[OSM-talk] Open GIS 2012 conference

[Ilya Zverev]

Hi! On 17-18 of November the first Russian conference on open GIS and 
open geodata took place. It was organized in three tracks: one for GIS, 
one for workshops, and OpenStreetMap got a whole two-day track too. To 
say it was fun is understatement. This was the best conference I've 
attended! :) We've just published almost all slides and photos we have 
at http://gisconf.ru/talks/index.en.html — alas, slides were not 
translated, but I've added a tooltip to indicate which presentation is 
understandable without reading Russian words (or with a bit of google 
translate). Videos will be added in a couple of weeks.

Also I can't but mention ITO World, who were so kind to make a "Years 
of Edits to OpenStreetMap" video for Russia: http://vimeo.com/53688271 . 
Thanks a lot, guys! Since it was the only video made specially for the 
conference, it gained a lot of attention and resulted in crowded OSM 
room :) In total there were about 270±10 attendees (I've lost a bet on 
this), and it seems next year we would need bigger rooms.

As for international participants, two of four speakers had trouble 
arranging Russian visas, possibly because they contacted some shady 
organizations. One of them is yet to recover his passport. We learned 
that it is not easy to get into Russia, and we will see what we can do 
next time.


IZ