The International Conference on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) will be held on 10-15 September 2012 at Beijing, China. The FOSS4G is a global and annual conference of Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), attracting around 1000 participants in Denver last year. This event was initialed by co-operating several famous predecessor conferences e.g. GRASS GIS users conference, Mapserver users conferences since 2006. It has provided a unique forum for exchanging ideas and knowledge on geo-information sciences and technology, initiating innovative open source projects and discovering business opportunities between GIS professionals and geo-informatics industry worldwide.

FOSS4G 2012 will have two days pre-conference workshop about open source GIS software skill training and excellent industrial case studies, and four days conference on technical sessions and academic sessions about open source geospatial techniques development or their applications on environment, ecology, traffic system and so on, related to web mapping, geospatial processing, remote sensing image processing, and global positioning systems. There will be also open standard GIS tested and mixed solutions based on open source GIS and close source software. For software developers, we also provide one day Code Sprint event for a full exchange of their innovative design and codes.

This conference will provide an excellent opportunity for professionals and students, developers and users, researchers and managers in geographic information domains to present their inspiring applications, exchange innovative ideas, and discuss new development directions. The organizing committee cordially invites geo-informatics professionals and scholars from universities, research institutions, industry, and even government sections around the world, review our past outcomes and develop our visions.