FOSS4G 2011 Synopsis and Slides coming in PostGIS 2.0

We were able to attend some of FOSS4G this year and for the very first time too. Hopefully next time we can stay for the full conference. Overall it was an enjoyable time. We got to see many of the people in person we've only corresponded with via email and even bumped into one of our college fraternity brothers we haven't seen in twenty years. It is indeed a small world. We gave our talk on Friday on what's up and coming in PostGIS 2.0. We were a bit shocked at the vast number of people attending our session and all the PostGIS sessions in fact. Next time we'll try to make our presentation less dense. The density of the presentation does make for a good after the conference hand-out. WARNING: The following slides feature SQL doing unconventional things suitable only for mature audiences. Viewer discretion is adviced.. You can check out our slides here PostGIS 2.0 the new stuff.

I think the last time we were in the Denver area (not counting airport stops) was when we were driving from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Stanford, California and we got stuck in a hail storm. Since we were in town, we thought we'd take in one of the nearby sites we've always fantasized about visiting; Casa Bonita Restaurant as featured in South Park. I wasn't expecting it to look or be quite as portrayed in South Park, especially the cave divers and waterfall. Indeed there were cave divers plunging every 30 minutes off the water fall and a Black Bart's Cave. We explored the cave and various other cavities of the restaurant and picked up some gifts at the gift shop to take back. The sopapillas were super delicious too as Cartman described. Then we went for dinner to eat some game food -- like Rocky Mountain Oysters. I exclaimed to Leo -- "these do not taste anything like oysters, not particularly interesting taste". To which he laughed and said "You've never tasted these oysters before." Had I known they were Rocky mountain oysters before-hand I might have appreciated the flavor a little more.

On Saturday we had the code sprint and the whole PostGIS clan (including remote folks) got together to strategize on the details of PostGIS 2.0 which includes the feature freeze, final expected release, what we would try to get done before release and what we would set aside for the future. A very strong showing of people about 8 local and several more on PostGIS IRC. The details are sketched on the PostGIS 2011 Sprint etherplans page. We will have Feature Freeze sometime in November and release Early 2012.