Gavin Fleming

Gavin is a Professional GISc Practitioner (PGP 1234), has an MSc in Genetics, is a charter member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), is on the advisory committee for geoinformatics programs and the advisory board of the CGIS at the University of Pretoria and was on the national council of GISSA for over fifteen years. He started in the GIS industry in 1996 and his experience includes thirteen years with the full suite of ESRI software and since 2005 with a wide range of FOSS GIS tools. He worked at GIMS (now ESRI South Africa), CSIR, Mintek and SAEON before starting AfriSpatial in 2010 and then Kartoza in 2014 with Tim Sutton. He is passionate about Open Source Software, Open Data and other Open philosophies that lead to interoperability, empower people and help maximise economic benefits. He is an advocate for Free and Open Source GIS software integrating with or replacing existing expensive, privative alternatives, in line with the Government Open Source policy. After bringing FOSS4G 2008 to South Africa and working almost exclusively with FOSS since then he has responded to the surge in demand and usage of FOSS GIS in all sectors in South Africa and globally and coupled with that, a growing base of service providers and related resources.

Gavin lives with his wife near Hermanus, has two sons at university and enjoys playing squash, cycling, hiking and sailing.