North River Geographic Systems Inc

Geospatial Problem Solving

Conference

QGIS North America Meeting 2020

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The QGIS US Users Group & partners in North America are proud to announce the QGIS North America 2020 virtual conference to be held on Friday, July 17, 2020 (and Friday, July 24th if needed). We offer this meeting as a way to share our ideas and skills when so many in-person meetings cannot safely happen. We recognize that while we are all separated, we have the opportunity to include people in a greater diversity in locations and economic situations since travel and registration costs are not necessary. We invite participation from all over the globe, but presentation times will focus on the North American audience.

The cost to attend will be free, and we would like to suggest attendees make a donation to support QGIS at https://qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/donations.html

Call for Participation

The organizers of the QGIS North America 2020 virtual conference would like to solicit proposals for participation in this conference to be held online on Friday, July 17th (and potentially Friday, July 24th, with sufficient interest) in the form of talks, workshops, birds-of-a-feather networking sessions, and ideas for other session. Sessions can focus on any aspect of QGIS and we particularly encourage talks about applications of the software, software and plugin development, and discussions of transitioning to using QGIS software from other tools. Proposals for sessions should be submitted online via our Google Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXVbO58aMZMmHo1mT5QEpF7uPki79e8PCyRJ9tBna_2IcAvw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Proposals for talks, birds-of-a-feather networking sessions, and ideas for other session require

  • Contact information for the presenter
  • Title
  • Description or abstract

Proposals for workshops requires

  • Contact information for the presenter
  • Title
  • Description or abstract
  • Length (in hours) of the workshop
  • Software requirements
  • A list of people who can potentially act as helpers (does not need to be finalized at the time of submission)

The deadline for submission is Friday, June 12, 2020.

FOSS4G SE United States – QGIS Meeting

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Here comes about the most abstract thing I’ve done in a while.

I’ve been having meetings centered around FOSS4G Software in the Southeastern US (Knoxville TN – UTK) for the last 2 years. Over the last 2 we’ve had talks ranging from GRASS to LIDAR to SAGA to QGIS and all points in between. We even have a listserve for email.

Now that we are in the third year I want to shake this up a bit. I’m announcing a QGIS centric meeting for October of 2019. I don’t have a firm date because I have no clue who is interested and who isn’t. I can easily take this to Knoxville or Chattanooga – but my worry with a QGIS centric meeting we may attract more than the normal crows which would be a great thing.

So with that I’m probably going to start some chatter on the QGIS-us users list and a few other places but center it on the southeast-us listserve. SO JOIN THAT MAILING LIST TO HELP ME NOT LOSE MORE HAIR.

  • Cost: As cheap as I can make it
  • Location: Somewhere free
  • Who: You
  • Sponsors: I’ll scream your name out
  • Talks: Yes
  • Workshops: Maybe

With that – prepare to see more noise and a possible website crank up – I’ve got enough lead in time so maybe we can make this a grand adventure. If you want to help email me and you can be part of the insanity.


QGIS Class at TNGIC

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So to break the silence and this is something I should have done much sooner – I’ll be at the TN Geographic Information Council Conference holding a QGIS workshop and possibly talking about QGIS and a client’s implementation of QGIS/PostGIS/Geoserver later in the conference.

Anyway – show up for this:http://www.tngic.org/2019-conference.htm#preconferencetraining if you’ve had questions on QGIS and didn’t know what to do or who to ask or anything else – show up.

QGIS – it’s what all the cool kids are doing.

I will even speak some insanity. Don’t tell anyone but I’ll encourage you to show up up for it even if you didn’t sign up for it. Bring a friend. Sneak in. I will tell no one. Seriously. Bring a laptop and I’ll have QGIS and the data and the presentation on a Thumb Drive. We’ll be using Chattanooga data and making this TN/Chattanooga Centric.

I’ll see you there. We’ll have more crazy to talk about once we shut the door so one can hear us.

Southeast FOSS4G meeting

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Emails are going out to people and the gears are slowly starting to turn.

Last year several of use got together and held a FOSS4G “mini event” in Knoxville TN. It turned out pretty well with about 50 people coming from as far as 5 hours away to join in the fun. I think we had about 10 or 11 presentations – too many to be honest but I didn’t want to turn anyone down. We ran the event for free and if I remember (I’m not looking up the costs) the entire event ran something like 600 dollars. We had 4 sponsors (including myself in that one) and overall it rocked.

Two things:

  • I’ve had a large number of people ask “Are you doing this again?” and I had a blast doing it. Sooooooo – the answer has turned into “YES”. Granted I don’t run meetings like this for a living but everyone enjoyed themselves and the true spirit of Free and Open Source software for GIS was there. Yes it’s happening.
  • The big question is where and when. I’ve had offers of moving this to Chattanooga. I’ve had offers of Knoxville again. I’ve had other offers outside of my normal area. So I’ve got to decide and go “IT’S HERE” and we crank this up again. FOSS4GNA got in the way for spring so we’re gonna have to push this off a bit.
  • OK this is a third thing. I will probably charge just a wee bit for this one. Why? So we had something like 50 register. 5 dropped. 5 walked up out of nowhere. I bought food for 65 people so some left with an extra sandwich shoved in their pocket. If I run this for $10 bucks a piece people are likely to show up and it gives me a bit more money to play with to do things like deal with parking or snacks or fly someone in for the event. Yeah I said it. Fly someone in.
  • Fourth thing – workshops? I’ve debated some educational opportunities for this event – except that drags it into multi-iday. I’m OK with multi-day if it remains fun.

That was four things – you might wonder how I write blog posts and the answer is pretty much unedited most of the time.

So anyway – I have no clue what to call this gathering. Don’t really want to give it a name. Are un-conferences a thing still? Where conferences? Anyway – more news will be coming and if you want to help track me down and we’ll make this a thing for 2018.

 

 

FOSS4G event in TN

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Join this email list if you haven’t already: https://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/southeast-us

I know with this being Labor Day many of you may be off so I’ll be repeating this email on Tuesday Sept 6th also.

Over the last few months I’ve been getting more and more comments of “We need to do something FOSS4G related in the area” with the area being the general area of East Tennessee. So after a lot of emails to various people from Texas to Canada and all points in between:

  • There is momentum after the FOSS4GNA Raleigh event. People are interested in Free and Open Source GIS and People are using Free and Open Source GIS.
  • Colleges in Particular have been vocal (more so than usual): ETSU and UTK I’m looking at you and I’m yelling to anyone else in the area.
  • The consensus is this needs to be cheap and fun. Emphasis on Cheap and we can always make it Fun. It will be Informative by default.
  • Location: We don’t have no stinkin’ location – we need one (see above bullet point for cheap).
  • We have some funding to pull this off (more funding sources are welcome).
  • This will be a “Pre Boston FOSS4G 2017 event” – whatever we do needs to feed into that event. I’ve been talking to them and they are excited and send energy our way.
  • There are three conferences we will be avoiding and as this gets more momentum I’ll be sticking those up somewhere. The three conferences are good conferences and we in no way want to hurt those events (NC TNGIC FOSS4G2017).
  • Date: We don’t have no stinkin’ dates.

With all that being said – A Free and Open Source GIS event of some type and shape at some point is happening. FOSS4G people in the surrounding areas – we welcome your input and participation.

This will all be done probably on this list – so if you don’t like a lot of email – Sorry. This is community building at the ground level. Step 1 was this email list. Step 2 is happening. Step 3 is ????.

If I can repeat two things: Cheap and Fun.