
| In process of being established
| Muyambi Fortunate
| fbenda at icpac.net
|-
|-
| 54.
| [http://www.labocart.ufc.br/ Federal University of Ceará ]
| Ceará
| Brazil
| South America
| -38.543395,-3.718394
| 2013-10-29
| In process of being established
| Prof. Dr. Adryane Gorayeb
| adryanegorayeb at yahoo dot com dot br
|-
| 55.
| [http://geospecial.wordpress.com/ University of Gloucestershire ]
| Gloucester and Cheltenham
| United Kingdom
| Europe
| -2.223409, 51.872215
| 2013-11-06
| In process of being established
| Dr Robert Berry
| rberry at glos.ac.uk
|-
| 56.
| [http://mrt.ac.lk/foa/ University of Moratuwa ]
| Moratuwa
| Sri Lanka
| Asia
| 79.9008, 6.7964
| 2013-11-11
| [http://www.mrt.ac.lk/tcp/osgeosl.html OSGeoSL ]
| Aruna Wickramasinghe
| toaruna at gmail.com
|-
| 57.
| [http://www.fudan.edu.cn/ Fudan University]
| Shanghai
| China
| Asia
| 121.452, 31.198
| 2013-11-14
| [http://lab.osstat.org/ Open Source STATistics]
| Zhijie Zhang
| epistat at gmail.com
|-
| 58.
| Haskell Indian Nations University
| Lawrence, Kansas
| USA
| North America
| -95.230691, 38.938859
| 2013-11-22
| [https://sites.google.com/site/dtmcdermott/home/haskell-cartography-class/ Haskell Indian Nations University]
| Dave McDermott
| dmcdermott at haskell.edu
|-
| 59.
| [http://www.geof.unizg.hr/mod/book/view.php?id=1165&chapterid=110&lang=en University of Zagreb, Faculty of Geodesy]
| Zagreb
| Croatia
| Europe
| 15.963888, 45.808500
| 2013-11-25
|
| Dražen Tutic
| dtutic at geof.hr
|-
| 60.
| [http://www.geo.gob.bo/ GeoBolivia-Vice-presidency of the State ]
| La Paz
| Bolivia
| South America
| -68.1547, -16.4949
| 2013-11-24
| In process of being established
| Raul Fernando Molina Rodriguez
| rafemoro at gmail.com rmolina@geo.gob.bo
|-
| 61.
| Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, University of New Brunswick
| Fredericton, NB
| Canada
| North America
| -66.641474, 45.950252
| 2013-12-10
| In process of being established
| Emmanuel Stefanakis
| emmanuel.stefanakis at gmail.com
|-
| 62.
| [http://geo.sab.ac.lk/ Faculty of Geomatics, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka]
| Belihuloya, Sabaragamuwa
| Sri Lanka
| Asia
| 80.78995, 6.7102
| 2013-12-12
| In process of being established
| Thilantha Dammalage
| thilantha9 at gmail.com
|-
| 63.
| [http://www.sliit.lk/index.php/sliit/departments/department-of-information-technology Dpt of IT, Faculty of Computing, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology]
| Malabe
| Sri Lanka
| Asia
| 79.973166667, 6.914866667
| 2013-12-13
| [http://osgeolab.sliit.lk/ OSGeoSLIIT]
| Nimalika Fernando
| nimalikaf at gmail.com
|-
| 64.
| [http://www.unige.ch/environnement University of Geneva - Institute for Environmental Sciences]
| Geneva
| Switzerland
| Europe
| 6.1487, 46.2253
| 2013-12-19
| In process of being established
| Gregory Giuliani
| gregory.giuliani at unige.ch
|-
| 65.
| [http://www.ifs.hsr.ch/Geometa-Lab.12520.0.html?&L=4 Geometa Lab at HSR - University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil]
| Rapperswil
| Switzerland
| Europe
| 8.81690, 47.22341
| 2014-01-26
| (published 2014-02-05)
| Prof. Stefan Keller
| sfkeller at hsr.ch (and/or at gmail.ch)
|-
| 66.
| National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy", Ecology Faculty
| Kyiv
| Ukraine
| Europe
| 50.456936, 30.515647
| 2014-02-16
| In proess of being established
| Tetyana Kuchma
| tanyakuchma at yahoo.com
|-
| 67.
| Centre for Research and Technology Hellas - Hellenic Institute of Transport
| Thessaloniki
| Greece
| Europe
| 40.567811, 22.996707
| 2014-02-17
| In process of being established
| Dr. Evangelos Mitsakis
| emit at certh.gr
|-
| 68.
| Centre for Spatial Information Science(CSIS), University of Tokyo
| Kashiwa-shi, Chiba
| Japan
| Asia
| 139.938952, 35.902681
| 2014-02-18
| In process of being established
| Taichi FURUHASHI
| taichi at csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
|-
| 69.
|[http://foss4geo.org FOSS4Geo Academy @ Del Mar College National Open Geospatial Technology Consortium]
| Corpus Christi, Republic of Texas
| USA
| North America
| -97.407096, 27.764053
| 2014-02-18
| Active
| Dr. Phillip Davis
| pdavis at delmar.edu
|-
|}

== Interested in adding your own node into the ICA-OSGeo Labs network? ==

As the lab network is expanding fast ,we have also setup nodal contacts for each regions

# Anne Ghisla - Asia & Australia
# Helena Mitasova - North America
# Charlie Schweik - South America
# Suchith Anand - Europe & Africa

Email Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk and cc Helena Mitasova ‎[hmitaso at ncsu.edu]‎, Charlie Schweik ‎[cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu]‎, Anne Ghisla [a.ghisla at gmail.com] to start the conversation and they will be happy to discuss details and guide you through the process.

The key requirements for establishing a local OSGL are:

(A) Both parties should work for the vision of the [[MOU_ICA|ICA-OSGeo MoU]] to develop collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organizations in open source GIS software and data in the future.

(B) Someone at your institution or organization should have a strong Geospatial knowledge and vision to lead this activity and build a team of people, locally.

(C) There should be a website established for your Open Source Geospatial Laboratory listing current research, people, and training information. This web presence will allow the other nodes in the network and others to understand and promote your local efforts around research and teaching of open source geospatial technologies and approaches.

From our end, we will promote the initiative widely through both OSGeo and ICA channels to help build up collaboration opportunities for the future. We will also do a joint press release to announce the initiative and start building collaborations. A primary collaborative initiative continues to be the creation and maintenance of shared open access educational resources (for example [http://elogeo.nottingham.ac.uk/ the ELOGeo platform]). We will also add the info of all labs in the Open Geospatial Lab network node site within OSGeo website so that all participating labs urls are added and linked.

We especially welcome applications from universities, educational institutes, government organisations in developing countries to help develop capacity building in geospatial education by establishing Open Source Geo Labs.

== Meetings ==
; Next meeting:
* '''[[ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-09-05]] 18.00 UTC'''

; Past Meetings:
* [[ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-07-29]] 14.00 UTC
* [[ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-05-02]] 14.00 UTC
* [[ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-06-06]] 14.00 UTC

== ISC OSGeo Lab Network Research and Teaching Areas ==

[[ICA_OSGeo_Lab_Research_areas]]
 
[[ICA_OSGeo_Lab_Teaching_areas]]

[[Category: Education]]
[[Category: ICA OSGeo Lab Network]]

PDX OSGEO 20130417 Meeting

2013-04-12T13:20:32Z

Wiki-Percyd:

== Time and Location ==
* '''April 17th, 6-8pm'''
* '''Renewable Funding'''
* '''400 SW 6th Avenue, Suite 902'''
* '''Portland, OR 97204 USA'''
* [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=400+SW+6th+Avenue%2C+Suite+902%2C+Portland+OR+97204+US map]
* '''If you arrive after 6pm, please buzz the security guard, who will open the doors and let you up to the 9th floor.'''
* '''The office is through the double doors immediately to the left after exiting the elevators.'''

= Agenda =
''This month is a chance for anyone who wants a trial run at their talk for GIS in Action''

== Item 1 ==
''Unconference details''

== Item 2 ==
''Notes''

PDXOSGEO Member Listing

2011-10-26T03:48:22Z

Wiki-Percyd:

# Jeremy VanGelder, GIS Technician, I-10 Associates
# Robert Denner, GIS Coordinator, City of Philomath
# David Percy, Geospatial Data Manager and Map Wrangler, Portland State University, Geology and Urban Planning Depts
# member4
# can this be a less space taking table without making the syntax complex for new users?

Academic Network

2011-05-18T17:12:09Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Brainstorming page - not official'''
-------

The goals of the OSGeo (International) Academic Network would be primarily collaboration, to:

# Provide a unified academic body for OSGeo to turn to for more official perspectives and roles.
# Allow OSGeo focused students, interns, and institutions to find opportunities to work together.
# Help each other find research funding opportunities and grants by working together.
# Maintain a comprehensive list of contact persons in various regions for rollout of ideas. (more than just a mailing list!)
# Receive and direct the use of funding. There would be a fee to join the network, with some of that funding going back to fund activities - e.g. scholarships, research, writing, events.
# Give a more unified presence for OSGeo Academics at major events - e.g. AAG, ICA ...
# Identify the best opportunities for using marketing funds at academic events.
# Help host and run regular, regionally focus, workshops, events and education sprints.
# Coordinate with the OSGeo Journal to have special editions, move toward collective needs.
# Show the world that OSGeo is organised and pursuing academic initiatives.

All this would build on the idea of the [[Education Committee]] but act more like a formal Project within OSGeo rather than just a discussion place.

More background on the [[Talk:Academic Network]] page.

== Institutions showing interest ==

* Tyler Mitchell, OSGeo, coordinating discussion

# Charlie Schweik, University of Massachusetts, USA
# Ari Jolma, Aalto University, Finland
# Suchith Anand, University of Nottingham, UK
# Lluís Vicens, SIGTE-University of Girona, Spain
# Maria Brovelli, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
# Rafael Moreno, University of Colorado Denver, USA
# David Percy, Portland State University, USA
# Massimiliano Cannata,SUPSI, Switzerland
# Venkatesh Raghavan,OCU, Japan,
# Helena Mitasova, North Carolina State University, USA
* ICA and ISPRS - several above members on their working groups too

[[Category:Education]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-03-26T00:37:18Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action(GIA)], which will also include some open source tracks--mostly concentrated on Thursday. GIA has a single day rate for those who would only want to attend Thursday.

This Friday/Saturday event will take place at University Place and will have access to several rooms for different tracks. Track 1 is in a room that seats 125, tracks 2 and 3 in rooms that seats 70.

Depending on the number of attendees, we can scale back accordingly within three days of the event.

There will be a registration fee of $15 to $20 to pay for rooms, and possibly some refreshments. Lunch will be up to the attendees, there is a nearby stand of food carts which have excellent choices.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 
Track one is a series of invited talks, tracks 2 and 3 will be organized ad hoc, depending on interest from attendees.
Check the evolving [http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-osgis/web/open-source-gis-unconference list] of invited talks.

Track 1 is in a room that seats 125, tracks 2 and 3 in rooms that seats 70.

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Tracks 2 and 3===
More Unconference!

[[Category:Events]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-03-26T00:34:24Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action(GIA)], which will also include some open source tracks--mostly concentrated on Thursday. GIA has a single day rate for those who would only want to attend Thursday.

This Friday/Saturday event will take place at University Place and will have access to several rooms for different tracks. Track 1 is in a room that seats 125, tracks 2 and 3 in rooms that seats 70.

Depending on the number of attendees, we can scale back accordingly within three days of the event.

There will be a registration fee of $15 to $20 to pay for rooms, and possibly some refreshments. Lunch will be up to the attendees, there is a nearby stand of food carts which have excellent choices.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 
Track one is a series of invited talks, tracks 2 and 3 will be organized ad hoc, depending on interest from attendees.
Check [here]http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-osgis/web/open-source-gis-unconference for an updated list of invited talks.

Track 1 is in a room that seats 125, tracks 2 and 3 in rooms that seats 70.

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Tracks 2 and 3===
More Unconference!

[[Category:Events]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-03-26T00:25:59Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action(GIA)], which will also include some open source tracks--mostly concentrated on Thursday. GIA has a single day rate for those who would only want to attend Thursday.

This Friday/Saturday event will take place at University Place and will have access to several rooms for different tracks. Track 1 is in a room that seats 125, tracks 2 and 3 in rooms that seats 70.

Depending on the number of attendees, we can scale back accordingly within three days of the event.

There will be a registration fee of $15 to $20 to pay for rooms, and possibly some refreshments. Lunch will be up to the attendees, there is a nearby stand of food carts which have excellent choices.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 
Track one is a series of invited talks, tracks 2 and 3 will be organized ad hoc, depending on interest from attendees.
Check here for an updated list of invited talks.

Track 1 is in a room that seats 125, tracks 2 and 3 in rooms that seats 70.

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Tracks 2 and 3===
More Unconference!

[[Category:Events]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-03-26T00:20:07Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action(GIA)], which will also include some open source tracks--mostly concentrated on Thursday. GIA has a single day rate for those who would only want to attend Thursday.

This Friday/Saturday event will take place at University Place and will have access to several rooms for different tracks. Track 1 is in a room that seats 125, tracks 2 and 3 in rooms that seats 70.

Depending on the number of attendees, we can scale back accordingly within three days of the event.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 
track 1 in a room that seats 60, track 2 in a room that seats 30, several other smaller rooms available for more focused "sessions".

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Track 2===
More Unconference?

== Planning Meeting Agenda/tasks ==
# Purpose
# Location - how many rooms, what size?
# Participation expectations/reach
# Volunteer availability - local chapters, project reps
# Crossover with other orgs/projects?
#Funding: sponsors vs registration fee

[[Category:Events]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T19:36:43Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action(GIA)], which will also include some open source tracks--mostly concentrated on Thursday. GIA has a single day rate for those who would only want to attend Thursday.

This Friday/Saturday event will take place in the Urban Center and will have access to several rooms for different tracks. Track 1 is in a room that seats 60, track 2 in a room that seats 30, several other smaller rooms available for more focused "sessions".

If it is sensed by the organizing committee that more than 100 people will attend, Percy can look into more rooms on campus. Smith Center is booked all day Saturday, so it is unavailable.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 
track 1 in a room that seats 60, track 2 in a room that seats 30, several other smaller rooms available for more focused "sessions".

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Track 2===
More Unconference?

== Planning Meeting Agenda/tasks ==
# Purpose
# Location - how many rooms, what size?
# Participation expectations/reach
# Volunteer availability - local chapters, project reps
# Crossover with other orgs/projects?
#Funding: sponsors vs registration fee

[[Category:Events]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T19:35:00Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action(GIA)], which will also include some open source tracks--mostly concentrated on Thursday. GIA has a single day rate for those who would only want to attend Thursday.

This Friday/Saturday event will take place in the Urban Center and will have access to several rooms for different tracks. Track 1 is in a room that seats 60, track 2 in a room that seats 30, several other smaller rooms available for more focused "sessions".

If it is sensed by the organizing committee that more than 100 people will attend, Percy can look into more rooms on campus. Smith Center is booked all day Saturday, so it is unavailable.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 
track 1 in a room that seats 60, track 2 in a room that seats 30, several other smaller rooms available for more focused "sessions".

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Track 2===
More Unconference?

== Planning Meeting Agenda/tasks ==
# Purpose
# Location - how many rooms, what size?
# Participation expectations/reach
# Volunteer availability - local chapters, project reps
# Crossover with other orgs/projects?

[[Category:Events]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T01:02:51Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action], which will also include some open source tracks.

This Friday/Saturday event will take place in the Urban Center and will have access to several rooms for different tracks. Track 1 is in a room that seats 60, track 2 in a room that seats 30, several other smaller rooms available for more focused "sessions".

If it is sensed by the organizing committee that more than 100 people will attend, Percy can look into more rooms on campus. Smith Center is booked all day Saturday, so it is unavailable.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 
track 1 in a room that seats 60, track 2 in a room that seats 30, several other smaller rooms available for more focused "sessions".

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Track 2===
More Unconference?

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T00:44:12Z

Wiki-Percyd:

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T00:43:21Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR''' 
'''April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423'''

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action], which will also include some open source tracks.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Track 2===
Unconference?

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T00:25:47Z

Wiki-Percyd:

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action], which will also include some open source tracks.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration 
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes 
10:00 -sessions start 

==Day 2==
Track 1 
9am - Codesprint/Documentation Sprint 

===Track 2===
Unconference?

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T00:16:19Z

Wiki-Percyd:

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR 
April 16th and 17th, 2010 
Portland State University 
Portland, Oregon 
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action], which will also include some open source tracks.

==Day 1==
9am - Registration
9:30 - Put sessions in rooms based on votes
10:00 -sessions start

==Day 2==
Track 1
9am - Codespint/Documentation Sprint

===Track 2===
Unconference?

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T00:10:49Z

Wiki-Percyd:

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T00:07:49Z

Wiki-Percyd:

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

April 16th and 17th, 2010

Portland State University

Portland, Oregon

45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action], which will also include some open source tracks.

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-28T00:06:58Z

Wiki-Percyd:

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR
April 16th and 17th, 2010
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon
45.511873,-122.68423

This "unconference" will follow a 2-day traditional GIS conference, [http://www.orurisa.org/GIS_In_Action GIS In Action], which will also include some open source tracks.

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-27T23:45:12Z

Wiki-Percyd:

[[Category:Events]]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

2010-01-27T23:44:46Z

Wiki-Percyd: New page: [Category:Events] Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

[Category:Events]

Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR

Category:Events

2010-01-27T23:44:05Z

Wiki-Percyd:

This page lists all events with a major OSGeo appearance like a booth, workshop, talk, presentation or BOF session. If you are interested in helping promote or organize an event, please read the [[Event Management]] page and check out the [[Marketing Targets]].

[[Open Source GIS Conference--Portland, OR]]

OSCON 2008

2008-07-25T20:28:47Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Booth'''
* PercyD is in charge

'''Volunteers'''
* Brian, Will, Morgan

'''Summary'''
* traffic was reasonable, the conversations were often good. A pattern of specialty still exists - that is, a small handful of professionals had completed sometimes extensive projects and wanted to show them off to us on their laptops! While the majority of attendees had little exposure to the tech at all, however they had GPS units and wanted to figure out how to get free basemaps, or... Some interest in intro web mapping. Some awareness of FOSS4G in Cape Town.

*once again, a common theme is that people want data! and they want geocoding! This is Percy's third year doing OSCON, and there was a "groundhog day" feel to those kind of questions. Usually some guy has an idea about how to make money using LBS, but he doesn't want to give you all the details, so he's a little vague and talks about locating zipcodes and calculating distances between things.

* spoke with some media professionals.. they are aware of the strategic importance of the sector

* several companies expressed polite interest in getting developer attention through OSGeo

*Brian gets accolades from Percy for tireless, cheerful staffing of the booth! He put in at least twice as many hours as anyone else. Thanks Brian!!!

*Percy had a nice chat with Geoff Zeiss about "enterprise" open source GIS, and Geoff brought up a good point about the need for a standards based data-input constraint engine or something. I'm not sure where to go with it, so I'm just splattering it here...

*a picture of the booth will appear near here sometime soon.

* We (someone besides Percy) should talk to the O'Reilly folks about doing an OSGEO track next year :-)

*Percy thinks we can probably count on sharing space with opensourcelabs, PSU rocketry club, etc next year, if we want... It's not as plush and high visibility as having our own booth, but you can't beat the price!

OSCON 2008

2008-07-25T20:28:08Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Booth'''
* PercyD is in charge

'''Volunteers'''
* Brian, Will, Morgan

'''Summary'''
* traffic was reasonable, the conversations were often good. A pattern of specialty still exists - that is, a small handful of professionals had completed sometimes extensive projects and wanted to show them off to us on their laptops! While the majority of attendees had little exposure to the tech at all, however they had GPS units and wanted to figure out how to get free basemaps, or... Some interest in intro web mapping. Some awareness of FOSS4G in Cape Town.

*once again, a common theme is that people want data! and they want geocoding! This is Percy's third year doing OSCON, and there was a "groundhog day" feel to those kind of questions.
Usually some guy has an idea about how to make money using LBS, but he doesn't want to give you all the details, so he's a little vague and talks about locating zipcodes and calculating distances between things.

* spoke with some media professionals.. they are aware of the strategic importance of the sector

* several companies expressed polite interest in getting developer attention through OSGeo

*Brian gets accolades from Percy for tireless, cheerful staffing of the booth! He put in at least twice as many hours as anyone else. Thanks Brian!!!

*Percy had a nice chat with Geoff Zeiss about "enterprise" open source GIS, and Geoff brought up a good point about the need for a standards based data-input constraint engine or something. I'm not sure where to go with it, so I'm just splattering it here...

*a picture of the booth will appear near here sometime soon.

* We (someone besides Percy) should talk to the O'Reilly folks about doing an OSGEO track next year :-)

*Percy thinks we can probably count on sharing space with opensourcelabs, PSU rocketry club, etc next year, if we want...
It's not as plush and high visibility as having our own booth, but you can't beat the price!

OSCON 2008

2008-07-25T20:25:56Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Booth'''
* PercyD is in charge

'''Volunteers'''
* Brian, Will, Morgan

'''Summary'''
* traffic was reasonable, the conversations were often good. A pattern of specialty still exists - that is, a small handful of professionals had completed sometimes extensive projects and wanted to show them off to us on their laptops! While the majority of attendees had little exposure to the tech at all, however they had GPS units and wanted to figure out how to get free basemaps, or... Some interest in intro web mapping. Some awareness of FOSS4G in Cape Town.

*once again, a common theme is that people want data! and they want geocoding! This is Percy's third year doing OSCON, and there was a "groundhog day" feel to those kind of questions.
Usually some guy has an idea about how to make money using LBS, but he doesn't want to give you all the details, so he's a little vague and talks about locating zipcodes and calculating distances between things.

* spoke with some media professionals.. they are aware of the strategic importance of the sector

* several companies expressed polite interest in getting developer attention through OSGeo

*Brian gets accolades from Percy for tireless, cheerful staffing of the booth! He put in at least twice as many hours as anyone else. Thanks Brian!!!

*Percy had a nice chat with Geoff Zeiss about "enterprise" open source GIS, and Geoff brought up a good point about the need for a standards based data-input constraint engine or something. I'm not sure where to go with it, so I'm just splattering it here...

*a picture of the booth will appear near here sometime soon.

* We (someone besides Percy) should talk to the O'Reilly folks about doing an OSGEO track next year :-)

OSCON 2008

2008-07-25T20:25:24Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''Booth'''
* PercyD is in charge

'''Volunteers'''
* Brian, Will, Morgan

'''Summary'''
* traffic was reasonable, the conversations were often good. A pattern of specialty still exists - that is, a small handful of professionals had completed sometimes extensive projects and wanted to show them off to us on their laptops! While the majority of attendees had little exposure to the tech at all, however they had GPS units and wanted to figure out how to get free basemaps, or... Some interest in intro web mapping. Some awareness of FOSS4G in Cape Town.

*once again, a common theme is that people want data! and they want geocoding! This is Percy's third year doing OSCON, and there was a "groundhog day" feel to those kind of questions.
Usually some guy has an idea about how to make money using LBS, but he doesn't want to give you all the details, so he's a little vague and talks about locating zipcodes and calculating distances between things.

* spoke with some media professionals.. they are aware of the strategic importance of the sector

* several companies expressed polite interest in getting developer attention through OSGeo

*Brian gets accolades from Percy for tireless, cheerful staffing of the booth! He put in at least twice as many hours as anyone else. Thanks Brian!!!

*Percy had a nice chat with Geoff Zeiss about "enterprise" open source GIS, and Geoff brought up a good point about the need for a standards based data-input constraint engine or something. I'm not sure where to go with it, so I'm just splattering it here...

*a picture of the booth will appear near here sometime soon.

* We (someone besides Percy) should talk to the O'Reilly folks about doing an OSGEO track next year
:-)

User:Percyd

2007-07-31T16:24:56Z

Wiki-Percyd:

'''David Percy'''

Geospatial Data Manager
Geology Department
Portland State University

David Percy has been the Geospatial Data Manager for Portland State University’s Geology Department since 1998. Before that, he spent 15 years as a database manager and programmer in the field of medical research. He retrained as a geologist in order to use his skills in the field of Earth Science. Since 1999 he has taught technology courses related to GIS, including GIS for the Natural Sciences, GIS Programming and Web GIS at the university. He also teaches high school teachers to use GIS in their science courses, and mentors high school students. He is involved in international data standards regarding geospatial data transmission through the Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information. He is actively involved in the Open Source GIS movement through OSGEO and is a collaborator on a web-mapping framework named Map-Fu. His work in the domains of glaciology, coastal studies and web mapping has been published in several journals and open file reports.

User:Percyd

2007-07-31T16:23:37Z

Wiki-Percyd:

David Percy

[[Image:http://conferences.oreillynet.com/images/speakers/david_percy.jpg]]

Geospatial Data Manager
Geology Department
Portland State University

David Percy has been the Geospatial Data Manager for Portland State University’s Geology Department since 1998. Before that, he spent 15 years as a database manager and programmer in the field of medical research. He retrained as a geologist in order to use his skills in the field of Earth Science. Since 1999 he has taught technology courses related to GIS, including GIS for the Natural Sciences, GIS Programming and Web GIS at the university. He also teaches high school teachers to use GIS in their science courses, and mentors high school students. He is actively involved in international data standards regarding geospatial data transmission through the Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information. He is actively involved in the Open Source GIS movement through OSGEO and is a collaborator on a web-mapping framework named Map-Fu. His work in the domains of glaciology, coastal studies and web mapping has been published in several journals and open file reports.

All Members

2007-07-30T18:32:29Z

Wiki-Percyd:

''We should consider moving the content of the '''About''' column to the corresponding user pages (that is what they are meant for) and leave only the list here. MediaWiki is throwing an edit warning that the page is larger than 32kb which can cause trouble in some browsers.''

{| border="1" class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; border-collapse: collapse;"
! style="background:#efefef;" | Name
! style="background:#ffdead;" | Affiliations
! style="background:#efefef;" | OSGeo Projects
! style="background:#ffdead;" | Location
! style="background:#efefef;" | About
|-
| Add yourself
| Everyone is welcome
| In which OSGeo Projects and Committees are you involved
| Input your latitude and longitude here (and watch out for [[Axis Order Confusion]])
| Copy and paste this entry, put it last, and add your information
|-
| Chris Holmes
| [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project], [http://geoserver.org GeoServer]
| [http://incubator.osgeo.org Incubator], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| (40.72,-74.00)
| I come from the Java side of the OSGeo fence, getting my start in GeoServer, where I was lead developer for a couple years, and GeoTools, where I still serve on the PMC. My time is made possible by [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project (TOPP)], a great non-profit in New York that has been the lead supporter of GeoServer for years now. I spent the last year in Zambia on a Fulbright Scholarship, looking at the potential for open source software to help implement spatial data infrastructures in developing countries. It was a bit of a failure, but I learned a ton, and I see a lot of potential for open source in developing countries, towards truly open spatial data infrastructures. I'm back at TOPP, in a new role as VP of Strategic Development, helping to grow the organization, and figuring out how to make our geospatial stuff self sustaining. Once that's rolling, I hope to reinvest extra revenue in to figuring out and building a truly open geospatial web. And just like apache and linux are the bedrock that the World Wide Web rests on, so too do I believe that the geospatial web necessarily must be built on a foundation of OS Geo software. My continuing thoughts on all of this can be found at http://cholmes.wordpress.com
|-
| Michael P. Gerlek
| [http://www.lizardtech.com LizardTech]
| [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee] (chair)
| (47.673166,-122.530143)
| Manager of LizardTech's Engineering department, where we do MrSID and JPEG 2000 stuff and play with with the next generation of technologies for supporting raster data GIS workflows. No, our products are not open source -- but we do very much support and use open source and open standards. (I think there is room in the world for both the open and closed development models, and I have a strong interest in helping "closed" companies understand the value of, and contribute to, the open software world.) [[User:mpg]]
|-
| Frank Warmerdam
| Independent
| [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR], [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu MapServer], [http://incubator.osgeo.org Incubator], [http://board.osgeo.org Board]
| (45.45,-77.25)
| Lead developer of GDAL/OGR and freelance geospatial software developer.
|-
| Jason Birch
| [http://www.nanaimo.ca/ City of Nanaimo]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site], [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion & Visibility]
| (49.155, -124.005)
| I am a long-time GIS/IT/'Net junkie, and am currently working for the City of Nanaimo's IT department as a Sr. Applications Analyst (GIS Specialist). I am excited about what I see happening in the open source geospatial world, with OSGeo as a catalyst. [[User:Jasonbirch]]
|-
|Howard Butler
| [http://www.hobu.biz/ Hobu, Inc]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee],
| (42.00, -93.00)
| MapServer hacker, MTSC member. GDAL hacker. ESRI ArcSDE hack. Purveyor of Windows binary builds [[User:hobu]]
|-
| Markus Neteler
| [http://mpa.itc.it ITC-irst], [http://www.cealp.it CEA], [http://www.gdf-hannover.de GDF Hannover]
| [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [http://geodata.osgeo.org Public Geodata Com.], [http://edu.osgeo.org Education Com.], [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion & Visibility Com.]
| (46.06714, 11.15113)
| Developer of GRASS GIS, researcher at ITC-irst + CEA, Trento, Italy and co-founder of GDF Hannover [[User:neteler]]
|-
| R. Paul Warriner
| [http://www.orchardparkny.org/ Town of Orchard Park]
| [http://fundraising.osgeo.org Fundraising Committee], [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee]
| (43.17, -78.69)
| Network Coordinator, old oil field hand (really, I do know what a christmas tree is).
[[User:RPaulW]]
|-
|Bart van den Eijnden
| [http://www.osgis.nl/ OSGIS]
| [http://chameleon.maptools.org Chameleon],
| (52.0768396070808, 5.12454)
| Freelancer working with several open source GIS tools, mainly Chameleon, Mapserver and Geoserver.
[[User:bartvde]]
|-
|Simone Giannecchini
| [http://simboss.wordpress.com/ blog] ,[http://www.geo-solutions.it GeoSolutions]
| [http://geoserver.org GeoServer], [http://http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home GeoTools]
| (gotta look for it :-))
| I have been working as a freelance consultant in the GIS and Image Processing field since early 2004, mainly in scientific and military environment. I am PMC member of [http://http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home GeoTools] and active developer of [http://geoserver.org GeoServer]. I am also providing some patches for the [https://jai.dev.java.net/ JAI] and [https://jai-imageio.dev.java.net/ ImageIO] SUN libraries for image processing in Java.

