Fulcrum Live is an all day event co-located with the International Conference for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G). Join Team Fulcrum, our partners, and user community on Tuesday, August 15th in Boston, MA for a full day of presentations, case studies, technical talks, and networking! Located at the Boston Seaport and World Trade Center, this fast-paced single day event runs the day before the FOSS4G sessions and is free for conference attendees!
Why FOSS4G?
The annual FOSS4G conference is the largest global gathering of developers, users, decision-makers, and observers focused on open-source geospatial software. As mentioned in a previous post, the event spans a full week of workshops, presentations, discussions, and networking. It has earned a strong reputation for quality speakers and an enjoyable atmosphere. Held in various locations worldwide, FOSS4G conferences typically attract attendees from over 40 countries. Each event offers a unique experience shaped by the Local Organizing Committee and the host city. Boston 2017 promises to continue this tradition with exciting opportunities for attendees, speakers, and sponsors.
2015 FOSS4G
At the 2015 FOSS4G North America conference in San Francisco, Michael Terner, Executive Vice President at AppGeo, gave the talk, Five years of geo Open Source evolution in a commercial setting: projects and the business ecosystem. In his talk, Mr. Terner explained that the program committee initially rejected his abstract, citing a “lack of belief” in interest in the “business of open source” topic. He argued that while FOSS4G began as a “technical conference,” it has evolved to include more discussions on how FOSS4G tools are actually used. Interest in the business side of open source has also grown significantly. Terner cited Fulcrum, Mapbox, CARTO, and Planet Labs as innovative cloud-based PaaS and SaaS companies powered by open-source technologies.
FOSS4G today
Fast forward two years and Terner is now the Conference Chair for FOSS4G 2017. The list of sponsors certainly reflects a successful group of companies building products and services on open source geospatial technology and the business track is packed with excellent presentation topics. Fulcrum is built on many of the open source software libraries and utilities championed at FOSS4G and we committed to sponsoring this years’ event back in January. Our sponsorship not only helps support the technology our platform depends on, but it has enabled us to hold our own event, co-located with the conference. We are now putting out the call to the entire Fulcrum user community to come and join us in Boston!
Fulcrum Live Event
In the six years since launching Fulcrum, we’ve experienced tremendous growth in all aspects of the company. Our team has expanded, the product has evolved, and our user base has grown alongside us. We’re working on exciting new features, and our users consistently amaze us with what they accomplish using Fulcrum. Now is the perfect time to come together, meet the team, share success stories, and plan for the future.
We’ve outlined a tentative schedule for Fulcrum Live and are booking speakers from across the community. We will have eleven Fulcrum representatives available for questions or one-on-one meetings to discuss business, partnerships, or engineering. You can also talk with us about services, community interests, or any other topics that matter to you. We will have staff at the booth during FOSS4G sessions, so stop by to say hello or schedule a meeting when convenient.
We plan to officially introduce our new Fulcrum Community initiative at FOSS4G, in addition to the Fulcrum Live event. The Community initiative enables rapid deployment of the Fulcrum platform for collecting open data related to humanitarian efforts. It also supports other large-scale, non-commercial crowdsourcing tasks. Qualified projects receive quick provisioning and access to the platform free of charge.
Join us in Boston!
Whether you’re a longtime Fulcrum user or new to mobile field data collection, join us in Boston for this event! If you’re passionate about GIS or open-source software, you can’t miss this year’s FOSS4G conference. We aim to connect the Fulcrum community with the broader geospatial world while also introducing our platform to FOSS4G attendees.