North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

Training

A tale of two FOSS4G meetings

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In the Spring of 2017 I had a small FOSS4G meeting in Knoxville TN and the general feeling after it finished was “When are we doing this again?”. So the conversation started and surprise – we had two meetings.

The first meeting happened in Knoxville on August 13th 2018. We had 9 presentations. The big headache I had with this meeting is it all comes down to sponsorship. I wanted it cheap – but I didn’t want to do in the hole again to do this. So we had sponsors. We also had a $10 dollar charge that could be offset with a scholarship if needed.

We had right around 50 people and covered everything from postgis tricks to measuring vegetation in the Great Smokey Mountains with LIDAR.

The second meeting was in Huntsville Alabama on August 14th 2018. The GIS Association of Alabama stepped forwarded and covered all the expenses. There was no charge for this one.

Fifty people came from the North End of the State to hear about QGIS, working with FOSS4G tools, and Jupyter Notebooks.

So what is the point? Actually is there a point? I sat around most of the day playing with how I wanted to summarize these two meetings. Meetings like this are hard. You have catering, a worry no one will show up, and a bigger worry no one will come and speak. We gave close to 100 people a chance to see something different. Which was double of what we did last year.

When I first started going to GIS meetings back in 1995 it was exciting. People would get up and speak and we’d all compare notes and figure out that we were all wrestling with the same problems. We were writing AMLS and buying workstations and digitizing old maps. Everyone had some sort of ESRI based user group. Maybe they were Intergraph. Maybe they had bought other software.

Flash forward to now and I’m consulting and not working for the Feds. User group meetings have morphed into these multi day extravaganzas that meet in your area…possibly not. You have to budget time and hotel reservations and it’s just a pain. So you end up not talking to your fellow geo people….or as we saw over the last two days people with specialties where geo is another trick in the bag.  Of course there is twitter and slack and facebook and linkedin and 100 different ways to talk to one another. What if you don’t?

So lets have a meeting centered around FOSS4G……or meetings. They don’t have to cost much. Maybe they cost $10 a person. Maybe they are free.  For Knoxville I poured about 2 to 3 hours a week over the course of 3 months…so about 40 hours. It wasn’t that hard – get a few people together and it’s less difficult. Find a low cost/free location. Huntsville had theirs in a courtroom. Knoxville had theirs at the University.

So in 2018 – I would like to get people together to talk about FOSS4G. Maybe you have a friend with a commercial solution in place for his organization. Maybe they have nothing. I think ESRI owes a large part of their success from the early days of getting people together to talk. We can do the same for QGIS/PostGIS/Geoserver/GDAL/etc. It’s a big world out there – you can mix and match about everything. I may not be able to make a North America Meeting (FOSS4GNA). Maybe these smaller meetings can scratch an itch for people and I can do that instead.

There’s no one to tell me I can’t. So what am I going next year? Workshops and a meeting in Knoxville. It sounds like the same thing will happen in Huntsville.

Intro to QGIS Training – September 25th 2018 – Montgomery Alabama

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The Intro to QGIS class is going to Alabama! Actually – Montgomery Alabama September 25th 2018.

It was picked to start off the Alabama Damage Summit. Also – with much luck this will be certified! Actually – there is no luck about it. It’s a certified class. Which means approximately 25 dollars per student goes back to the QGIS Organization.

Anyway – if you’re coming to the conference sign up! If you’re not ding the conference organizers and maybe you can attend. The more the merrier at this event.

What will we cover?

    1. QGIS Community
    2. Navigating the Interface
    3. Data and Symbology
    4. Geoprocessing and Plugins
    5. Editing
    6. Layout Manager
    7. Databases

The Database section might change a bit depending on time constraints. It should be a blast – so come down/up/over/back and learn some new software.

FOSS4GNA 2018

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I love a good road trip. FOSS4GNA was in St Louis Missouri this year. Close enough for me to get in the car and tune out for 5 to 6 hours.

First thing on the Agenda – QGIS.  I did the 4 hour “Intro to QGIS” for about 60 something people. You had people who had worked around gis for a good while and were curious about this Open Source desktop. You had some people who had been using it and had questions. Overall it was a bit much with that many people – but worth the effort. I hope everyone walked out with something new they didn’t know. I was inspired – 4 years ago you’d scream “QGIS” and there were a few who knew. I think this year I’ve taught the 4 hour class to about 100 people. This is going well – watch for QGIS Part II coming shortly. I’m hopeful to do the 8 hour one at some point. Seriously – I know you people love 3.5 hours of me talking but the 8 hours of me talking is magnificent (it’s actually not).

