Under the motto “where free culture meets geospatial technologies”, the Jornadas de SIG Libre – or Spanish FOSS4GSIG Conference- brought together nearly 200 professionals from all over Spain to share the most outstanding technological solutions in the geospatial sector.
The conference, organized by Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing Service (SIGTE) of the University of Girona, was held on June 8-9 in Girona.
This 15th edition, the topic of the plenary sessions was Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Karina Gibert, director of the Intelligent Data science and Artificial intelligence Research Center of the UPC opened the conference with a more informative communication. She was followed by Laia Romero, director of the geospatial tech company Lobelia, who put some examples of how machine learning and artificial intelligence applications can face the climate emergency. Finally, María Arias de Reyna, activist and senior developer of free software, talk about the state of the art of the FOSS – Free and Open Source Software.
More than 30 communications, 6 workshops and a social dinner
The Conference program continued with 4 parallels tracks with more than 30 communications about Data visualization; remote sensing; Open Data; Developments; Geoportals; Collaborative cartography, Cases of study and tutorials. The recordings of the communications are available in the DUGIMedia repository of the University of Girona.
The day concluded with the plenary session titled “The EU and data (regulation). A new love story? by Malcom Bain, an open licensing expert and founder of Across Legal company. At the end of the day, participants could attend a Girona’s guided tour and the social dinner held in the Devesa park.
The second day of the Conference was the turn of the practical workshops organized in the computer’s rooms of the Faculty of Arts and Tourism of the University of Girona.
UNIGIS Girona meeting
This year, as usual we could meet some students from UNIGIS Girona master and postgraduate degree. This year we offered 6 scholarships for students to attend the conference and we also met some alumni during the conference. It was a pleasure to chat with them about the master’s degree, their interests and expectations and professional projects.
As sponsors of the event, we also organized a contest for the attendees with a fantastic UNIGIS Girona t-shirts as a prize.
The Spanish FOSS4G Conference was sponsored by Nexus Geographics, the Geographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC), the National Center for Geographic Information (CNIG), Geoinnova, Infraplan and UNIGIS Girona, which sponsored the Geosphere space as well.
Further information: https://www.jornadassiglibre.org