I am a big GDAL fan, I have been involved in the last year in an effort for putting GDAL behind ImageIO
for widening the number of supported formats. The goal is to make this formats avalaible through GeoTools to the GeoServer. If you are interested in supporting or joining this effort, please, drop me a few lines at simone.giannecchini-at-geo-solutions.it or simboss1-at-gmail.com
[[User:simboss]]
|-
| Helena Mitasova
| [http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/ North Carolina State University]
| [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
| (35.77, -78.69)
| Researcher at NCSU (geospatial technology, environmental modeling, sustainable development), Developer of GRASS GIS. [[User:Helena]]
|-
| Daniel Morissette
| [http://www.mapgears.com/ Mapgears]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR]
| (48.42, -71.04)
| Involved in MapServer, GDAL/OGR and most [http://maptools.org/ MapTools.org] projects, mostly around webmapping and data access and distribution. [[User:dmorissette]]
|-
| Tamas Szekeres
| [http://www.hmeirt.hu/ MoD ED Co.]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer]
| (47.56, 19.08)
| M.Sc.El.Engineer, Head of Development Department, GPS Division , MapServer contributor/hacker, mapscript C# maintainer, involved in various WEB mapping and desktop applications, GPS navigation and tracking systems. [[User:szekerest]]
|-
| Ari Jolma
| [http://users.tkk.fi/~jolma/index.html TKK]
| [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
| (60° 16' , 24° 47' 4'')
| Professor at TKK, Finland (geoinformatics, environmental information systems, water resources systems), [http://map.hut.fi/PerlForGeoinformatics/ just another Perl hacker] [[User:ajolma]]
|-
| Jeff McKenna
| [http://www.dmsolutions.ca DM Solutions Group]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer]
| (45.401397610, -75.725861625)
| MapServer documentation, [http://www.maptools/ms4w MS4W] maintainer, [http://www.maptools.org maptools] co-maintainer. [[User:jmckenna]]
|-
| Ian Turton
| [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work][http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
| [http://www.geotools.org GeoTools]
| (40.7932, -77.847)
| [http://www.geotools.org GeoTools] founder and developer, [http://www.geovistastudio.psu.edu GeoVistaStudio] benevolent dictator, [http://geoserver.org GeoServer] user. [[User:ianturton]]
|-
| David Blasby
| [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project], [http://geoserver.org GeoServer], [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| (varies)
| Currently, I'm the Project Lead for Geoserver and am on the GeoTools Project Management Committee. I'm just starting a GeoWiki (Public Participation GIS) (please contact me if you're interested). I was the orginal creator of PostGIS, and have contributed to several OS GIS projects, including JTS, JUMP, and Mapserver.
|-
| Andrey Kiselev
| "Radar" R&D Centre (Russia)
| GDAL/OGR
| (60.04,30.33)
| Freelance developer and contributor to GDAL/OGR project.
|-
| Helton Uchoa
| [http://www.geolivre.org.br Geolivre Community], [http://www.open3dgis.org Open 3D GIS Project]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee] and [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project Public Geospatial Data Project]
| (-22.96, -43.11)
| I'm a Geomatics Enginner and I work at [http://www.opengeo.com.br OpenGEO Company] as a GIS Specialist. I'm responsible for many GIS projects using FOSS and the OpenGIS Specifications in Brazil and I have some relevant papers and scientific articles presented in Brazilian and Latin-American conferences and published in scientific magazines. In last year, I have helped, as a teacher, introduce the GNU/FSF philosophy at the Transportation Engineering Department of IME ([http://www.ime.eb.br Military Institute of Engineering - IME], Brazil). I have worked in Geolivre Rio 2004 and 2005 as member of organization commitee. Now I'm working in [http://www.geolivre.org Geolivre Conference 2007]. [[User:Uchoa]]
|-
| Toru Mori
| [http://www.orkney.co.jp/english Orkney, Inc.]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS]
| (35.448, 139.642)
| President of Orkney, Inc. Advocate of Open Geospatial tools in Japan and Asia. Promote open geospatial data. [[User:moritoru]]
|-
| Allan Doyle
| [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO],[http://museum.mit.edu/cmp MIT Museum],[http://spg.gsfc.nasa.gov/ NASA Earth Science Data Systems Standards Process Group]
| [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project Public Geospatial Data Project]
| (42.28, -71.24)
| President of [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO] and [http://www.intl-interfaces.com International Interfaces], long-time geo-interoperability interests, opensourced (is that a verb?) [http://openmap.bbn.com OpenMap], originator of OGC testbed idea, Web Mapping Testbed, WMS spec editor, worked on WMS Context, [http://www.georss.org GeoRSS]. [http://www.eogeo.org/Members/adoyle more details]. [http://think.random-stuff.org Blog][[User:adoyle]]
|-
| Ned Horning
| [http://cbc.amnh.org/ Center for Biodiversity and Conservation], [http://www.amnh.org/ American Museum of Natural History]
| [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
|(43.9933, -73.0407)
|Program manager for [http://geospatial.amnh.org/ remote sensing/GIS]. Promoter of open source geospatial tools in the global conservation community.
|-
| Paul Spencer
| [http://www.dmsolutions.ca DM Solutions Group]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://chameleon.maptools.org Chameleon], [http://ka-map.maptools.org kaMap], [http://maptools.org/maplab/index.phtml MapLab], [http://maptools.org/ms4w/index.phtml MS4W], [http://openev.sourceforge.net/ OpenEV]
| (45.401397610, -75.725861625)
| CTO of DM Solutions Group, designer/developer/contributor to many open source packages, especially based on MapServer. Recent interest/focus is on AJAX clients for mapping applications. [[User:pagameba]]
|-
| Mark Lucas
| remotesensing.org
| [http://www.remotesensing.org remotesensing.org] and [http://www.ossim.org ossim]
| (27.9690219N, 080.5590534W altitude sea level + 5m)
| CTO, original founder of ImageLinks and remotesensing.org. Board of Directors [http://www.oss-institute.org/ Open Source Software Institute] and the [http://www.ncospr.org/ National Center for Open Source Policy and Research]. Member of [http://www.opentechdev.org Open Technology Development] Tiger team for the Department of Defense (USA). Lead a team of talented developers on the OSSIM and [http://www.ossim.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=3 osgPlanet] projects. Previously spent 22 years in the United States Air Force and [http://www.nro.gov/ National Reconnaissance Office] and the [http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/hall3.htm Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects] organization working with various classified programs. Prior to Radiant Blue Technologies, was a Lead Scientist for Intelligence Data Systems, Titan Corporation, and L3-Communciations. [http://web.mac.com/mlucas17/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html Personal Web site]. [[User:mlucas17]]
|-
| Jo Walsh
| [http://okfn.org/geo/ Open Knowledge Foundation],[http://mappinghacks.com/ Mapping Hacks], [http://publicgeodata.org Public Geodata]
| Open Geodata committee
| (42.368297,-71.108696)
| Came to geospatial software through collaborative mapping on the semantic web work. Organising events to get geospatial hackers together with data-creating people and promote public access to state collected geodata. If you are in Europe please see [http://publicgeodata.org Public Geodata] and consider writing to an MEP about public domain data and "intellectual property rights" issues. If you collect GPS tracks, please consider uploading them to [http://openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetmap] - my only real contribution to this project is to talk about it a lot. I co-wrote "Mapping Hacks" with Schuyler Erle and Rich Gibson, with a lot of contributions from OSGeo type of people. Last year wrote a lot of software using OSM and [http://openguides.org/ OpenGuides] with [[Mapserver]] to provide a basis for collaborative local "portal" type services on community wireless networks. Now more interested in doing collaborative writing and research projects. [[User:JoWalsh]]
|-
| Dave McIlhagga
| [http://www.dmsolutions.ca DM Solutions Group]
| [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee]
| (45.401397610, -75.725861625)
