Wow what an adventure, Jody Garnett here returning from visiting FOSS4G conference and the GeoCat offices.
FOSS4G for the People
The Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial conference was very much a community affair this year. FOSS4G 2023 was a chance to meet and speak with peers from the GeoNetwork and GeoServer projects and connect with companies and the B2B activity.

Indeed GeoCat attended with a booth, and a few things to hand out, and conversation. Our booth was near the speakers, so we would sneak over and turn down the music so we could talk. And we talked a lot – so many nice people! With all the talking I do not beleive I opened my laptop to show off our products once the entire week.
It was a pleasure seeing Jeroen and Florent comfortable on the massive stage providing an 1:250k scale overview of GeoNetwork activities.


I had a good workshop on GeoServer with Ian Turton to start, and some entertaining presentations with Andrea over the course of the week. The GeoServer Feature Frenzy and GeoServer used in fun and interesting ways were real highlights with great audience response.


Photos by Jody Garnett and FOSS4G CC-by-A
Presentations:
- State of GeoNetwork
- GeoNetwork Orientation
- GeoServer Feature Frenzy 2023
- State of GeoServer 2.23
- GeoServer Orientation
- GeoServer used in fun and interesting ways
- Getting Started with GeoServer (Workshop)
Open Source Geospatial Foundation
This year I only had one outreach presentation, on the topic of OSGeo values, with Tom.
With the conference hosted by OSGeo and the FLOSSK regional open source group it appeared attendees were already comfortable with open source as a concept. However OSGeo values go a bit further than just a license – looking at a project’s sustainability and other risk factors also.


Presentation:
GeoCat Bennekom
It is always a pleasure to visit the GeoCat office, and customers, in the Netherlands. Everyone was full of ideas and opportunities, and pushing hard on GeoCat Bridge for ArcGIS.
The office garden is amazing, exploring outside of the village showed a landscape surprisingly dry from a regional drought.


Coming soon
The next activity GeoCat is attending is the Bolsena Code Sprint. Please consider yourself invited!
There are number of regional foss4g events coming up and we look forward to more opportunities for advocacy and meeting new customers.