A: I am an architect and urban planner by training, and GISer by circumstance since 1991. I founded ENTCHEV GIS in 2005 and GeoHipster in 2013. Currently (since 2015) I am the GIS specialist for Franklin Township, NJ. Read more about me in my GeoHipster interview.
Q: Tell us the story behind your map (what inspired you to make it, what did you learn while making it, or any other aspects of the map or its creation you would like people to know).
A: This map is one in a series offering visual representation of all reported animal-vehicle crashes in Franklin Township over the course of several years. The map series informs environmental policy decisions in the town, particularly with regard to hunting regulations. I felt that discrete representation of point events was not communicating well the story behind the data, being that many animal crashes locations were concentrated in tight clusters — hence my choice of heat mapping for the series. I learned that deer population moves over time, which is probably obvious, but I never thought about it before.
Q: Tell us about the tools, data, etc., you used to make the map.
A: The map uses data from police reports. The project started in a MapInfo derivative, moved to QGIS, then ArcMap, then Paint.net. Data was originally created in MapInfo TAB, moved to SHP (hi, @shapefile! đ ), then to GeoTIFF, to PNG, to PDN, to PNG, ultimately to PDF (of course!).
The founder of GeoHipster, Atanas Entchev, learned BASIC in 1984 on a made-in-Bulgaria Apple ][ clone, and has been working with computers ever since. These days he splits his time between slinging shapefiles and searching for the perfect saddle for his Cannondale. Find him on Twitter, Instagram, and on his personal blog Mostly Subjective.
Atanas was interviewed for GeoHipster by Board Member Bill Dollins and CEO Mike Dolbow.
Q: For any readers who don’t know, tell us about yourself and how you got into geospatial.
A: My road to geospatial was long and circuitous. I graduated with a Masterâs in architecture in my native Sofia, Bulgaria. Upon graduation I was assigned a job as an urban planner. In 1991 I came to Rutgers University in New Jersey to complete a Masterâs in urban planning, where I was indoctrinated into the Arc world on PC ARC/INFO on DOS. While still in grad school and looking for a ârealâ job as a planner, I took a GIS internship position at the NJDEP, digitizing parcels in ArcInfo on a SUN Sparc workstation. Temporarily. As it turned out, there is nothing more permanent than the temporary. I have been âdoing GISâ ever since.
Q: Between early pieces in Directions, to your own blog(s), to your activity on various social media platforms, you have been a visible face and an early adopter of social platforms in the geospatial community for almost two decades. What effect have those platforms had on the landscape of geospatial technology? How have those platforms changed? What would the ideal social platform look like to you, today?
A: The biggest effect social media platforms have had on the landscape of geospatial technology is that blogs and social media have all but eliminated the need to go to conferences. This is probably an unpopular opinion, and easily challenged by the fact that geoconferences seem to be multiplying. But you donât need to go to a conference anymore to find out whatâs happening in the industry. The blogs and social media deliver high-quality, high-signal-to-noise-ratio content, right to your screen, better than any keynote. Heck, you can âattendâ multiple conferences simultaneously and be billable at the same time.
Obviously, there are other things that happen at conferences — geobeers, geoteas, geohookups — so conferences arenât going away. But the reasons for going to conferences have shifted. Get out of work, anyone? Travel to a new city/country? On your employerâs dime? Sign me up!
Three things drive people to social networks: FOMO, interestingness, and utility — probably in that order. Early Twitter was interesting. Less so these days, but I stay because of utility. Instagram is interesting, but has no utility. Facebook has neither.
How have platforms changed? They become less interesting as they grow and mature. The ideal social platform must stay interesting, and combine interestingness with utility.
Q: Wow, I can’t believe that this December will mark the five year anniversary of the geohipster.com launch with a tongue-in-cheek industry poll. Looking back on that moment and what has happened since, were there any surprises?
A: The biggest surprise was that it took off the way it did. I registered the domain name on a lark, I thought some kind of website would be good for a few chuckles at most. Five years later GeoHipster is running strong, bigger than I ever thought it would be.
I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge Glenn Letham and Renee Sieber, two early advisors who offered ideas and encouragement in the very beginning. Mike Dolbow became the first guest interviewer, then the advisory board took shape, then Mike and Jonah and Amy stepped up to share with me the many duties that go into putting out a web publication. Were it not for these people, GeoHipster would not exist today.
Q: Walk us through a typical day for you – not just for your day job, but also for your âside hustlesâ.
A: My day job as the GIS specialist in Franklin Township, New Jersey, includes multiple various GIS-related duties, so itâs never boring. I maintain several PostgreSQL/PostGIS databases; I dabble in SQL and Python. I make maps to print (PDF FTW); I help township staff with various geo-related tasks; I create shapefiles; I export databases to shapefiles to share with other organizations; I add new township streets to Open Street Map.
I use a mixed bag of tools: ArcGIS Desktop, QGIS, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, CARTO.
My latest side hustle is designing, promoting, and selling the âI♥️SHPâ merchandise. My plan is to grow it to a point where I can quit my job and retire. My other side hustle is GIS consulting — mostly training, teaching GIS novices how to use shapefiles (no joke; shapefile haters leave a lot of money on the table), and some GIS and web development. And, of course, I help run GeoHipster as Editor-in-chief.
After work and on weekends I ride my bike, sometimes with my daughter. Or tackle a side hustle task. Or go to the beach with my wife. Or we go to concerts (Buddy Guy, Jonny Lang, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Govât Mule this summer).
Q: The âI♥️SHPâ merchandise seems to be really taking off. Any plans to expand it for the âsidecar filesâ?
A: As soon as Taylor Swift agrees to wear a âPRJâ shirt for the promo campaign. I have my people talking to her people. Seriously, though, I consider âSHPâ a pars pro toto moniker, thus including all sidecars. The shapefile agrees.
Q: If the shapefile disappears tomorrow as though it never existed, to which format would you switch?
A: To whichever format has critical mass. For the record, I donât use shapefiles exclusively — I use PostGIS on PostgreSQL and file geodatabases in equal measure. But when I need to create a quick disposable layer for a quick map, shapefile it is. And when it comes to spatial data exchange, the shapefile is the undisputed king. In my job I share spatial data with a large number of users, mostly external. Every single one of them asks for shapefiles. So I give them shapefiles. Iâm not gonna fight them. If they start asking for geopackage, I will give them geopackage. Nobody has asked as of yet.
I wrote about my position in the shapefile debate on my personal blog. To quote myself: âTo call for the abolition of the shapefile is akin to calling for the abolition of the .xls(x) format on the grounds that millions of people erroneously use it in lieu of âlegitimateâ databases.â
There is currently a shapefile vendetta raging on the twitters. I think itâs silly. If and when it is no longer needed, the shapefile will fade away.
Q: GeoHipster readers, and many others, have followed the ordeal of your family and your son, Eni, closely. Would you provide an update?
A: For those who may not know, last December my son was deported to Bulgaria — a country he does not remember and whose language he does not speak, but where he is âfromâ. We are working on bringing Eni back home. We are pursuing all possible avenues. This will be a long and complicated process. Meanwhile he has settled in Sofia, has found a job that he likes, and is making friends. He is in good spirits. We communicate via social media and chat almost daily. My son is making the most of this bizarre and unfortunate situation, and has made me proud with his ability to handle adversity.
I want to thank the hundreds of people, most of whom I have never met, for their outpouring of support for my familyâs plight, and for reaffirming my faith in humanity.
Q: Sounds like you’ve been riding your bike more and more lately. Do you and Bill have some kind of exercise competition going?
A: I post more bike pics lately — or, rather, I post less other stuff than I used to — which makes it look like cycling is all I do. But I have indeed been riding more and more lately. I rode my first metric century (100+ km) in May, and I aspire to ride my first full century (100+ miles) next year. I love cycling — it is a great sport, great exercise, and with the right equipment you can cycle year-round.
Above all else, cycling for me is meditation on wheels. It helps me clear out my head. When I am on the bike, I think about nothing. It feels great.
Bill and I do not have a competition, but maybe we should. What would be the metrics, though? Bill? (We’ll let Bill answer this question on Twitter. –Ed)
Q: What is your grammatical pet peeve that would most surprise GeoHipster readers?
A: What would probably be most surprising to those who know me is that while I used to be a grammar nazi, I am working on kicking the habit, and I have made significant strides in this effort. I remember when, in the early 1990s, I wrote a letter — on paper — to TIME magazine, to complain about a grammatical error. I composed a letter, printed it in the computer lab, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, walked it to a mailbox⊠TIME wrote back, by the way, acknowledged the error, and apologized. Today I look back on this episode and cringe with embarrassment. There are far more important things to spend oneâs time and energy on than correcting other peopleâs grammar. (or style, e.g.: Oxford comma, double space after a period, etc. đ ). I try to remember what The Duchess said to Alice: âTake care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.â
Q: You’re the âOGâ – Original GeoHipster – so I don’t think we really need to ask you that question. Instead, do you have any favorite answers to that question from the last five years?
Brian Timoney: The hippest thing Iâve ever done was switch from pleated khakis to flat-front khakis.
Guido Stein: The only hipster attribute I wish I had that I lack is the hipster gene that makes them all slender and buff.
Alex Leith: I knit maps, then scan them at 10 ”m before faxing them to myself.
As I write this article, I am packed and prepared for three days âoff the gridâ, and honestly I could use a break from the daily news. I recognize that I have a tremendous privilege in being able to afford such a break, and that others are not so lucky. Nothing brought this fact to life as much as the recent news that Eni Entchev was deported…despite living in the U.S. for 25 of his 27 years.
Atanas with his son, Eni.
Eni is the son of Atanas Entchev, and sometimes we refer to Atanas as âthe OGâ…as in, âOriginal Geohipsterâ. While we may be using âOGâ in jest, letâs face it – without Atanas, âGeohipsterâ might only be a Twitter account. It probably wouldnât be a website with over 100 interviews published since it started almost 4 years ago. And it most definitely wouldnât be the small independent business partnership it is today.
I certainly know I wouldnât have been able to meet and/or interview so many amazing people these last few years without Atanasâ ideas, support, and generosity. And so when I learned that Eniâs family had set up a funding drive to pay for legal fees and living expenses, I knew I had to act. Like many of you – our amazing colleagues in the geospatial community – I donated from my personal funds. But also, with support from the GeoHipster Advisory Board, Iâve pledged 25% of the revenue from our 2018 GeoHipster Calendar sales.
So, this holiday season, as many of us take some time to celebrate our good fortune with loved ones, I hope youâll consider either donating directly or buying a calendar to help reunite the Entchev family. Sure, hanging a unique calendar with 13 different pages of âmap artâ on your wall might make you the talk of the office. But knowing that in some small way youâve also helped out a friend in need? To me, thatâs what the geospatial community is all about.
On most days, we listen to the soundtrack of work: Â phones, email notifications, office chatter, or the sound of the city. For some of us, our daily soundtrack is a carefully curated playlist of our favorite tunes. Being in the latter group, music can provide the white noise needed push through an hour of getting the labels âjust rightâ, or the inspiration that sparks the fix for that problem with your code.
I was curious about what others are listening to during the day – What does a GeoHipster listen to?
As you might expect, asking anyone who likes music to pick a few songs can be a near futile task. A desert island playlist would be drastically different from a top side one, track ones playlist. Making a mixtape is subtle art, there are many rules – like making a map. I recently talked to several of our interesting colleagues in geo to see what tunes get them through the day. I asked the impossible: pick  3 tracks they love to share for a mixtape.
For your listening and reading  pleasure we have hand-crafted a carefully curated playlist from the GeoHipsters below, complete with liner notes of the cool work they do while listening to the tracks they picked.
Ps. i couldnât help but add a few selections of my own.
Sorry/Not Sorry
jonah
A font made from satellite imagery. WAT. Joey is one of the minds behind  Aerial Bold  – a kickstarter funded project that finds letters in buildings, ponds, trees, and everything else  in satellite imagery.
Generationals – “Reading Signs” Banoffee – “With her” Kings of Convenience – “I’d rather dance with you”
Vicky Johnson @hurricanevicky // GIS Specialist at USAID via Macfadden
A self-admitting geogrump, Vicky regularly talks about maps, all things Buffalo, and nostradamus-style death predictions. Her writings on maps, like âThe Maps We Wandered Into As Kidsâ Â are some of best out there. Seriously. Read her stuff.
Ludovico Einaudi – Night Michael Daugherty – Lex Grimes – Â Kill v Maim
Jereme works on making trail data accesible and open. Through the smooth OuterSpatial platform heâs working on, organizations can provide beautiful maps of their trails, like the Napa County Regional Park & Open Space District
Jereme provided some DJ set links with the caveat: “……Basically, for any kind of work, especially geo/maps. I’m into DJ sets, which is also kind of the only time I’m into DJ sets. :-)……”
Amy Leeâs recent map stylings like âVintageâ and âBlueprintâ have wowâd us all and she continues to produce amazing examples of modern cartographic design.
The Beatles – I Want You (She’s So Heavy) Fetty Wap ft. Drake – My Way Drake – Hotline Bling
Among many of the cool OpenStreetMap related work at NPS, Jim is working on synchronizing ArcGIS Online Services with the OpenStreetMap API via Places-Sync
Kraftwerk âComputer World Boban I Marko Markovic Orkestar â Devla (Khelipe Cheasa) Mad Caddies â Down and Out
Lauren Ancona @laurenancona // Sr Data Scientist at City of Philadelphia
When sheâs not sciencing the shit out of data, sheâs learning all the things by making projects like Parkadelphia – a project that letâs everyone from Von Hayes to the pope view when and where they can park in Philly.
Farrah Fawcett Hair / Capital Cities Genghis Khan / Miike Snow Light Up / Mutemath
When Chris isn’t fracturing bones from shredding rails, heâs spinning up apps like RideScore & CyclePhilly and for the greater Philadelphia regionâs planning authority.
Beach Slang – âRide the Wild Hazeâ Interpol – Heinrich Manuever Band of Horses – Laredo
Mamataâs cartography as inspired so many of us over the last few years. She cooks up fancy visualizations at CartoDB, and is giving us a special sneak peek at a current project – only to be described asâŠ.seismic!
Ant Banks/ Mac Mall / Too Short / Rappin4Tay / E-40 – Players Holiday Whitey Morgan and the 78s – I’m On Fire Phoebe Ryan – Mine (The Jane Doze Remix)
Will Skora @skorasaurus // Operations Manager at SVDP Cleveland
Way back in March of 2015, we interviewed Will for GeoHipster where he talked about his awesome project Marilliac , a hot meal finder app for Cleveland. More recently, heâs been working on transit data and isochrones with OpenClevelandâs RTA project.
BT – Dynamic Symmetry Tim Hecker – Virgins (Virginal I or II) The Future Sound of London – Lifeforms (Life Forms End)
Michael Terner has been working in the geo/GIS industry since 1985, initially in state government where he was the first manager of MassGIS. In 1991 he co-founded Applied Geographics/AppGeo, where he remains a partner and Executive Vice President. Michael was interviewed for GeoHipster by Atanas Entchev, Mike Dolbow, and Randal Hale.
Q (Randal): So Michael, you are Executive VP at AppGeo. AppGeo has been around for around 25 years. You’re one of the founding partners, correct? What’s the history of AppGeo? ArcINFO was still command line at that point, and I’m pretty sure Windows NT hadn’t made a strong appearance in the market place. Plus I still had hair.
A: Yeah, I hate to admit it but I’m increasingly feeling like one of the “old guys” in this industry. I got my start in GIS in 1985, straight out of college when I got an internship with the Massachusetts state government in a small environmental agency. My task was to see what this new “GIS technology” was all about and see if it might help Mass with hazardous waste treatment facility siting. Long story short, that internship led to 7 years in state government where I had the privilege of helping to get MassGIS started, and was the first Manager from 1988-1991. In that time I took my ARC/INFO (correct spelling of the day) training on a Prime 9950 mini computer and ARC/INFO 3.2. Our first disk quota was 600MB, and the system administrator said “you’ll never fill that up.” We did in 3 months. I also helped Massachusetts buy its first copy of ARC/INFO to run on a new VAX computer at version 4.0. I have no nostalgia for the bad old days of command line, 9-track tapes, and needing to start projects by table-digitizing the data that you needed. I do miss AML a little bit.
I left state government to co-found AppGeo with two partners in 1991. My partner for 24 years, David Weaver, retired late last year. Our president Rich Grady joined us in 1994, and we’ve built a strong, internal management team. In hindsight, the one thing I think we’ve done best these past 25 years is anticipate and willingly change as technology evolves. We started AppGeo with one UNIX workstation that ran ARC/INFO for 3 people using terminal emulation on PCs connected to the workstation. We ran ArcInfo on Windows NT, and we’ve evolved through ArcView, ArcView IMS, ArcIMS and ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS for this and that. We’ve seen a lot of technology and devices come and go, and beginning in 2008 we began pivoting from Esri as the sole solution for all problems. Initially with open source, and now increasingly with newer web platforms from Google Maps to CartoDB alongside open source. Again, I have no nostalgia and have never had more fun in this industry than now. Choice is back, and innovation is flourishing. Everywhere. I still have some hair, but as my daughters remind me, my forehead has grown considerably since then.