| President & CEO of DM Solutions Group. Active promoter of open source geospatial technologies. Led DM Solutions Group to become a major contributor and advocate of MapServer and development of key open source MapServer utilities including [http://chameleon.maptools.org Chameleon], [http://ka-map.maptools.org kaMap], [http://maptools.org/maplab/index.phtml MapLab], [http://maptools.org/ms4w/index.phtml MS4W]. Provided financial and resource support for setup of a key home for open source geospatial projects at [http://www.maptools.org MapTools]. Led the organizing committee for [http://www.omsug.ca/osgis2004/index.html OSGIS], the first Open Source Geospatial conference in North America which coincided with the second MapServer User Meeting. Spearheaded the integration of the two major open source geospatial conferences from North America and Europe/Asia, as the [http://www.foss4g2006.org/ Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformations] single international event to be held in Lausanne Switzerland. [[User:davemac]]
|-
| Pericles (Perry) Nacionales
| [http://land.umn.edu University of Minnesota]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee]
| (44.9873167, -93.1851500)
| Promoter of open source geospatial technologies specially in the field of natural resources management and conservation, advocate of open and interoperability standards, MTSC member, author of [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/tutorial/tutorial/tutorial MapServer Tutorial].
|-
| Norman Vine
| Independent
|
| (41:31:38N, 70:39:43W)
| Independent software developer [[User:Nhv]]
|-
| Mike Adair
| [http://www.geoconnections.org/CGDI.cfm Natural Resources Canada/GeoConnections]
| [http://communitymapbuilder.org MapBuilder]
| (45.27, -75.75)
| Contributor and member of MapBuilder PMC. Interested primarily in AJAX client technology for mapping, but also in the whole SDI stack. [[User:madair]]
|-
| Stefan F. Keller
| University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR), [http://www.ifs.hsr.ch Institute for Software]
| [http://webgis.hsr.ch/javawps JavaWPS]
| (47.2240, 8.8181)
| Promotor of open source and commercial technologies specially in the field of information retrieval, databases, GIS and visualization. Advocate of open and interoperability standards, member of national GIS standardization (e-geo, SNV) and umbrella (SOGI) organizations. Creator of [http://wwww.geometa.info geometa.info], one of the first search engines for geospatial services (WMS), metadata and online maps (Lucene-based); contributor of geo-webservices for german Wikipedia. [[User:Sfkeller]]
|-
| [[User:Arnulf Christl | Arnulf Christl]]
| [http://www.wheregroup.com WhereGroup], [http://www.opengeospatial.org OGC Member]
| [http://www.mapbender.org Mapbender], [http://www.fossgis.de FOSSGIS], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [[Promotion and Visibility Committee]]
| (50.7342N, 7.0707W)
| Mapbender PSC, [http://www.gnu.org Free] and [http://www.opensource.org Open] Source Software [[Business]] advocate on a mission to reduce [[FOSSFUD]].
|-
|V.RaviKumar
|Geologist
|OSGeo member [http://freegis.gnu.org.in/grass_geosciencedataset.pdf],[''GRASS Indian exmple'']
| 17° N 79° E
| A Geologist from India who is interested in FOSS software. GRASS in particular. Conducted a FOSS workshop at Hyderabad, India in May 2005. The workshop boosted our spirits with a large participation and good articles on various FOSS software. An entire session was for GRASS, Qgis software. Presently lecturing in various forums on the capability of GRASS and allied FOSS GIS. With the help of Free Software Foundation India, trying to spread awareness of GRASS GIS, GNU-Linux and FOSS. Countries like India have a lot to gain with the spread of FOSS.
|-
|David Hastings
|UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok
|Member of original Grass Interagency Steering Committee, etc.
| 13.75°N 100.5°E
| A physicist/geophysicist/geological engineer who has used GRASS since 1987, and on the GRASS Interagency Steering Committee for the original public-domain package. I wrote the Linux Mini-HOWTO on GRASS-GIS (which is now woefully out of date); and taught short courses in scientific (as opposed to cartographic) GIS since 1980. In 1994 I moved my teaching to the Web, developing the CyberInstitute Short-Course on GIS. Currently, I'm at UN ESCAP. Open-Source is a great capacity- building environment for software communities worldwide. In developing countries, rather than being stuck merely teaching people to cut and paste stuff within a proprietary office suite, you can be part of the full development team, customizing the software to your community's needs, helping your country to have its own software development community - and hopefully making a satisfying living in the process.
|-
| Gary Sherman
| [http://mrcc.com Micro Resources], [http://qgis.org Quantum GIS]
| OSGeo Member
| (-149.567, 61.32138)
| Consultant, "Father" of Quantum GIS, long-time Linux user and Open Source proponent.
|-
| Astrid Emde
| [http://www.mapbender.org Mapbender], MapServer, PostgreSQL/PostGIS
| Mapbender Development
| (7.0707, 50.7342)
| Projects with MapServer, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Mapbender. Part of the Mapbender Developer Team. Courses for Mapbender, UMN MapServer, PostgreSQL/PostGIS and WMS, WFS
|-
| Jeroen Ticheler
| [http://geonetwork-opensource.org GeoNetwork opensource], [http://sourceforge.net/projects/intermap InterMap opensource], [http://www.fao.org/geonetwork Food and Agriculture Organization GeoNetwork]
| OSGeo member, [http://www.osgeo.org/geonetwork GeoNetwork]
| 42.07420°N, 12.34343°E
| I've initiated the development of the GeoNetwork opensource Spatial Data Catalog software and its embedded InterMap opensource Map Viewer. I hope to contribute possitively to the creation of a comprehensive, FOSS based toolkit for Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) that help people share and use geospatial data and information in an easy and cost effective way. I focus especially on the data sharing within the United Nations system and in countries under development. I promote free and open source software as an excellent option for more sustainable development in these countries, proving it works by applying and further developing it in my day to day work. [http://lists.eogeo.org/mailman/listinfo/opensdi OpenSDI] is a forum to discuss foss and cots integration.
|-
| Dirceu Machado
| [http://www.pti.org.br Itaipu Tecnology Park]
| OSGeo member,GRASS
| 59°S, -24°E
| I'm a brazilian developer of open source GIS/WEB_GIS applications using PHP, JAVA and Python with Mapserver and PostGIS and also a user and enthusiast of Linux and BSD's OS. I'm excited with the idea of a community like this one and i wish to help in any way i can with development's (if necessary) and/or documentation translations to portuguese language. Actualy i'm working in a project to develop a GIS viewer and map generator (for printing purposes) in Python based on the idea of the JUMP Project.
|-
| Kevin Yam
| [http://www.ene.gov.on.ca Ontario Ministry of the Environment], [http://www.lio.mnr.gov.on.ca, Land Information Ontario]
| OSGeo member
| 43.709, -79.544
| Program coordinator for information management within the Provinicial Ministry of the Environment. I focus especially on data sharing between government agencies, departments and local stakeholders, and I am a promoter of open source geospatial tools applicable to environmental monitoring and observing [[User:kevinyam]]
|-
| Colin Gowens
| Geographer, GIS Professional
| OSGeo member
| 33.7518, -84.3920
| User of GRASS, GDAL, OGR, PostGIS and Mapserver since 2002. The open source GIS software and community have proven tremendously valuable to my GIS endeavors.
|-
| David Bitner
| [http://maps.macnoise.com/interactive/ Metropolitan Airports Commission], [http://dbspatial.com/ dbSpatial]
| OSGeo member, Geodata Committee
| 44.844, -93.560
| Active PostGIS and MapServer user. GIS application developer for airport authority and other freelance projects. Serve on Regional/State committees (Minnesota) for Data Sharing and Enterprise Geospatial Architecture. Member of Twin Cities Mapserver Users Group.
|-
| Tyler Mitchell
| [http://spatialguru.com, Spatialguru.com]
| OSGeo Executive Director, [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee], [http://edu.osgeo.org Education Committee]
| 52.13, -121.13 (lat/lon)
| MapServer, PostGIS, GRASS, GDAL user. [http://oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping, O'Reilly Author], writer, promoter of Open Source GIS.
|-
| Rafael Medeiros Sperb
