FOSS4G:UK Local 2023
Thurs 7th Sept 2023
FOSS4G:UK Local 2023 is now over! Thanks to everyone who took part
We will be making videos available through YouTube in due course.
FOSS4G:UK Local 2023 went really well. It was held on Thurs 7th Sept, and we reached about 250 people across eight venues in two countries. We raised about £5000 for OSGeo:UK which will go towards our funding of Open Source Geospatial software over the coming year. The full programme is available in PDF or Google Sheets. See individual venue pages pages for more details.
We have done a short write up, summarising some of the feedback and highlighting a few of the lessons learned for next time. We’re planning to run a conference in 2024, and will be asking for volunteers early next year - so please sign up to the mailing list or email to find out when we’ll be meeting to discuss this.
Thanks to everyone who took part, and thank you for filling the feedback form. Thanks to sponsorship from Locate Press, we have given away Locate Press books to those who completed the feedback form, including:
- Ian Turton, who chose a copy of Earth Engine and Geemap
- Matthew Paice, who chose a copy of Discover QGIS 3.x - Second Edition A Workbook for Classroom or Independent Study
- Daniel Evans, who chose a copy of The PyQGIS Programmer’s Guide
- Tom Chadwin, who chose a copy of Geospatial Power Tools
- Nick Morgan
- Richard Hargreaves
- Sophie Hallam
Join our our mailing list to keep up to date with news.
Venues
We had eight venues:
- Glasgow University of Glasgow
- Lancaster Fraser House Hub
- Keyworth (Nottingham) British Geological Survey
- Maynooth (Ireland) Maynooth University
- London Geovation
- Swansea UWTSD IQ Campus
- Basingstoke Willis Museum
- Bristol Engine Shed
You are welcome to chat to other participants in the OSGeo:UK & FOSS4G:UK Matrix Room.
Keynotes
We had two amazing keynotes: Ujaval Gandhi and Helen McKenzie.
Helen McKenzie, Geospatial Advocate at CARTO: Getting People Excited about Geo! (09:45, streamed live to all venues and online)
Slides YouTube Helen will share her experiences on how to get non-geospatial professionals excited about geo! Whether you need a project timeline extension, promotion or needing a new hire - communicating the value of GIS is one of the most important soft skills needed in our industry. In this session, hear effective strategies for promoting the value of geospatial, such as emphasizing practical outcomes and commercial benefits.
Ujaval Gandhi, Educator | Founder @ Spatial Thoughts: Building a Career with Open-Source Technologies (14:45, streamed live to all venues and online)
Slides YouTube Ujaval will take you through the evolution of the geospatial industry through the past two decades with his personal journey from working at Google to starting his own academy focused on open-source technologies. You will get to hear how open-source technologies - GDAL, QGIS, and Python - played a key role in his career and helped solve complex geospatial problems and build data pipelines for processing petabytes of data. The talk will conclude by looking at emerging trends and how to prepare oneself to thrive in the current environment.
Ten Years After
YouTube We will also had the Ten Years After panel discussion to mark ten years since FOSS4G 2013 in Nottingham, themed around “Where have we gone in the last ten years, and where will be in ten years time?”.
Code of Conduct
Participants at FOSS4G:UK Local 2023 are expected to act respectfully toward others in accordance with the FOSS4G:UK Online Code of Conduct. Short version: everyone is welcome, make everyone welcome, be nice.