So if you’re keeping up in 2020 I was ready to end the business thanks to Covid. 2022 was probably my best year in business in a very long time. This year was slower than anticipated BUT that’s why you save money, advertise, and spend wisely. It also had it’s exciting points.
I spent a part of this year “looking back”. Where was I as a business and as a human in 2008, 2010, 2013, 2015 etc? Why look back? Why not. Some inward reflection can be good for the soul. I always hope I’ve grown as a business and a person. Have I grown as a person? Am I doing what makes me happy with the business? There was a lot of things I looked back at business wise and wondered why I did what I did. I also did the same on a lot of personal matters. Overall I’m in a better spot.
Parent’s experienced a bit more medical excitement than anticipated. We are all getting older. Anyway Mom made a visit to the hospital for a few days and Dad had some vision issues that popped up. We made it through that and as of today everyone is healthy although irritating at times (myself included).
Training
This year saw the biggest change in training that I’ve had in a long time. Originally I had planned on teaching three classes that basically were “QGIS 1, 2, and 3” and post lockdown no one is sitting in classes for 3 or 4 days. So I ripped apart my QGIS 1 and 2 class and started building smaller 4 hour classes. Model Designer was probably my favorite. I have one called “Tips and Tricks”. I’m building a LIDAR class for QGIS. None will be longer than 4 hours and I’m working on keeping them cheap PLUS trying to make sure I support QGIS in the process. Overall I didn’t teach a lot – but when I did it was enjoyable.
Social Media
There isn’t enough space for me to write my feelings on Twitter. 2023 saw the probable end to my Twitter presence. I’m going to keep my login on Twitter and I will occasionally go back to keep it from getting deleted but I won’t do anything that’s going to enable or empower the owner.
I’m on Mastodon. I’m on Linkedin a bit more. This upcoming year’s goal is “one blog article a week” on really anything. Will I make it? No Clue. The website/Blog (this space) is mine. It’s been mine for years.
If you look back at my life with social media, I missed the early AOL days and the Myspace Era. I came to Facebook and Twitter after they had been up for a few years. I found a community of people. I was talking to Atanas Entchev one day after reading a lot of articles on Social media in 2023 and we both somewhat agreed “The Golden Age of Social Media is over”. I’ll never do snapchat or tiktok. So I’m on the downhill slide as far as social media goes. I could be wrong. I’m wrong on a lot of things.
Geohipster
I took over the reigns of Geohipster. That’s been a learning experience from not publishing enough for my own tastes to a foul up with the yearly calendar. So this year The big thing was the website and getting it moved and updated. What I have learned is I need to spend 2 hours a week working on articles. In 2024 I think I’m going to try a few different things and possibly do a meetup somewhere.
New Stuff
There are things that I know. There are things I don’t know. When I hit April of this year I got a bit fed up and declared that “I’m sick of learning NEW CRAP”. That’s a bit dramatic but I was feeling overwhelmed. WHAT ELSE SHOULD I KNOW ABOUT AS A GEO PERSON? I know a lot of stuff already.
Well this is going to be silly – but I know very little on web maps. You have leaflet, maplibre, openlayers, etc, etc and I’ve been avoiding that whole side of the industry. “Hey does that mean you’re going to offer putting data out on the web?” Doubtful. I did learn a lot about leaflet and as of right now openlayers. Searching the internet for examples/tutorials is your friend. PG_featureserve and pg_tileserv are fascinating to me right now. Geoserver is also. I think about this much like I do my old jeep. I know enough to be able to change the transmission in it. Will I ever do it? Nope….but I know enough to be able to connect to the people that do it for a living.
I did go ahead and scream “I’m supporting QGIS” in 2024. Yeah – for everyone going “QGIS doesn’t have support” – well it always has but there’s a company you can call in the US. Technically there’s been a company you can call in the US for a while. Several actually. l will see what happens. I’m already supporting ike 4 or 5 businesses now so it’s not new territory – but it will be new territory if it ramps up.
Picked up one new client on the TN 911 stuff. I started converting the Georgia NG911 ESRI template over to PostGIS. Their standard is more NENA based so it will take a little bit of effort to make it work – but it’s doable.
I also dove into PyQGIS after declaring “I’m not learning that either”. I’m guessing my new tactic should be “I’m not learning XYZ” because I’m immediately going to do it I guess.
AI is AI. I have zero wish or want to dive into that arena. I did pay more attention to Machine Learning so maybe that will be the thing I learn about in 2024. Maybe they are one in the same. No idea. I’ll learn.
Conferences
I did way too many conferences this year. I’m literally trying to remember what I went to. Maybe 5 or 6 events. Some small some big. I made notes which was something new. Here are my notes:
- State Level conferences are good – even if I’m still “that guy yelling about FOSS4G”. There are a lot of other FOSS4G users at the state level. So I stand a chance of gaining new clients.
- If I’m going to do anything smaller than state level it’s generally going to be an ESRI centric discussion to which I have no real input. I stand little chance of gaining clients.
- FOSS4G-NA was my big conference. I handed out cards, made contacts, and life was overwhelmingly good. I really needed foss4gna this year. It was great reconnecting and just chatting with what people were doing these days even if the conversation wasn’t tech based.
I say all that to say – conferences that are FOSS4G based are my sweet spot these days. ESRI centric meetups just aren’t my thing. I’ll probably not make a lot of effort to attend those moving forward.
Conclusion
I guess that’s about it. Didn’t do enough hiking. Did more traveling than I have in the past but still not enough. I did do a lot of thinking and a did more walking than I normally do. I have a park about 10 minutes away with a 2 mile loop trail and I’ve made that loop more than I can count.
Did a lot of weird OSM things from putting in a local canoe trail to tracking down bike lanes. Switched over to Fedora for my main workstation. I think by the end of this year I was back in love with some of the tech and the technical that I had given up on back in the spring.
Anyway – 2024 is right around the corner and I’ve got some more paperwork and things to wrap up. Good people – Take care of yourself, be kind, and help your neighbors.
