One of the keynotes was by Josh Berkus of PostgresQL talking about "firehose databases". FOSS4G is always a firehose conference, and this one was no exception. I missed many more talks than I wanted to take in, for various reasons - the 3 simultaneous tracks, my own commitments to talks and OpenGeo work, and often because it's just such a good chance to talk to great people from all around the FOSS4G world.
Here are some of the my conference highlights:
- another inspiring keynote from Paul Ramsey, on the origins and future of open source
- the Ignite Spatial talks, which were fast, fascinating and funny
- a panel discussion which hit on the need for a replacement for the shapefile (PLEASE!)
- hearing Josh Berkus talk about the impressive new features coming in PostgresQL 9.2 (JSON, index-only scans, SP_GIST, to name a few)
- Andrew Turner's fastpacedpresentationonGeoIQ
- meeting Kevin Web and hearing more about OpenTripPlanner
- discussing skeletonization, long-distance hiking, and sewage treatment with Stephen Mather
- talking to Josh Marcus about GeoTrellis, an engine for scalable geoprocessing
- talks on using NoSQL DBs such as MongoDB and HBase for storing and querying spatial data
- a discussion with Javier de la Torre of CartoDB about the need for a spatially-sensitive sampling technique (a la Oracle's SAMPLE clause) in PostGIS. We ended up discussing this with Josh Berkus (since he was sitting at the next table!) and apparently there is some work starting on this in PostgreSQL. Hopefully this will extend to spatial datasets as well.
- and of course, meeting lots of people using JTS!
Here's a few other reviews from around the web:
- Directions Mag takeaways from the ever-present Adena Schutzberg
- smather on a Real American Hero
- Bill Dollins also had the firehose feeling
- Josh Berkus liked his sip from the spatial firehose
3 comments:
and you forgot Josh's review :)
http://www.databasesoup.com/2012/04/foss4g-na-2012.html
I guess you guys really made an impression on him. I regret missing it.
Good find, Regina!
It was great having him at the conf, and it will good if this leads to more synergy between the PostgreSQL and PostGIS worlds. After all, spatial is a great place to find big gnarly DB use cases...
Yes I agree. BTW next book we are working on is:
"Up and Running with PostgreSQL"
will be published by O'Reilly
Leo and I are finalizing the first draft this week and getting to review phase next week. Much shorter book than PostGIS in Action though. Hope to have a Sequel to PostGIS in Action once the PostGIS 2 series warms up a bit. :)
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