Astun Technology Supports Most Successful FOSS4G Ever

The International Conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial 2017 was held in Boston, MA during August and saw over eleven hundred people attend. They all enjoyed the choice of a remarkable eleven parallel sessions through the week which was kicked off by a welcome from the Mayor of Boston, a series of hands-on workshops and an entertaining keynote presentation from Paul Ramsey, who explored the economics of open source software under the title of ‘Why We Code’.

Astun continues to be an active and enthusiastic supporter of the open source community and Geospatial Architect, Ian Turton took to the stage to explain how a Raspberry Pi can be used to host and serve maps to mobile users. Ian also lead one of the workshops, educating attendees how to implement the open source Java GIS toolkit, GeoTools.

Later in the week, former Chair of FOSS4G and Astun Strategic Advisor, Steve Feldman took to the stage and gave, what was widely accepted as the presentation of the week when he combined current affairs and open source cartography in his ‘FAKE MAPS, very dishonest’ talk that saw stand room only available in the audience.

Steve wasn’t just there to entertain and in the run up to this year’s event he worked with the FOSS4G Travel Grant Programme team to unite funds from the OSGeo sponsors, donors and a large crowdfunding campaign and successfully send ten people to Boston. This dedication to spreading education to as many people as possible and to develop a community is at the heart of the OSGeo movement.

The Travel Grant Programme team will be back in action for the 2018 conference and are aiming to raise US$50,000 to allow more people to attend FOSS4G 2018 which will be held in the capital of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam.