\title{G\'{e}o\'{e}v\'{e}nement 2007}
\author{by Yves Jacolin}

\maketitle

%\section{Presentation of the G\'{e}o\'{e}v\'{e}nement}
\label{sec:presentation}
G\'{e}o\'{e}v\'{e}nement is the annual French geomatics tradeshow. In 2007, it took place at \textbf{Porte de Versailles} in Paris. It offered booth exhibits, thematic presentations and Birds of a Feather sessions. This year, more than 35 companies had a booth of which 13 were from the open source community. These 13 companies created an open source village which provided more than 30 free presentations, free as in free beer and in free mind. Some companies proposed workshops about Mapserver, CartoWeb and OpenLayers installation. 

OSGeo participated in this village with a booth and two presentations. There was also a Birds of a Feather (BoF) meeting about starting an OSGeo Francophone Local Chapter.  Topics discussed included: how to organise it, how to manage the election of officers, which organisations need to be contacted, etc.

\begin{figure}[htbp]
 \centering
  \includegraphics[width=0.95\textwidth]{events/yjacolin/20070407_tux_yja_ccbysa}
  \caption{Tux welcomed people in the Open Source Village}
\end{figure}

This report aims at presenting the results of the booth, presentations and BoF. First of all, here is a presentation of the Francophone Local Chapter.

\section{The Francophone Local Chapter}
\label{sec:Fr-LocalChapter}

The idea of creating a Francophone Local Chapter first emerged at FOSS4G 2006, Lausanne. In October 2006 the Francophone mailing list and the Francophone wiki page were created. People subscribed to the mailing list and the number of members grew to more than 75 people (still growing). Following the Local Chapter Guidelines, the next step, after the self-organisation, is to define the group's missions. Here they are:

\vspace{0.2cm}

\noindent Free Organisation
	\begin{itemize}
		\item Create a portal for the Francophone users of open source geomatics (data, software, jobs, ...)
		\item Set up meetings and tradeshows
		\item Promote OSGeo and its missions
	\end{itemize}
Free Data
	\begin{itemize}
		\item Promote open source licensing
		\item Host, share and create free data
	\end{itemize}
Free Software
	\begin{itemize}
		\item Promote and demonstrate open source software
		\item Localise/translate software
		\item Translate and share documentation
		\item Provide support in French (mailing-list and forum)
	\end{itemize}

\noindent For more on the activities of the Francophone Local Chapter, see the Local Chapter Reports section of this Journal.

\section{Promotion of OSGeo}
\label{sec:OSGeoPromotion}
\subsection{Exhibition Booth}

The Francophone Local Chapter put up an exhibition booth to promote the OSGeo mission and its hosted projects. We focused on FOSS and missions promotion rather than demonstrate some projects which will be possible next time using some LiveCD (i.e. Omniverdi LiveCD\footnote{\url{http://livecd.ominiverdi.org/index.php?page=LiveCD&toc=livecd}}, Geolive\footnote{\url{http://geolive.cartography.st/geolive/wiki/FrenchDesc}}). In order to promote OSGeo missions and projects the Francophone Local Chapter ran a \textit{sprint translation} project to translate the OSGeo Flyer,\footnote{OSGeo Fliers: \url{http://www.osgeo.org/visibility}} created a poster and showed a presentation on two laptops.

The booth welcomed a continuous stream of people who showed a lot of interest in the OSGeo and its projects, here are some frequently asked questions:
\begin{itemize}
\item What is OSGeo?
\item Is OSGeo different than AFIGEO? (AFIGEO is a French geomatics association)
\item What is the difference between OSGeo and OGC?
\item Do I have to pay something or subscribe to become an OSGeo member?
\item How can I contribute?
\begin{itemize}
   \item How can I find what help is needed?
   \item Where can I learn how to contribute?
   \item Who should I contact?
\end{itemize}
\item Do you have some project demonstrations on LiveCD or anywhere?
\item Do you have any examples of projects?
\begin{itemize}
   \item Example of contribution?
   \item Example of funding projects?
\end{itemize}
\item What is the equivalent of MapInfo/\textit{Cartes et Bases} in Open Source? (Cartes et Base is a proprietary GIS analysis tool)
\item Do you think you will create a summary of projects with a comparison of each?
\item Does a simple tool exist to create a WMS web service?
\item Does OSGeo plan to provide training?
\item Does OSGeo fund any external projects?
\end{itemize}

\noindent Some questions focused on the migration from proprietary software to FOSS and to learn if this software is good enough for their use, if they can find some training, etc.

