We've had our heads down working towards the 1.0beta release for some time, and we have a ways to go.
But at risk of jinxing things, I wanted to quickly write about the goal of this milestone, and what's in store for GeoNode beyond this release. There are two reasons why we have committed to delivering the 1.0beta release by early August and the complete 1.0 version by the beginning of October at the latest. Both are part of the broader strategy around GeoNode as determined by the organizations we work for and are building it for: the World Bank and OpenGeo. The first is based on the World Bank's schedule. They have been excited to deploy GeoNode in production for disaster risk reduction since we started building it for them, and they have lined up five or six potential opportunities to do just that this fall. (Peru is one, the others are in the Eastern Caribbean). The 1.0beta, and subsequent releases, will be what they demo to interested governments and organizations to get them on board. The 1.0 release will be what these institutions deploy and use as their pilots. In the coming months, we will be getting user feedback from these users and using it to guide future GeoNode development. GeoNode remains an important part of CAPRA's larger plan for improving disaster risk management on a large scale through more efficient data sharing. The second reason for the release schedule is because of OpenGeo's schedule. We want to have GeoNode 1.0 at a release candidate point by FOSS4G so we have a very strong showing for the open source geospatial community. A year ago, almost nobody had heard of GeoNode, and most of those that had thought it was just a dream. Six months ago, there was still plenty reason to be skeptical of whether it could live up its ambitions. We are still very far from fulfilling the potential of the GeoNode vision. But I think it will be clear from our 1.0 release that it is a very strong foundation on which to build towards it. What we are building is something new for open source geospatial, and is really a culmination not just of our work this past year, but of the years of work on GeoTools, GeoServer, GeoNetwork, OpenLayers, GeoExt, OWSLib, Django, and more. It is something that is going to attract a lot of organizations to open source, and it will be a vehicle for further development of the projects that its made of. So it is something I think the open source geospatial community as a whole can be proud of and will want to get involved with. So our 1.0 release is going to be a big deal. It is going to be the cornerstone of our strategy for growing our user community. And it is going to be the focal point as we try to attract more contributors to our developer community. On top of the uses just mentioned, OpenGeo is also building a relationship with Global Earthquake Model to continue development on GeoNode past 1.0. And there are others out there--some already on this list--who will hopefully appreciate our efforts towards 1.0 and offer their feedback. So GeoNode's second year is going to be as busy and challenging as its first. I hope that as we continue to work together towards GeoNode 1.0 in the next month or two, you will share with me excitement that our small steps are towards something much greater. -- Sebastian Benthall OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