I did a really technical “Copy and paste” of the paper abstracts as listed on the website and filtered out a few words that were throwing everything off.  You could pick and poke and over analyze this very happy looking word cloud a bunch – I wouldn’t. Do notice the giant work “DATA” in the middle of it though. There is a very small word: GIS. So I’ve gotten the question several times over the last bit “Why go to this one?”. My consulting life has taken a very data centric turn and to deal with that data I use open source tools. So I spend a lot of time talking to people at the conference. I spend time talking to the developers who make the software I like…at this conference. This one scratches an itch for me. There are a lot of smart people. It’s a good thing. if I go to an event and have all the answers what’s the point in going. So what I walked out with is this following:

  • I never heard “Big Data” – it was just data. The implication was there for it to be big. Hence you hear a lot of Machine Learning. I have only used machine learning in terrible Terminator Jokes and being snarky. It’s time to give it a look. It’s also time for all this machine learning to do a proper reboot of the Terminator franchise..
  • Python is my nemesis. I need to spend more time with it. If I heard that one word once I heard it half a dozen times. Which – no big deal it’s a tech conference but for me it stuck out more than usual. Maybe I’m more self conscience about it these days. If I count every programming thing I’ve ever done that has stuck – so far it’s been bash shell scripting from 26 years ago (that’s not even programming so much). I’ve just got to force myself into more cases where I have to use python.
  • All this machine learning is turning it’s collective head towards imagery. In a conference where I don’t hear a ton of “Raster” or just ignore it – suddenly raster was in my face everywhere.
  • Geopackage    – I feel like I’ve spent over a year going “PLEASE DON’T LET ME BE WRONG ABOUT GEOPACKAGE”. After this conference – I found it mentioned multiple times and the over arching theme seemed to be “it’s a thing now so deal with it”. With QGIS switching to geopackage as the default data format – I expect this grow over the rest of 2018.
  • I found myself walking in and out of conversations constantly. Sometimes I meant to stick my head in – sometimes the conversation found me. I missed several talks just for the fun of talking to other users/developers.
  • The nice thing with this open source software – there are smart people working on it. So what happens when you need improvements to the software? GDAL Barn Raising.   How much hay did they raise? 140k worth. So there are much needed improvements coming to gdal. It’s noteworthy looking at the companies that contributed. Yes ESRI is in there. So if you ever wondered – they see the value of the improvements. Open source GIS touches a lot of software.

Other noteworthy things:

  • Someone said “there’s a line at the women’s restroom”. If you stopped and took a look around – there were more women at this conference. I don’t have a number. There were more. There were about 527 total humans registered at the conference. I will guess higher than 35% for women. No numbers to back me up so deal with it.
  • The second thing I do is go look at a mirror and walk out and look at the crowd. I’m tired of seeing white middle aged balding bearded glasses wearing people at conferences. There were people of color at this conference. The colors varied. Not everyone was like me and that was a good thing.

If there was a keynote that stuck out – it was the final one.

Chris Holmes brought the conference to an end with a discussion…of….well….Deep Learning…Machine learning….imagery……..the idea of a queryable earth.  In other words there’s enough imagery being taken you should be able to “ask” it questions. Planet Labs it pulling down something like 10 terrabytes of imagery a day. One snapshot of the earth. A DAY. So train the computers to classify the imagery and start asking questions.

There was a lot more that happened. Walking across St Louis at night. Food. City Park. Talking to total strangers. Meeting random people I bump into over the interwebs and hassling them. I stuck my foot in the Mississippi River. I got to play Geohipster for a day and tweet random insanity.  Having served on multiple conference committees – I find I’m happier not on them.  This was a good event. I enjoyed it. I walked away feeling overwhelmed and hopeful for the path I’m barely scratching after 26 years. So where is FOSS4GNA in 2019? Stay Tuned.

QGIS Training and other fun

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OK it’s been a while since I’ve written anything exciting. It’s also bee a while since I’ve talked about training. It’s also about that time for the year end summary…..soooooo – Lets talk about training because it’s a slow day.

I taught one class (if I’m not mistaken) last year. I taught it for a conference. I had two thoughts walking out of that class. The first was I didn’t do that hot on the class (I didn’t think I had put together a decent offering). The second was – I sort of enjoy teaching the things I know. After a few spectacularly bad classes I took a break from instructing and tried to decide if I wanted to continue. I mostly have buried myself in work for the last year. I spent a few months trying to decide if I had enough info for a book of sorts – and really I can’t do any better than the books that are out and about already.

I’ve also installed QGIS 2.99 and have been working with that when and where I can. It’s exciting. I’ve also been working with a few people to reboot qgis.us . The original Intro to QGIS class has been around for almost 5 years. I’m not necessarily bored with teaching it but it does need a refresh.

