\title{Activity Report of OSGeo Taiwan}
\subtitle{At the 5th Taipei International Digital Earth Symposium (TIDES-07) and FOSS4G.tw Summer Training 2007}
\author{Dongpo Deng}
 
 \maketitle 

OSGeo Taiwan, founded on March this year, is a new and vibrant 
social network in Taiwan. OSGeo Taiwan actively participated 
in local GIS-related conferences and meetings to advocate open 
geo-data, promote Open Source GIS and introduce OSGeo to 
Taiwanese GIS communities. OSGeo Taiwan further collaborated 
with Academia Sinica Computer Center GIS Team, and Chinese 
Culture University Digital Earth Research Center, to organize 
a session for Free/Open Source Software for Geoinformatics 
(FOSS4G) at the 5th Taipei International Digital Earth 
Symposium (TIDES-07) which is held at Chinese Culture 
University from May 15 to 18. Moreover, OSGeo Taiwan started 
to conduct Summer Training courses for Open Source GIS on each 
Friday during June 29 to August 3 at Academia Sinica Computer 
Center. 

 

\section{A Session for Open Source GIS in TIDES-07}

The FOSS4G session in TIDES-07 was conducted on 18th May, during 
the morning session. There were four talks and a panel 
discussion in this session. The aims of talks are to deliver 
introduction of FOSS4G and demonstrate how the FOSS4G works. 
First of all, Dr. Victor T.S. Horng, general manager of OSS 
Integral Institute Co., Ltd., gave the attendees a clear and 
interesting summary for the benefits of using FOSS. Even the 
advantages of using OSS is obvious, the intellectual property 
rights issue of the OSS is often doubted in Taiwan GIS 
communities. Ms. Tung-Mei Ko, project manager of Open Source 
Software Foundry (OSSF), is familiar with legal topics of FOSS. 

In her talk, she delivered an overview of FOSS characteristics 
and the FOSS authorization model. Her experience is useful 
for encouraging the use and development of FOSS4G in Taiwan.

Mr. Hsiung-Ming Liao, initial member of OSGeo
Taiwan and project instructor of GIS Term of Computing Centre of 
Academia Sinica, demonstrated a web-based geospatial application 
constructed by MapGuide Open Source and Web 2.0 techniques. He 
considered that the development of the Geo Web cannot lack FOSS4G and 
that more successful experience of FOSS4G is important to FOSS4G 
progress in Taiwan. However, the prevailing commercial GIS 
solutions absorbed the public attention toward alternatives 
like FOSS4G. There is urgent need to provide more alternatives 
to deal with geospatial information in Taiwan. 

The final 
speaker in this session is Mr. Dongpo Deng who is coordinating, 
and also the initial core member of, OSGeo Taiwan. He introduced the
OSGeo Foundation, global rapidly forming OSGeo communities, 
and OSGeo Taiwan, with further explanatory discussion of 
crucial software aspect of FOSS4G. The talk gave the attendees 
a roadshow of current geospatial open source software 
applications, guiding them with the freedom of choices of 
appropriate tools for their own applications. 

\begin{figure}[htbp]
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=1\textwidth]{local_reports/taiwan/osgeo_tw_img1.png}
	\caption{Dongpo introduced OSGeo Taiwan and gave a tour of FOSS4G}
	\label{fig:tw_dongpo}
\end{figure}

The final panel discussion focused on \textit{Encouraging Development of OSGeo Activities in Taiwan}. Panelists not 
only shared their experiences of FOSS and FOSS4G, but also 
provided some suggestions for future development of FOSS4G 
in Taiwan. Most panelists agreed, Open Data is the first and 
most urgent task on the list of priorities of OSGeo Taiwan. 
Enthusiastically discussed by panelists, the OSGeo Taiwan 
should make concerted efforts to lobby the government 
releasing the geospatial data and providing useful resources, 
and co-developing tutorials, technical notes, training 
courses, workshops and conferences to assist novices of OSGeo 
\& FOSS4G to influence \& support local geospatial professional 
communities. For instance, Taiwan\`s Ministry of The Interior 
Information Center promised to start releasing map data to 
facilitate the learning and exchange among geospatial 
communities \& industry. 


\section{FOSS4G.tw Summer Training}
FOSS4G.tw Summer Training is held on each Friday during June
29 to August 3, 2007, at Academia Sinica Computer Center, Taipei. 
The free courses aim to provide technical and practical 
introduction for beginners, especially students and research 
assistants. We hope the attendees will use these tools in their 
homework or projects, gaining a deeper understanding, and we 
anticipate them to be seeds for future promotion of FOSS4G. 
The serial courses cover several heavy-weighted applications 
such as GRASS, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, MapServer, GeoTool and 
MapGuide, for example. Every instructor has his/her own rich 
experiences for FOSS4G, and can apply to local scenarios to 
best demonstrate the usage of it. The series of courses is 
sponsored by Institute of Information Science, Academia 
Sinica and Academia Sinica Computer Center. 


 \address{Donpo Deng\\
 OSGeo Taiwan \\
 \url{http://www.sinica.edu.tw}\\
 \email{dongpo AT iis.sinica.edu.tw}
 }