\subsection{Birds of a Feather (BoF) Meeting}

This meeting took place at the G\'{e}oCaf\'{e} (an open central place in the tradeshow) on the Wednesday 4th of April at 14h00. About 20 people participated. The content included an OSGeo Presentation, Presentation of Local Chapters and the development of the Francophone one.
Discussion also included:
\begin{itemize}
    \item How can we organise ourselves? Organisation, election, ...
    \item Who can help support the Francophone Chapter? Contact some associations that share common missions (join, organise, structure, ...)
\end{itemize}

\noindent Topics of the meeting were free and was larger than expected.

\begin{figure}[htbp]
 \centering
  \includegraphics[width=0.95\textwidth]{events/yjacolin/20070407_bof_yja_ccbysa}
  \caption{A presentation at the Open Source Village}
\end{figure}

Some ideas discussed on the Francophone mailing list were accepted: companies have the same place as inside OSGeo (sponsor role), members are only physical individual people.  Others ideas were proposed, such as, the creation of a webring which can promote each other and running a poll to know more about user and contributor interests.

Structure of the proposed Francophone Local Chapter followed closely to its missions: a lead manager to connect the local chapter to the OSGeo (providing monthly reports, etc.) and three other committee managers to lead one of the three main missions: organisation, free data and open source software.  Each of them have active projects (translating OSGeo Journal for example). If one of these projects is especially important a project manager will be chosen by the committee manager with agreement of the list.  Election of this structure ran at this end of June - results are reported in the Local Chapter Report of this Journal.

Free data is a part of the mission that seems to get the main interest from Francophone communities: How to host data? Where? Do we need to set up a data catalog? It seems that some datasets could be free in the current year.

Another meeting aims to do a synthesis about the Open Source Village. Everybody seems to agree about its success and will renew next year. We hope that OSGeo-fr may manage this to get stronger.

\subsection{Presentations}

G\'{e}o\'{e}v\'{e}nement organised some thematic presentations, one of them focused on \textit{How to get your hands on Open Source technologies}:

\begin{itemize}
	\item \textit{Rising of a FOSS industrial ecosystem} - David Jonglez, Camptocamp France SAS and Fran\c{c}ois Badet, WaynaSoft
	\item \textit{OSGeo: why a Francophone Local Chapter is important} - Yves Jacolin, G\'{e}orezo and Gwenael Bachelot, Autodesk
	\item \textit{Free GIS: freeness for reachness?} - Nicolas Klein, SI17  % not sure if this title needs help --TM)
	\item \textit{Some elements to compare 3 GFOSS} - Olivier Ertz, Erwan Bocher, Nicolas Ribot and Yves Jacolin
	\item \textit{Development of an Information System for Water (SGBD - SIG) in the Charente county} - Harold Rethoret, EPTB Charente
\end{itemize}

The Open Source Village also organised more than 35 presentations. Themes of this session covered testimonials, presentation of OSGeo or Open Source projects (OpenLayers, CartoWeb, GeoNetwork, etc.), free data, Web Services, open source licences, and project presentations. Almost all presentations are publicly available in the French translation of the OSGeo Library.\footnote{OSGeo Library: \url{http://www.osgeo.org/switchuilocale/fr?destination=library}}

\begin{figure}[htbp]
 \centering
  \includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{events/yjacolin/20070407_conf_yja_ccbysa}
  \caption{A presentation at the Open Source Village}
\end{figure}

\section{Conclusion}
\label{sec:conclusion}

The start-up of this Local Chapter project is allowing us to inform others about the OSGeo Foundation, and about the future Francophone Local Chapter. This is a success with 3 presentations about the OSGeo, a lot of people meeting at the booth, and a great richness in the discussion. Furthermore, a first contact between some contributors of the future Francophone Local Chapter gave some great ideas for future project (e.g. about free data topics, among others).

And now? We need to send OSGeo a proposal about the Local Chapter structure and organisation. For the next tradeshow we aim to translate many more brochures and fliers into French, share Geomatics LiveCD and present some workshops in addition to presentations.

Some media reported the success of the Open Source Village: "\textit{An Open Source Village in the G\'{e}o-\'{e}v\'{e}nement 2007 tradeshow}" (Le Monde Informatique), "\textit{Rendez-vous at G\'{e}o \'{E}v\'{e}nement 2007}" (SIG la lettre), portailsig which relays OSGeo-fr informations to the geomatics community.

All this effort has been made possible by the generous financial support of AutoDesk inc, Camptocamp SAS and Autodesk France. I would like to thank them for that.

\vspace{0.2cm}

\noindent \textbf{Some links:}
\begin{itemize}
	\item Conference papers are available online in French\footnote{Conference papers (French): \url{http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Fr_geoevenement2007}} and mentioned also in English.\footnote{Conference papers (English):\url{http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/GeoEvenement2007}}.  
	\item For more information about the Francophone Local Chapter, see the OSGeo wiki page.\footnote{Francophone Local Chapter: \url{http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Francophone}}.
	\item For more information about the G\'{e}o\'{e}v\'{e}nement, see the conference web site.\footnote{G\'{e}o\'{e}v\'{e}nement, see the conference web site: \url{http://www.ortech.fr/geo-evenement/index.php}}
\end{itemize}

\address{Yves Jacolin\\
 Local Chapter Contact, OSGeo Francophone Chapter\\
 \email{yjacolin AT free.fr}
 }