The main theme of this Jornadas SIG Libre de Girona has been cloud services and open data. Since the apotheosic beginning, with an outstanding speech of Sergi Morales (ExportosenTI), the rest of the conference has been running around the same theme. Some of them maybe more critical, like the one of F. Puga from CartoLab when he asked us not to forget undevelopment zones where not everyone has internet access and millions of people, which doesn’t have our tech level, also have GIS needs.
This is what cloud means on undevelopment countries. #siglibre7 #firstworldproblems
Another interesting theme of this conference came by the hand of Malcolm Bain, who told us about the legal limits of data cloud services, and what can we expect and demand and to what extent, from the cloud service provider, we have to offer a minimum service level. It is undoubtedly surprising to learn that some of the contracts we accept on very well known services (like web mail or hosting) are, in fact, illegal.
The battle of free software is ended, now we have to battle on freedom and privacy of data.
It has also been delightful to see the debate between some speakers, like when Javier de la Torre (Cartodb) talked against OGC or the government repositories of data. Undoubtfully a theme which, although I don’t fully agree, needs some discussion and improvement. Should government repositories of data become more useer friendly or should they remain just as repository of data?
On Thursday evening, Geocat had a double session between speeches very focused on metadata and the importance of government spatial portals. We first focused mostly on GeoNetwork and Bridge, talking also about our future GeoCat Live. and, just before ending the day, a workshop of 30 minutes to present GeoNetwork, which has followed by the first national meeting of geoinquietos.
It is hard to summarize in only one article all the huge dimension reached on this conference. A lot of optimism, willing to keep working and, most of all, the certainty that we are on the right path, helping free software and free data, focusing on the social part of our work. On Friday, almost to finish, Javier Sánchez oriented the end of the conference to this theme, talking about social companies, who have not only an economic result but also a social one.
In the end the Jornadas SIG Libre Girona are undoubtedly the GIS Event (capital letters) to which every Spanish speaker should take into account to be in contact with latest GIS news.
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