This year, the second workshop day included a new FOSS4G feature: the “FOSS4G for New-comers” session. The all-day track was basically a non-technical introduction to the philosophy of open source, case studies from organizations deploying open source, and a guide to some of the terminology folks could expect.

The session kicked off with Peter Batty explaining his history with FOSS4G, which (gratifying for me) started at FOSS4G in Victoria, exploring PostGIS. Peter covered his rationale for moving increasingly into open source, including his recent shepherding of the Ubisense infrastructure from a largely Google-bases system into an open source system. It all comes down to control: Google’s technology was fine, but the terms of use and lack of control over the future of system was too big a business risk to take over the long term.

A recurring theme throughout the session, pointed out by moderator Brian Timoney, was that of “hybrid approaches”. Using open source or proprietary software is not an either/or proposition, it is an and/also proposition. Every case study cited involved some kind of bridge or connection between open source and proprietary software.

My favorite presentation was from Michael Byrne of the FCC on why they chose open source for the National Broadband Map. And not just because he said the support he got from OpenGeo was “fantastic”. They benchmarked their options, and build prototypes to make sure they were making the right decision, and chose open source on the merits: it was faster, it was more flexible, it fit their needs for handing the expected huge traffic (500K visitors on day one) the map would generate.

Unfortunately the audience had very few questions, so I wasn’t able to meet my personal goal for the session: getting a gauge of what issues are top of mind for managers taking their first foray into the world of open source.

Tomorrow the plenaries and technical sessions begin, and there are many many talks to see. OpenGeo has lots of talks (too many, sadly, for me to go to them all and also see the other ones I want to) this year, and we’ll be having office hours at the booth again this year for folks who need their PostGIS/GeoServer/OpenLayers/GeoExt/GeoNode questions answered.

Tags: foss4g2011, recap