Upcoming local FOSS4G in Bulgaria on 7th-8th March#
QGIS.бг is an informal organization that brings together the Bulgarian FOSS geo enthusiasts. In the landscape dominated by proprietary software, the QGIS.bg is providing learning materials at beginner and advanced level, in Bulgarian language, for free to anyone who wants to know more about open source GIS and technologies.
While the community is named after the flagship FOSS product, QGIS, its members praise other products such as GRASS GIS, GeoServer, QField, MapServer, GeoNode, Leaflet.js, geospatial programming with Python, R and many more!
For the first time in March 2024 the community behind qgis.bg managed to organize a fully independent "Open GIS conference", which was surprising success even for them, with more than 160 people coming and 17 lectors from various private and public institutions at home and abroad.
And of course, a good Balkan party at the end to summarize the event and break the ice. With the great positive feedback, especially by the young members in the audience, the team behind the 2024 event decided to organize a new, bigger conference on 7-8 March 2025.
The organizers find the 8th March, the International Women's Day, an important sign about women in GIS and strengthening their positions in the field. This year's event will officially be named after the FOSS4G global brand - "FOSS4G:BG: Open GIS conference", as it is already following the very same international format, but will also include one additional day with workshops, where people can get their hands dirty with deep dive in certain GIS topics in 2 to 4 hour sessions. And of course, a great party afterwards is planned.
The organizers behind the event hope this year they can formalize their organization as a legal entity to promote Open source software in geospatial, commit the conference event to happen annually, onboard new members and further improve socializing. For anyone that is interested in the event, please check the even website foss4g.qgis.bg.