Back from Switzerland after the FOSS4G conference, and a weekend in Geneva. Whew! Geneva would perhaps have been more enjoyable if our hotel wasn’t on a street having an all-weekend party, complete with blaring music (Pink Floyd and Reggae mix one night, Slipknot or similar the next). Anyhow, we got about- went out to CERN and visited the United Nations, and even took in a little archaeology at St Peter’s Cathedral.

The end sessions of FOSS4G have been pretty well commented on elsewhere, and I don’t have much to add, except that I want to add my congratulations to Markus Neteler from GRASS for winning the Sol Katz award and to say that the whole conference was extremely interesting, inspiring and enjoyable.

I came across some great examples of what we perhaps have to call Neogeography today- from the beautiful and a little scary Information Aesthetics. They are all examples of using maps to display statistical information, and prove what all Geomatics-types know, which is that maps are a very effective way of getting statistical information across with maximum impact, and they can be visually attractive too.

Breathing Earth

Real Time Geographical Radio

Topix Forum Activity Map I particularly like this one as it has some similarities with the MapChat application that I blogged about from FOSS4G last week.