The preparation for the conference in September 2013 is gaining shape.

We have our first sponsors – Ordnance Survey (yes, another ‚OS‘) Google, Edina, MapGears, and Metaspatial have all got in with our early-bird 10% discount sponsor deal. The rest of you have until the end of the month, then it goes up to full rate.

Wall-of-sponsors page is here: http://2013.foss4g.org/sponsors/

We also have our first accepted keynote speaker, a major open-source geospatial figure – I’m not sure if its public knowledge yet, so I’ll not give any names away.

The first papers have been submitted to the Academic Track section. We expect many more, most of which will undoubtedly come in on the last
day!

The call for presentations and workshops is nearly done, the programme subcommittee are finalising the submissions process.

We’ve also started to investigate entertainment options for our evening dinner spectacular, and I’ve been in touch with agents to try and get a really top-class comedy/musical act with broad appeal to our community. If that fails we’ll give our committee chair a microphone and make him sing karaoke.

The announcement of FOSS4G-NA’s harassment policy has sparked some discussion on the committee, and we will be producing a code of conduct document to cover everything from harassment to dress code and timeliness. The dress code will insist everyone brings their t-shirts from previous FOSS4Gs!

With the countdown clock on the web site now under 8 months expect many more exciting announcements soon.

Barry