| [http://www.univali.br, G10 - UNIVALI]
| OSGeo Member
| -26.60, -48.70 (lat/lon)
|-
| Steven M. Ottens
| [http://www.geodan.com/ Geodan]
| [http://communitymapbuilder.org MapBuilder]
| 52.34, 4.91 (lat/lon)
| Contributor and member of MapBuilder PMC. [[User:stvn]]
|-
| Stefano Maffulli
| Politecnico di Milano
| [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/International_Outreach International Outreach], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project Public Geospatial Data]
| 45, 9 (Lat,Lon)
| Architect, worked within the GIS_Lab at University of Florence on research about sustainable development of historical cities. At Joint Research Center (Ispra) worked within the EU funded project [http://commongis.org CommonGIS]. Currently working with Politecnico di Milano as consultant on [http://www.corila.it/ Methodologies and technologies for conservation and restoration of historical Venetian buildings]
|-
| Dave Patton
| [http://members.shaw.ca/davepatton/ CIS Canadian Information Systems]
| helping the Website Committee
| 49.27N 123.15W
| Self-employed computer consultant. Co-lead developer for [http://punt.sourceforge.net/ Punt], an Open Source multi-language Windows desktop application that allows the user to view the terrain of any world in 3D. Canadian Coordinator and co-administrator of [http://www.confluence.org/index.php the Degree Confluence Project] [[User:Dpatton]]
|-
| Jody Garnett [[User:Jive]]
| [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home GeoTools]
| Iccubation and limited Website Committee
| missing
| It seems all I do is email, must be due to [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home GeoTools], [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOS/Home GeoServer], [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEO/Home GeoAPI] and [http://udig.refractions.net uDig]. I am working at [http://www.refractions.net/ Refractions Research, Inc], a small consulting company with an open source habit.
|-
| Justin Deoliveira
| [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project], [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home GeoTools], [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOS/Home GeoServer]
| [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home GeoTools]
| undeterministic
| [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Home GeoTools] module maintainer, [http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOS/Home GeoServer] developer, and [http://udig.refractions.net uDig] committer. I have been kicking around the Java GIS world for approximately 3 years contributing as an active developer on said projects. For the last year or so I have been working for a non-profit company known as [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project].
|
|-
| Dylan Beaudette
| [http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/drupal/node/38 UCD]
| GRASS
| Input lat/long here
| Soils and Biogeochemistry M.S. student at University of California, Davis. Interested in the use and proliferation of OSS in the sciences, particularly soil science. GIS and geomorphologic analysis; presentation of USDA-NCSS digital soil survey information / soils education through visual example.
|-
| Stuart Eve
| [http://www.lparchaeology.com L - P : Archaeology]
| Mapserver (user), GRASS (user)
| Input lat/long here
| Involved in using web-based Open Source technologies to make archaeological data accessible to a wider audience. We use Mapserver in a number of applications, including [http://www.fastionline.org Fasti Online]
|-
| [[User:Pmarc | Paulo Marcondes]]
| [http://www.marcondes.org marcondes.org], [http://hamstuff.blogspot.com Blog]
| [http://grass.itc.it GRASS] (translator), OSGeo Member (?), [[Brasil | OSGeo Brasil]] (proponent)
| (-22.915,-42.229), Maidenhead: GG87vc
| Working in the GRASS translation to portuguese (pt_br), somewhat involved (at least intelecutally) with Debian-GIS, involved in the local Debian User Group. My interests range from everything spatial to everything geospatial, GIS, GPS, Ham Radio, wardriving, etc. I have a B.S. in Geology (2001) Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil. I do R&D in the oil industry in a non GIS arena, but plan migrating to the GIS arena in the near future. I'm also planning a M.S. in GIS sometime in the future (accepting suggestions).
I would like to see free software adopted everywhere. I don't dislike proprietary software per se, but the attitude it usually inspires.
|-
| [[User:anselm | Anselm Hook]]
| [http://hook.org hook.org], [http://maps.civicactions.net maps.civicactions.net] [http://placedb.org placedb]
|
| (-122.673,-45.5371), Portland Oregon
| Both commercial and open source developer. Led engineering for platial.com and wrote placedb.org - also wrote maps.civicactions.net (an ajax tile map engine with a dataset behind it). Also wrote a small java spinny globe at [http://hook.org/headmap headmap]. Interested in providing fully open source map data (not simply applications or tools but actual content). Primarily interested in social and environmental issues with an eye towards modelling near term outcomes of decision making.
|-
| Oscar Cantán
| University of Zaragoza, Spain
| Member
| (41.666,-0.888)
| Currently working on the development and implementation of geospatial interoperability standards. Specially interested in OGC catalog services specification (CSW, SRW) and metadata content standards (ISO 19119-19139).
|-
| Lorenzo Becchi
| http://www.ominiverdi.org
| OSGeo Member
| moving
| ka-Map developer. User:[[User:Ominiverdi|Ominiverdi]]
|-
| Christoph Baudson
| http://www.mapbender.org
| OSGeo Member
| here, there and everywhere
| Mapbender developer. See [[User:christoph|Christoph]]
|-
| Georg Lösel
| http://www.grass-verein.de GRASS-Anwender-Vereinigung
| User (GRASS, QGIS); Free Geodata
| 52,3625/9,7481
| [[User:Georgloesel|Georg Lösel]]
|-
| Reinhard Simon
| [http://www.cipotato.org [International Potato Center, Lima, Peru]
| Project lead: [http://research.cip.cgiar.org/confluence/display/divagis/Home DIVA-GIS]
| NA
| [[User:rsimon|Reinhard Simon]]
|-
| Todd Jamison
| http://www.observera.com
| OSGEO Member; User: OSSIM, GDAL, MapServer; Contributor: OSSIM
| (38.898489, -77.500484)
| Chief Image Scientist and CEO of Observera, Inc. Observera worked on the original OSSIM library with ImageLinks and we have developed several projects using the OSSIM library and MapServer, including ALLEGRO (Land-cover / Land-use Classification) and the Change Detection WorkStation (CDWS), both for the US Army. Expertise includes spectral, thermal, microwave sensors, photogrammetry, image registration, image processing, morphology, resolution enhancement, workflow automation, machine learning (e.g., neural nets, support vector machines, genetic algorithms), Geologic GIS and bunches of other stuff. Glad to be a part of OSGEO.
|-
| Laurent Jégou
| [http://www.univ-tlse2.fr/geoprdc UTM Dept. Géo], [http://www.forumsig.org Forum SIG], [http://www.portailsig.org Portail SIG]
| User and wanabee [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project] contributor.
| (43.6N, 1.4E)
| Cartographer (conception, production, integration), cartography and GIS teacher for masters degrees, open source mapping software developper (.Net and Java), technology developpement monitoring.
|-
| Gary Watry
| [http://www.coaps.fsu.edu[Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies - Florida State University]
| NA
| (30.42277,-84.32370)
| [[User:Gary Watry]]
|-
| Hardeep Singh Rai
| [http://www.gndec.ac.in/ Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana, Punjab]
| -
| (30.55N,75.54E)
| Willing to see growth of GPL/OpenSource softwares in every field. Civil Engineer, in teaching profession since 1989. Presently Professor and Head of Civil Engineering Department.
|-
| Paolo Cavallini
| [http://www.faunalia.it Faunalia]
|
|
|
|-
| M. Agus Salim
| [http://gislab.cifor.cgiar.org/fsic Forest Spatial Information Catalog]
| User
| Bogor, Indonesia [106.752E,6.5533S]
| Working as GIS Assistant in Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). Currently i am interested in exploring geospatial open source software capabilities and hope to involved more than a user in the future
|-
| Janusz Michalak
| [http://www.ptip.org.pl/ Polish Association for Spatial Information]
[http://netgis.geo.uw.edu.pl/ Warsaw University, Dept. of Geology]
| GRASS user
| Warsaw, Poland (52.2118,20.9864)
| Will be added later
|-
| Chris Tweedie
| [http://www.dli.wa.gov.au/ Dept. of Land Information]
| OSGeo Lurker
| Perth, Australia [116.0043,-31.8869]
