Geospatial Geekery

I’m back now from my open source geospatial conference in Minneapolis, completely jazzed about the experience. There were a little over 300 people attending, a very good size for a conference, small enough so that you can interact with many of them. Yet it is a community that is growing quickly and is really starting to come of age.

I think of all the the open source communities I have some relation to, however tangentially, the geospatial community is the one with which I feel the deepest sense of connection. Naturally that’s because I’ve been in geography for a long time now, and also because of my distaste of the overwhelming dominance of the field by a certain 800-pound industry gorilla (no, it’s not Microsoft). Anyway, it was great to be able to attach faces and voices to familiar names.

The next such conference is in September 2006 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Pica and I might just plan a trip to Europe around that!