Hi! I’m Randal Hale, Owner and Operator of North River Geographic Systems, Inc. I’ve been in the Geo Field for way to long (1993). I started out in the federal government with a production mapping group. In 2006 I spun this business up as a part-time endeavor . In 2009, I went full time. In the beginning NRGS was heavily entrenched in commercial software. In 2013 I started making the switch to working with Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics (FOSS4G). Why? I was getting a bit tired of being a salesperson. I missed the community aspect that GIS had in the 90s. 

2013 found me working remote and needing a desktop software that could at least create a PDF and manipulate shapefiles. That piece of software was QGIS. That software lead me into the amazing world of GDAL, PostGIS, GRASS, and a handful of other software plus a community of users. 

My working life tends to be data and process driven. The tools don’t matter as much as a good process and correct data. A good process beats throwing more software at any problem. 

Follow for more rambling over here! 

Here is a sample of companies/organizations for which NRGS has worked: