It’s 4 a.m. I’m trying to write slowly in the darkness because Gonzalo it’s trying to sleep. He will read his paper tomorrow.

Today started the Conference. It seems the usual professional Conference in a four-star hotel, but there is a bit of unformality air. It’s not a geek conference at all (otherwise somebody would burn with gas because the wireless net continuous problems), there are people from different disciplines and organistations (government, university, enterprise, non-profit foundations, even lone developers).

In the opening we could hear some philosophical conferences (web 3.0 gaaaaaa!!!!)  and the launching of some projects related to the GIS world (Simon Jirka on 52º North about  Sensor Web Enablement, and Chris Holmes on OpenGeo about geospatial web services).

After lunch the most technical speeches began. Nacho opened the fire in his session with the releasing of SDIAnalyzer. He beared the network problems too, so he sadly couldn’t improve his speech with a fair demo. Then a pair of speeches followed about Catalonian and Andalusian governments apps around web geospatial services to their citizens.

There was an interesting discussion after the coffe about free (as in freedom) (spatial) data. Once again, governments and non-profit initiatives like OSM exposed their different points of view.

After sunset we went out for a walk with a tourist guide. We could admire how a city was built since the Roman Empire (Via Augusta crosses the city drawing the cardus) to nowadays. It was a pity the cathedral was closed. It’s the Gothic cathedral with the longest span in width nave in the world. We could read in those old stones some history about intolerance of Catholics against Jewish (modern era) and Communist and Anarchists against Catholics (Spanish II Republic and Civil War).

Finally we went to have dinner to a nice restaurant where we eat some typical  dishes. After it, around 100 GISers crossed in the night the city to find an opened pub. We found a pretty pub where two guitarists played a gypsy concert. I got a bit sad during a moment because I lost my session at the Portiño, but we really got fun dancing

(Of course I’m uploading some photos in my gallery.)

And… in four hours… we’ll sing “Join us now and share the software…”