On May 26 the "First Meeting of German-Speaking gvSIG Users" was held in Munich, with an attendance of nearly 60 professionals from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy and Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Presentations from many different perspectives were shown, demonstrating some of the projects that are being carried out in German-speaking countries; from the use of gvSIG with the artistic heritage of Bavaria and for the reconstruction of landscape geomorphology, through to its use in organisations for development cooperation.

The Department of Health and Environment of Munich City Council opened the conference with a speech about the process of migrating to free software that is being undertaken by the Council, and more specifically, the use of gvSIG as the tool selected for the migration process by the Department.

The company CSGIS [1] presented news relating to version 1.9 of gvSIG, while José Vicente Higón, as a representative of the gvSIG Association, explained the benefits that the future version 2.0--to be announced at the end of the year--will bring to developers. WhereGroup [2] gave a presentation on the creation of "OGC Services" with the gvSIG publication extension.

The conference was enhanced by a presentation about the application of raster and geostatistical methods using gvSIG and Sextante.

Attendees had the opportunity to share experiences directly with members of the Technical Steering Committee of gvSIG, which was very well received.

During the final session of the conference there was an interesting discussion about the various possibilities for active participation in gvSIG available to the German-speaking user community. Here, there were reports on the current state of the translation of the manual and the methodology of project documentation [3].

On their own initiative, users have created a Wiki [4] for the exchange of documentation relating to the gvSIG project. The event's presentations are available on the web [5].

The conference was organised by the Department of Health and Environment of Munich City Council, the Chamber of Commerce of Munich and Oberbayern and the company CSGIS.

[1] www.csgis.de

[2] www.wheregroup.com

[3] www.gvsig.org

[4] www.webmapping.info/mwgvsig

[5] webmapping.info/mwgvsig/index.php?title=Bericht_gvSIG_Anwendertreffen_2009