We are proud of having attracted key opinion leaders and drivers of the Open Source Geospatial world. Let us all get enlightened by their views and news!
Jeff and Patrick will open the conference with their talk on Tue morning, while Suchith and Venka will conclude it on Thu afternoon. All their talks will be given in the Conference Center.
Jeff McKenna - President, OSGeo Foundation
Jeff is the current president of the OSGeo and has been involved at the Board level of the organization since 2009. A founding charter member of OSGeo, Jeff has been using and promoting Open Source geospatial for over a decade. He has been a huge supporter of the FOSS4G conference, and a key member of the Conference Committee that has brought the annual FOSS4G to areas all around the world. Jeff is a long-time user and documentation lead for the MapServer project, and is a member of the MapServer Project Steering Committee. His strengths include helping build communities, and sharing his passion for Open Source geospatial.
Patrick Hogan - NASA
Patrick currently manages the NASA WorldWind project, a team of world class engineers producing NASA open source software that has received National and International awards, including NASA Software of the Year. Patrick previously managed the NASA Learning Technologies Project (2002-2006), an incubation program to develop software technologies that integrate NASA content into the classroom. Several successful education technologies were produced, World Wind being one. Sustainability was a key element to those projects. Patrick also has previous careers as a Registered Geologist in the State of California, a California certified high school science teacher and deep sea diver, as well as having been a pilot
About his talk: The term "geospatial" is all about where we are. So, where are we? Let's ask ourselves the question: Where are we and where do we want to go from here? For ourselves? For our children? For each other? What kind of future do we want for all of us? And since we are here at FOSS4G, let's also ask ourselves how are we going to get there in 4D. Spatial information intelligence is a global issue that will increasingly affect our ability to survive as a species. Collectively we must better appreciate the complex relationships that make life on Earth possible. Providing spatial information in its native context can accelerate our ability to process that information. The technology for achieving that geospatial harmony is certainly within reach. And so, like the key to the universe, there is good news and there is bad news. First the bad news, there is no key to geospatial harmony. And now for the good news, FOSS4G proves the door to geospatial harmony has been left unlocked, Open Standards + Open Source = Accelerated Solutions for All.
Suchith Anand - ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies
Suchith Anand is the chair of the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies . He is leading open source research at the University of Nottingham. He established the Open Source Geospatial Lab at the University of Nottingham under MoU with the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. He is now leading the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Labs/Research Centres in key universities worldwide as part of the Geo for All initiative.
He is one of the founders of the Open Source GIS Summer School initiative and the Geospatial Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data e-learning initiative. He is also the founder and co-chair of Open Source GIS Conference Series. He also leads the Open Source, Open Standards, Open Data for Open Nottingham. He is also member of Working Groups on Open Education and Open Science of the Open Knowledge Foundation.
He co-established HealthGIS research theme at the University of Nottingham. He also established AgriGIS research theme in collaboration with colleagues in Plant Science and Crops for the Future Research Centre. These newly established research themes have brought in many research projects, PhD studentships etc for UoN.
He is reviewer for various funding councils (EU, RCUK etc) and number of leading GIS journals (such as the International Journal for Geographical Information Science, Computers and Geosciences etc). He is also in the scientific committees of many international conferences and serves on the Editorial Board of GIS Professional. He is also invited speaker for many conferences and universities. He is involved in many FP7 research (GIS4EU, ISSUE etc) , involved in supervising PhD students and also external examiner for PhD (both UK universities and other EU universities) etc . His research interests and publications are in automated generalization, metaheuristic optimization techniques (simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, hill climbing, tabu search etc), location based services, linked data, HealthGIS, AgriGIS, open source, open standards, open data and data harmonization research.
His mission is to build up open source, open standards, open data research for bridging the digital divide.
Venkatesh Raghavan - Osaka City University, Japan
Venkatesh Raghavan (aka Venka) is Professor of Geoinformatics at the Graduate School for Creative Cities, Osaka City University, Japan. He coined the FOSS4G acronym in 2004 to denote Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics and has been promoting FOSS4G ever since. He is also one of the founders of OSGeo and currently serves as Charter Member and also plays active role in OSGeo Local Chapters in Asia.
Research interest includes Geospatial Services, Sensor Web and Remote Sensing for change detection. Recently, involved in ZOO WPS Platform and goGPS Projects. Team leader and member in several Geoinformatics projects and vast experience in conducting national and international training programs and development of learning materials for RS/GIS using FOSS4G.
On 2012-10-25, Venka was named as the recipient of the 2012 Sol Katz Award, at the inaugural FOSS4G-India event, in Hyderabad.