The Charge of the Light Brexit Brigade

Into the valley of death Rode May's two hundred Europhobe to the right of them Opposition to the left of them Country in front of them Volleyed and thundered
	The Charge of the Light Brigade by Caton Woodville

Message to FOSS4G-Europe 2018

This is a message sent to the plenary of the FOSS4G-Europe 2018 conference. This conference took shape largely from my initiative and I was part of the Local Organisation Committee. Click on the logo for the conference web site.

Dear all,

The history of this conference dates back to August of 2016, when the international FOSS4G was held in Bonn. Seven Portuguese attendants gathered in that conference, most of which are OSGeo charter members. However, only one of those actually lived in Portugal at the time. The financial crisis sent many professionals abroad and our community seemed particularly affected.

Slowly the idea formed in the back of my mind: why not turn the issue on its head and bring FOSS4G to Portugal? As the conference moved on from presentations to code sprint, me and Jorge Gustavo were left as the last Portuguese at the BaseCamp in Bonn. The discussion started: while the international conference would possibly be too much for the modest OSGeo-Portugal, the European edition looked feasible. And with the international conference taking place outside of Europe in 2018, there seemed to be a nice gap for OSGeo-Portugal to fill in.