Simon Nitz

Simon Nitz’s OSGeo professional biography describes consulting in New Zealand and Australia, with a focus on open-source desktop and web mapping. It records chairing New Zealand’s MapInfo User Group during the 1990s and 2000s and helping organise FOSS4G/SotM Oceania events. The biography documents the overlap between the commercial desktop user community and later open-source networks.

Simon Nitz at Napier City Council favoured an independent bi- or triannual whole-sector event, while Central Hawke's Bay engineer Peter Eastwood argued that New Zealand was too small for every supplier to sustain a separate conference. The discussion concerned the cost, format and usefulness of conferences. It reflected the mixed software estates council staff were actually supporting.