| Deploying a statewide SDI for WA using largely OSGeo projects. General lurker i'm afraid, lots of ideas, not enough time~
|-
| The Sunburned Surveyor (A.K.A. - Landon Blake)
| [http://openjump.blogspot.com/index.html My Blog]
| OSGeo Lurker
| Stockton, California
| Project administrator and developer for The JUMP Pilot Project and the SurveyOS Project.
|-
| Rob Atkinson
| [http://online.socialchange.net.au]
| Geoserver PSC, Geotools
| Wollongong,Australia
| SDI Architect. Involved in data standards and tools to deploy them, registry design, standards development (mainly OGC and ISO, INSPIRE.) Generally, enabling Observations and Measurements patterns in OS tools and other consistency/productivity/scalability requirements.
|-
| Mateusz Loskot
| [http://mateusz.loskot.net/ http://mateusz.loskot.net]
| [http://www.gdal.org/ GDAL/OGR] hacker, [http://fdo.osgeo.org FDO] PSC and hacker, [http://wl.sggw.waw.pl/ Warsaw Agricultural University]
| Warsaw,Poland (52.2373 21.0834)
| A freelance geospatial software developer and contributor to various FOSS/GIS projects. Interested in [http://mobile.maptools.org/ mobile GIS solutions]. Active member of various Open Source Software communities. [[User:mloskot]]
|-
| Asif Ahmed
| http://www.on.ec.gc.ca/orise
| Osgeo Member
| Toronto, Canada
| Mapserver user, Chameleon user, Coldfusion, .NET, C and Perl experience. Open source enthusiast.
|-
|-
| Dongpo Deng
| [http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~dongpo/cv.html About me]
| OSGeo Lurker
| Taipei, Taiwan(25.041N 121.614E)
| A researcher for open geospatial techniques and data.
|-
| Ian Ibbotson
| http://developer.k-int.com
| Osgeo Lurker
| Sheffield, UK (37.0625,-95.677068)
| Information Retrieval / Information Repository Developer. Worked with USGS on combining text and spatial IR systems, on the GEO Z3950 profile, and on exposing GEO access points in the SRW/SRU protocol. Developer on UK Peoples Network cultural heritage / digital preservation amongst other projects with public information / spatial faceted data.
|-
| Josef Assad
| Independent (for now)
| Still figuring out where I can be most useful as an OSGEO slave
| Cairo, Egypt (30.070877;31.220312)
| Free software, open standards are my primary areas of interest.
|-
| Ben Discoe
|
| [http://vterrain.org Virtual Terrain Project (VTP)]
| Ahualoa, Hawai'i (20.0532,-155.5085)
| After some years in the virtual reality field, i got the geospatial religion. With some support from Intel, i began what later grew into the VTP. 7 years after public launch, it is now a thriving community, educational website, and suite of open-source geovisualization software, which is likely to become an official OSGeo project at some point.
|-
| Emilio Mayorga
| [http://marine.rutgers.edu/BGC/ Rutgers], [http://garrobo.org/ CAEE]
|
| New Brunswick, New Jersey (40.505,-74.399)
| Post-doc researcher at Rutgers, working on [http://www.marine.rutgers.edu/globalnews/ global carbon and nutrients exports from rivers to the ocean], and very interested in pushing FOSS tools (geospatial and otherwise) and the open, community aspects surrounding them, into the Earth Sciences community. I'm doing more and more Python lately (and enjoying it), but previously have worked with Perl, C, the whole ESRI stack, Matlab, etc. In my recent, previous life, I was a lead GIS Analyst at a [http://www1.co.snohomish.wa.us/Departments/Public_Works/Divisions/SWM/ Washington state county]; that 5-year experience strongly colored my perspective and interests. I've also worked with [http://garrobo.org/ a small group compiling and redistributing environmental data (mostly geospatial) for Central America], where I've pushed a FOSSG stack (MapServer, GDAL, qgis). I hope to help out with the [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project Public Geospatial Data Project], focusing on scientific datasets, developing countries, and practical implementations. [[User:Emayorga]]
|-
| Aarti Singh
| Johns Hopkins - KGMU Collaborative Projects
| OSGeo Member
| Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India (26.55, 80.59)
| We're working on public health research and are using GIS tools to map our study area.
|-
| Dan Jacobson/積丹尼
| (none)
| [[Taiwan|Taiwan Chapter]] member
| Dongshi, Taiwan 120.87 E, 24.18 N
| House address planning, utility pole coordinates, bus routes. See http://jidanni.org/
|-
| Yves Jacolin
| [http://georezo.net GeoRezo moderator] for the Webmapping forum
| Francophone Local Chapter / OSGeo Member / GRASS, QGIS and MapServer User
| Suresnes, France (48.87N, 2.23E)
| Translate and write documentation or how-to about GDAL-ORG, QGIS, GRASS, MapServer, ... Help in georezo.net forumsig.org OS and webmapping forum. Work on the creation of the [[Francophone|francophone local chapter]].
|-
| [[User:Jsanz|Jorge Sanz]]
| [http://www.prodevelop.es Prodevelop], [http://www.gvsig.gva.es gvSIG project] [http://geomaticblog.net geomaticblog.net]
| OSGeo Member / [[Español|Spanish Local Chapter]]
| Valencia, Spain (40.396N,3.713W)
| I'm working as GIS developer and power user :P. Free software fan since 2000 and enthusiastic GNU/Linux user. I'm translating OSGeo portal pages.
|-
| Markus Müller
| [http://www.deegree.org deegree], [http://www.lat-lon.de lat/lon]
| [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Deutsch/NAS Free NAS implementation]
| Hamburg, Germany (10.00, 52.74)
| I am one of the founding members and managers of the [http://www.deegree.org deegree] project. Besides this I am actively involved in the work of the [http://www.opengeospatial.org OGC], e.g. as editor of Symbology Encoding and SLD profile of WMS specifications.
|-
| Bob Bruce
| Handyside Web Programming Services [http://www.hwps.ca]
| MapServer, QGIS user, co-creator of the mapping interface for www.TheMuralsofWinnipeg.com [http://www.themuralsofwinnipeg.com/Mpages/indexMuralsMap.php]
| Winnipeg, Canada (49.86059N, 97.104989W)
| I am an advocate for open source geospatial software
|-
| [[User:milovanderlinden|Milo van der Linden]]
| CTO 3DSite IT&C bv, the Netherlands
| [http://www.3dsite.nl 3DSite]
| (51.516N,3.880E)
| BSc in Geo-science, 10 years experience in GIS. Started my own company in jan 2007. Focus on 3D GIS, Google Earth, Fleet management, Routing and Navigation. Open Sourcing with: MapWindow GIS, OpenStreetMap, OGR/GDAL, QuantumGIS, dotProject, Blender. Developer in VB6, VB.NET and C#
|-
| Kevin Flanders
| PeopleGIS Inc. [http://www.peoplegis.com]
| MapServer, home of MapsOnline...a municipal online mapping service
| Concord, MA USA (42.459N, 71.3518W)
| PeopleGIS has built MapsOnline and other related products on open source software for over five years, working with many people on this list.
|-
| [[User:AndrewTurner|Andrew Turner]]
| [http://highearthorbit.com HighEarthOrbit], [http://mapfacture.com Mapufacture]
| OSGeo Lurker
| Ann Arbor, MI, US (42.2774N x 83.7611W)
| [http://oreilly.com/catalog/neogeography Neogeographer] - interested in helping GIS be usable and creatable by non-geo-savvy users. Helps develop [http://mapstraction.com Mapstraction], and [http://georss.org/geopress GeoPress] web mapping and publishing tools. Active contributor to the [http://georss.org GeoRSS Community].
|-
| Wolf Bergenheim
| none. I'm a free OS coder
| GRASS as a developer and GSoC 2007 Mentor. PostGIS user
| 60.237N 24.823E (Espoo Finland)
| I'm an independend student of geoinformatics and OpenSource. Interested in developing GRASS and helping to add more features to the already rich feature set. I'm prepared to develop modules for GRASS on commission / request.
|-
| [[User:peterrushforth|Peter Rushforth]]
| [http://www.geoconnections.org Natural Resources Canada/GeoConnections]
| OGR user
| Ottawa, Ont, Canada
| Interested in GML / XSLT processing.
[[Category:Membership]]
|-
| [[User:percyd|David Percy]]
| [http://gisgeek.pdx.edu Portland State University Geology Department Geospatial Data Manager]
| FOSS4G 2007 Workshops Committee
| Portland, OR, USA (45.51238, -122.682500)
| Interested in web mapping and most things to do with GIS, databases, and networking, especially related to Earth Science. I work with a large portion of the geologic mapping community in the United States at the state and federal levels to bring geologic maps into some semblance of interoperability. This effort is also internationalized via the [http://www.bgs.ac.uk/cgi_web/ Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information]. We use almost all open source GIS software for this effort. See the [http://ngmdb.usgs.gov National Geologic Map Database] for progress.
[[Category:Membership]]