Q (Randal): So what does AppGeo do?
A: We’re geospatial consultants, plain and simple. We help customers solve geospatial problems and we help them plan and implement geo. We both spec and create data. And we build a lot of applications. Nowadays, almost always on the web, and increasingly what we build is optimized for mobile device access. Sometimes our customers want our ideas; other times they need extra capacity, and sometimes they need special skills such as programming or project design. We really believe in “dogfooding” and “eating what you cook.” As such doing things like creating data and maps as well as applications helps us be more confident in the kinds of recommendations we put forth in our strategic plans. Now we also resell some technology, and we have our own software as a service (SaaS) offerings that we serve out of the cloud to many dozens of customers. Pretty much everything we do has geospatial in it, but as geospatial — or location — has gotten more mainstream, increasingly our work involves integrating with non-geospatial business systems or tying geospatial technology into traditional IT infrastructures. Which is good. As our development team will say: “spatial is not special, it’s just another column in the database.” It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but with SQL extended for spatial operations, not by much.
Q (Randal): One of the things I’ve noticed about AppGeo is that you have several business partnerships. Two of the most interesting were Esri and Google. One of the two decided they didn’t want to partner with you in the GIS realm anymore. Which one ran?
A: As a small business, we have always been open-minded to partnerships. In addition to geospatial supplier partnerships, we have partnered with a wide variety of other consultants on projects. From big engineering firms to well known IT consulting firms to firms that are highly specialized in a particular market such as airports. We add the geo/location expertise.
And we’ve always been very open to partnering with the geospatial software providers. In addition to the two you mention — Esri and Google — at various times (and to this day) we’ve been partners with Intergraph, Bentley, FME, and CartoDB. Our loyalty is to our customers, and we want the expertise needed to help them solve their problems, and we need to understand the tools that are out there very well to provide that expertise. Partnerships help us to do that.
So to your question: Esri kicked us out of their partner program after almost 20 years in the program. I blogged on that topic in 2014 and provided a good amount of detail on what we think happened, and what it means. Many, many people read the piece, and as I’ve traveled around, several other people have sought me out to tell me “their story.” We’re certainly not the only ones who have met this fate, but not many have talked about it openly. As I wrote, it was not a healthy partnership, and in the end it was good that it happened. We have never been stronger, and there are many other firms — including Google — that have welcomed us as a partner, and respected our non-denominational outlook on partnership. We still use a ton of Esri and feel very comfortable as a customer of theirs. As our clients know, our expertise in Esri didn’t disappear with our partner status. We greatly respect the company and Jack Dangermond as a strong and tough businessman. And, in our “best of breed” outlook on the geospatial landscape, Esri is the best at many things. But, in our opinion, not all. And that’s probably why we parted company.
Q (Mike): Any regrets about publicly airing all of those details? Do you think AppGeo would be different today if you had been able to stay in the program?
A: No regrets whatsoever. In fact, we have been a bit surprised at how many people were interested in the story. In the end, we had heard that Esri was telling the story to some of our mutual customers in “their terms”, and we felt it was important for people to have the ability to also hear that story directly from us. Quite honestly, I don’t think things would be much different for us if we had stayed in the Esri partner program. Business remains good, and we would still be using a variety of technologies, and we would still have our primary loyalty to our customers. Really, the biggest difference is in the posture of our relationship with Esri. Now we’re an Esri customer and user instead of a partner. And thus the kinds of conversations we have with Esri are somewhat different.
Q (Atanas): How is partnering with Google different than with Esri?
A: As you might expect, it’s an enormous difference. Google’s program is certainly not perfect, but Google is very clear with their partners on the role of the partner channel and Google’s expectations. It took some getting used to, but we have hit our stride and the partnership is very productive for us. Here are a few of the biggest differences:
Google has many, many fewer partners than Esri, and the partners are selected/recruited based on their qualifications. And there is not an annual fee to be in their partner program.
Google’s program is re-selling oriented. We do a lot of related services (e.g., application development), but that is between us and the customer; we work very closely with Google on providing the right subscription-based products. Unlike Esri, Google allows their partners to sell any of their geo products, not just the lower-end subset of products.
