So I’m seeing this pop up everywhere. I saw this at Bill Dollin’s blog and he referenced some site called GISuser (heh). So I decided to throw my .02 cents worth in on the news.

North America is getting it’s own FOSS4G conference. It will be:

April 10-12, 2012
FOSS4G North America 2012
Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Washington, DC – USA

Which all makes me think about one thing I am trying to do this year. Actually several – learn more about FOSS4G. I’ve got two goals in mind for me as a company – well actually three. Three that I need to start talking about but I’m not quite ready yet as it kind of pushes me in a slightly different business direction.

Anyway – I was at a conference earlier this year co-teaching URISA’s Open Source GIS Tools workshop (with the writer of the class – nothing makes you feel dumber than that). A salesman from another company went on a bit of a rant that was something like: “where’s your support? I don’t see anyone here! Open Source is a lost cause”. For him maybe – for me it’s actually a bit exciting. GIS has gotten a bit stale and FOSS4G doesn’t make it stale anymore. I actually did one small side project in QGIS the other day and never touched the other stuff. It was nice. I felt dangerous again.

Anyway – will I make it to this one? I have no clue. I would love to as the Denver conference earlier this year was a bit much for me to do. This is within a long road trip or a reasonably priced airline ticket.