I decided to do 3 things yesterday:

  • Start rewriting the Introduction to QGIS for 3. Which means I’m going to change up the formatting just a bit and put more exercises in and remove a few other things in the class. Which during the rewrite I leave it open finally for Part 2 – which never quite worked right every time I tried it. I actually wrote a “part 2” and taught it a few years ago and didn’t enjoy it that much. I was going to do a Postgis class this year and decided I didn’t know enough to make that happen. I think I might be there now.
  • Change the pricing model. So the biggest killer in teaching is finding a place to teach. I set up a class and declare “HEY I’M DOING A CLASS” and prepay for a facility and people bail and I’m lucky if I break even. So – I’m looking at organizations who want to do a training class in QGIS. Conference? Bar Mitzvahs? Weddings? I’ll work with you on a price and we will do it. It will change just a bit based on where you are – but – I think it gives me some flexibility. Of course it moves to prepay or pay a significant portion down for me to do the class.
  • The final part is donating back to QGIS with the class. I’ve debated every way under the sun to hold a class and give a portion back to QGIS. I wouldn’t be doing this if not for all the hard work of a lot of people.  So I think there is going to be a fee that gets donated back to the organization. I’m unsure if I do a percentage or money made or what – I expect this will be a bit experimental.  I tried this one other time and failed miserably. Usually a class ends up with a few people in it and I’m literally breaking even or losing just a bit to do it. It takes everything I make and then I have nothing left. Which ends up with me being grouchy. I’m tired of being grouchy.

Anyway – I know if you look back on other posts you might go “Eh – no different than what he said last year” and that probably wouldn’t be far off the mark….BUT – it’s a new year and this year proved training wasn’t a necessity in my life. Other years it’s been “OMG I have to” and I don’t. I want to give this a good shot though. It’s fun and disruptive.

We will see if I get to the end of 2018 with more than 1 class under my belt. I’m hoping for 4 classes at least and a running account of what I was able to donate back to QGIS.

Year in Review: Training 2016

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I threw out the first two editions because I was dwelling on the Gov’t Agency in North Georgia that refused to pay for training but took the class. Eh – it’s almost a new year and that is old news. I almost bared all with that one – posted correspondence and everything. Heh. I considered that “Not cool”.

Training was a bit hit or miss this year. Sometimes the class was full – sometimes not. Overall it wasn’t bad as I didn’t put a ton of effort into it. To be honest I was burned out after the spring class where I didn’t get paid and half the class ruined the class for the other half. I just really sorta sat there going “I hate training” and explored the grumpiness that comes with it.

The biggest class was at FOSS4GNA in Raleigh this year. I think there were well over 60 participants and it ranged from Government employees to Teachers to “hey whats this QGIS thing I keep hearing about” people. I crammed 8 hours of information into 4 hours (probably too much) and it went well. It’s just tiring. I equate training to a 4 or 8 hour stand up comedy special where it just doesn’t stop. It is interesting at the number of people looking at QGIS who are ArcGIS users. I can’t say that there is a “war for desktop users”. I can say that the Open Source side is providing a compelling argument on switching if you can. If you’re an ESRI user I believe that ArcGIS Pro will lock you in from here on out and breaking free will get harder with each passing year (not necessarily a bad thing overall – just boring IMO). I’m blown away by the passion on the QGIS end. ArcGIS is sorta slipping into irrelevancy currently for me (jut me). I hate it – as a consultant I need to remain up to speed on both – but……….

I did decide to change things a wee bit and  move the class into Sphinx That’s going to let me get a bit more long winded and provide a search tool for the Class. Plus updates will be quicker. So I’m learning Sphinx. Yippee for new Job skills.

I did bump the price up to $375 from $325. I’m also attempting regularly scheduled classes like once a quarter. I actually had more success from agencies looking to not purchase ESRI products. The quote was “We can bring you in cheaper than buying an Arcview license”. So I did that quite a few times which was unscheduled and random. I didn’t even attempt online training. I thought about it and decided no again.

After diving head over heels into PostGIS this year I’m going to try to add a second day centered on databases. I started it and then wavered as I want it to tie into the QGIS class – but not stretch out. If I do it the way I’m currently doing it – it’s bordering on 3 full days. It will be good – but I don’t know who wants to listen to me for 3 days. Which leads me to wanting to do a few other things in which I turn this into a week long boot camp and no one is going to want to listen to me for a week (I guess). I can dream though. If I gave myself a dollar for every time I mentioned the PostGIS class I’d have more money than I’d probably make on the class.

I wrestle with the original spirit of the business in regards to training. Way back when I was an ESRI Business Partner training was 1/3 of my business. Training is fun mostly – but I do mostly services oriented work and that has picked way up. Training is almost an outreach of sorts and I hope I break even doing it. I like work and I like problems and I like providing answers. Training is fun for meeting people…….but I don’t know how much of the core of my business I want to remain in training. Which really all comes down to $$$. Do I make enough to justify the time? Sorta. I did have a few instances where conferences contacted me wanting to do the QGIS class and those fell through. Which – no harm in that happening.

I did see a lot more people dive into providing QGIS training. Which is fine. I think a few are attempting to replicate what I’m doing and good for them. This class now has 4 years of teaching behind it – it’s pretty solid at this point. I use the software everyday – so it’s hard to replicate that. Hey – the more the merrier. It’s good for the QGIS Community as a whole.

Hmmmmmm – what to review next…..Maybe Personal…….

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