Google has other, non-geo product lines (e.g., Gmail/Google for Work; Google Cloud Platform; Search; etc.) and many of Google’s geo partners sell, or even specialize in these other product lines. Google’s partner conference (which I just attended in March) mixes all of these different partners, and it’s a really interesting and diverse ecosystem. There’s a specialized track for each product line (we followed the geo track), but you also get to see the whole cloud-based vision of the larger company and interact with, and learn from the non-geo partners.
Probably the biggest difference for us is that there is a very active exchange of leads and joint selling. We got more leads from Google in our first month in the program than we did in the entire life of our Esri partnership which spanned almost 20 years. Fundamentally, Google and their partners work together on sales which was not the case for us with Esri.
Q (Mike): While weâre drawing comparisons, youâve been working with customers around the country. Are you noticing any regional differences in the way GIS or mapping technologies are approached?
A: Honestly, I don’t see fundamental “technological approach” differences across the country. Pretty much everywhere I go Esri remains the dominant player, but also I see people’s eyes and minds being ever more open to new approaches like open source (e.g., QGIS) or cloud-based platforms (e.g., CartoDB, Fulcrum). There may be slight regional differences in the rate of uptake of new technology, but everywhere people are more curious than I’ve ever seen. People are also increasingly interested in open data across the country, and even in Canada, which does not have the same public records laws and open records history as the USA.
The biggest regional differences are in governmental organization and the priority of particular issues. The things that vary on a regional basis are more like, âDo you work with more counties vs. cities/towns?â Or, âIs the drought, or agriculture, or public lands a big issue?â
Q (Mike): Iâll ask you what I asked you in Duluth last fall — can the open source community band together to make sure the Yankees never win another World Series?
A: Wish it were so. But as a fellow Red Sox fan I feel good about where we stand relative to the Yankees in the 21st Century, i.e., 3 titles Red Sox to 1 for the Yankees.
Q (Atanas): Hippest commute mode: ferry, train, or bike?
A: Iâm a big public transit fan, mostly because the downtown Boston driving commute is terrible. Usually Iâm on the commuter rail. But during the window from mid-May through the end of October thereâs a commuter ferry from Salem (the neighboring city to my hometown of Beverly) into downtown Boston. So my favorite, and by association hippest, commute is the 1-2 days/week during the summer I get to bike the ~3 miles from home to Salem for a wonderful high speed ferry ride into Boston (and then back). This is the morning âentering Bostonâ view:
‘Entering Boston’ by Michael Terner
Q (Randal): So with all these questions behind us ⊠do you feel geohipsterish? We did a poll way back in the beginning days of GeoHipster to define a geohipster, and the best we could come up with are they shun the mainstream, have a wicked sense of humor, and do things differently. Do you feel like one?
A: Yes, I hope so. Iâm not sure I âshunâ the mainstream, but I donât believe there is a mainstream that lasts very long in technology. If you stand pat, you die. Weâve lasted 25 years so at a minimum weâve bobbed in and out of the ever-changing tech mainstream fairly effectively. In 1985 when I started in this business, Esri was not mainstream. I appreciate humor (especially Randyâs) greatly, and I hope Iâm occasionally funny (even if my family might disagree). Yes, I think we often approach things differently, and arenât afraid to âtry differentâ, and thatâs been a great asset.
Q (Randal): I usually leave the last question up to you to say whatever you want to say to the world, and I’m going to do just that ⊠BUT with a twist. Something big is coming to Boston in 2017, and you and the Geo community did a tremendous amount of work to make this happen. So what is coming to Boston in 2017?
A: Yes, the Global FOSS4G Conference is coming to Boston in August of 2017 as the three-continent rotation returns to North America after a successful stop in Seoul, Korea in 2015, and the upcoming conference in Bonn Germany in 2016. See our nascent web-site to mark your calendars. The Boston geo community rallied, and I am extremely proud to have led our awesome Boston Location Organizing Committee (the BLOC) in generating the winning proposal to host that conference. We had incredibly tough competition with really strong proposals coming from both Ottawa and Philadelphia, and we are committed to putting on an awesome conference and rewarding the faith OSGeo has put in us. We are also excited to support the upcoming FOSS4G North America that will be held in Raleigh, NC in just 4 weeks. Please show your support for FOSS4G and learn lots and have fun with us in Raleigh.
