Letter from the Conference Chair

FOSS4G is the global conference focused on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial, organized by OSGeo. In 2015, FOSS4G will be held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, after being held in Portland, Nottingham, Denver, Barcelona, Sydney, and Cape Town in past years. FOSS4G 2015 will be the first time event outside of Roman alphabet world. You may meet different language, culture, character and foods. These differences will inspire your imagination and creativity. Cultural diversities in OSGeo will eventually enrich the OSGeo structure and pipe the new fresh energy to OSGeo.

FOSS4G gathers developers and users of Open Source geospatial software as well as managers and decision-makers from around the world to discuss new directions, exciting implementations, and growing business opportunities in this space. Recent years have seen substantial changes in the geospatial industry. One of those changes has been the growth in maturity and adoption of Free and Open Source solutions. In many cases organizations are using a mixture of open and closed source solutions.

Seoul is “THE” right place for international event in terms of accessibility, convenience, and attractions. Seoul with the nickname of ‘Soul of Asia’ is over six hundred years old and one of the most advanced cities in the world, meaning that the city has both past and present. The city has old palaces and temples and also has cutting-edge skyscrapers with those historical monuments. Seoul has over 10 million people and most headquarters of famous Korean companies including Samsung and Hyundai, meaning that there might be more opportunities to broadly promote open-source GIS at once and attract many GIS relevant people from various kinds of industries in South Korea. We anticipate not only many Korean attendance and also the largest attendance from Asian countries. As a sponsor of FOSS4G, you will be associated with what I believe will be one of the outstanding geospatial event of 2015.

The title of FOSS4G SEOUL 2015 is “Toward Diversity!
FOSS4G Big Bang from Seoul!”.

You can see many business opportunities there in Asia. Asia will be the next big market to open source GIS professionals, users, and companies. The market size of Asian economies already exceeded that of E.U. and U.S.A. and we’ve watched many emerging and vibrant FOSS4G activities in Asia. However, this market is still untapped in terms of open source GIS. For this, we have a plan to organize ‘FOSS4G Asia Special Session‘. We anticipate that open-source GIS big bang can be ignited from Seoul throughout FOSS4G 2015.

FOSS4G SEOUL 2015 CO-CHAIR
HONG, Sanggi Chairman of KSIS(Korea Spatial Information Society),
SHIN, Sanghee Representative of OSGeo Korean Chapter

Contact Information

Mr. Daegeun Lim
FOSS4G Seoul 2015 Secretariat
Tel.: +82 2 6288 6335
Fax: +82 2 6288 6399    Email: foss4g2015-sponsor@osgeo.org

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