2026-09-01 –, Phoenix Hall
The session will be featuring the three keynote speakers together with OSGeo President Jeroen Ticheler and several current OSGeo leaders and contributors.
The panel will explore the future of OSGeo, the challenges and opportunities facing open source geospatial communities, and the role OSGeo can play in the years to come.
As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the OSGeo Foundation in 2026, let us learn from our history, express our gratitude to those who built our community, and look ahead together toward its future.
This will be an interactive session — we welcome your questions and your ideas for OSGeo's next 20 years.
This keynote session is highly beneficial for every attendee.
I make my conference contribution available under the CC BY 4.0 license. The conference contribution comprises the abstract, the text contribution for the conference proceedings, the presentation materials as well as the video recording and live transmission of the presentation:
Tom Kralidis is with the Meteorological Service of Canada and longtime contributor to FOSS4G. He leads and contributes to numerous projects in the Geopython ecosystem. He is the 2024 recipient of the Sol Katz Award for Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G), awarded annually by OSGeo to individuals who have demonstrated leadership in the FOSS4G community.
Tom is the co-chair of the OGC API - Records Standards Working Group, chair of the WMO Expert Team on Metadata, and serves on the OSGeo Board of Directors.
Joana is a data engineer with a strong background in geospatial tech. Her pursuit to make geospatial information F.A.I.R. has led her to the board of GSDI and to OGC, where she leads relations with the developer community. Committed to advancing the open-source geospatial ecosystem, Joana is a OSGeo board member and project contributor.
Joana is the founder of ByteRoad, a boutique company in the field of Spatial Data Infrastructures. She is also a reviewer for the European Commission, and has been involved in education, teaching the next generation of full-stack developers and data analysts.
Marco Bernasocchi is an open-source advocate, entrepreneur and full-stack geoninja. He is the creator of QField for QGIS, currently serves as QGIS.org Chair, and is an Open Source Geospatial Foundation board member. In his day job, Marco is the CEO of OPENGIS.ch, which he founded in 2011.
A geographer by trade, Marco lives in a small Romansh-speaking mountain village in Switzerland, where he loves scrambling around the mountains to enjoy the feeling of freedom it gives him.
CEO/Owner of GeoCat – Chair and founder of the GeoNetwork opensource – OSGeo President of the Board of Directors.
Jeroen established the GeoNetwork opensource project while working at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). A widely used geospatial catalogue application used for example as national and international level catalogs including National Geospatial & Open Data Registries and the INSPIRE GeoPortal in the EU.
Jeroen has been promoting the use of international standards and Free and Open Source Software for geographic data and information for over twenty years now. He currently serves on the OSGeo Board, and did so in 2007 & 2008.
Toru Mori is a geospatial industry leader and long-time advocate of FOSS4G in Japan.
He is the founder of Orkney, Inc., which helped introduce open source geospatial technologies to the Japanese market, and worked with Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan on the early internationalization of GRASS GIS and MapServer.
In 2006, he founded the OSGeo Japan Chapter and served as its first representative, helping launch FOSS4G conferences in Japan.
He is also an OSGeo Charter Member.
Today, he serves as a board director of MIERUNE, where he continues to promote open geospatial technologies and support the broader OSGeo community.