Vasile Crăciunescu is a researcher with more than 17 years experience. He received his diploma in cartography and physical geography in 2001. In 2006 he started geo-spatial.org (http://geo-spatial.org), a collaborative effort by and for the Romanian community to facilitate the sharing of geospatial knowledge and the discovery and publishing of free geographic datasets and maps. He is also affiliated with the Romanian National Meteorological Administration where is in charge of the scientific and operational activities related to rapid mapping, air quality data integration, spatial data infrastructure and web-mapping. He has a good experience in working and leading national, EU and ESA research projects. Since 2011 he is the Romanian representative in the Copernicus User Forum (the European Earth observation program formerly known as GMES) at the European Commission and the representative of Meteo Romania at Open Geospatial Consortium. In august 2014 was elected in the Open Source Geospatial Foundation board of directors. For the last five years he is teaching FOSS4G-based techniques at the Faculty of Geography – University of Bucharest in the first Romanian ICA-OSGeo Lab.