North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

Education

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.

 

 

Implementing a Geospatial Education at CAU – GA URISA September 2016 Luncheon

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Implementing a Geospatial Education at CAU

Speaker Name: Emeline Renz

Speaker Bio: Ms. Emeline Renz currently serves as the Director of the GIS Program at Clark Atlanta University. With over 10 years of professional GIS experience, including more than 5 years at Esri, Inc., Ms. Renz is working with the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum for a geospatial education, engage the university community in using GIS in their classrooms, and hopes to develop an interactive campus map to help the students, faculty, and staff at Clark Atlanta better manage their assets, programs, and facilities. Ms. Renz graduated from Skidmore College with a BA in Sociology-Psychology and the University at Albany with an MA in Geography.

Presentation Summary: Clark Atlanta University, the largest Historically Black College and University in Atlanta, has listed a “Fundamentals of GIS” class in the course catalog since the late 1990s, but the class hasn’t been taught in over a decade. What does it take to reintegrate a geospatial education at a medium-sized university without a geography department? What methods are best to engage the community and drive students to enroll in an unfamiliar course? And what steps can be taken to encourage a university to adopt a GIS Implementation to manage its community? Ms. Emeline Renz, Director of the GIS Program at CAU, discusses the importance of geospatial thought in higher education, the roadblocks she faced while implementing this program, and the measures she is using to implement a strong GIS Program at Clark Atlanta University.

Parking and Location Information:
Guests should park in the Morehouse parking garage ($3). They will need to show their ID at the security gate. Here is a Google Map Link for accurate directions:
https://goo.gl/maps/Z2otxUdteS42

The meeting will be held in the Cole Research Center: https://goo.gl/maps/YxtriG89GJB2

Go to http://www.gaurisa.org for more information.

Intro to QGIS and PostGIS – November 16-17 2016

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Date: November 16-17 2016
Location: Chattanooga (Address TBA)
Price: $375 per day

NRGS is holding a Introduction to QGIS and an Introduction to PostGIS on November 16-17 2016.

This is a 2 class endeavor. I’m going to strongly suggest you be familiar with GIS in general for the Intro to QGIS class (so strongly I may not let you in if you have no idea how GIS works). I’m also going to require the Intro to QGIS class before the Intro to PostGIS class.

You can read all you want on the Intro to QGIS here.  That one is pretty self explanatory. I’ve done this one a lot and the revamped class flows pretty well. In general it starts off with a slow build and by the end you’re asking more questions than I can answer during the class. It seems the light bulbs start going off about the time I go “Plugins” for some reason. Maybe I’ve covered enough by that point people see this as a decent alternative.

The Intro to PostGIS class is going to be a bit different.

I’ve had this idea for a while that I wanted to actually do a “theme” to training. Which is more or less “it’s a big world out there and there are plenty of tools”. This has also been at odds over the “I don’t want to turn training into a 52 week a year job” thought. I like my clients and I like training – so in 2017 training is going to be a structured event so that I’m happy and you’re happy. Right now there are two more classes slated for this endeavor. WILL I DO THIS ONLINE? Probably no. I’ve tried online and I wasn’t happy with the way it went. I’m better in person. You’re happier if you talk to people you are sitting near.

In 8 hours I can’t turn you into a PostGIS guru. I can take some of the fear out of it and make it at least productive enough you will know what to search for and how to find answers and be a part of the community. Combine PostGIS with QGIS (my two favorite things in the world) and you’ve got a powerful tool set for free.

Right now (and this changes every day) we are covering (in no order):

  • PostGresQL and how that fits into this
  • SQL – what the heck is that?
  • Connecting QGIS to PostGISL: DB Manager (we will cover about 3 ways to connect but DB Manager is going to be the theme)
  • Spatial SQL (it will make your head hurt especially if you are an ArcGIS user)
  • Workflows and Data.

It’s a bit fluid at the moment BUT – it’s shaping up. I’m trying to keep this at 8 hours. You won’t be a guru at the end but you’re going to understand this better than I did starting out. How did I start out? Sitting on St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands getting SQL files and wondering how all of this fit together. Why did I have tables that told me what the geometry was and how was all this happening. How did I load data. What do I do with it once it’s loaded. How do I dump data back out to something the other stuff can use. Projections go Where?

PLUS BOOK Recommendations at the end to help answer more questions. I’ve been buying books. Again. Stuff I need and stuff that is useful. My St Thomas experience was 3 years ago and I haven’t stopped learning. You can’t stop. Hopefully you won’t.

Anyway – more news coming shortly. Mark it on your calendars.

 

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.

Open Geospatial Science and Application Webinar

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From the Email Bag:

You are invited to join the next “Open Geospatial Science & Applications” webinar series on Aug 31st, 2016. We thank Dr. Rafael Moreno and colleagues at the FOSS4G lab, University of Colorado, Denver who are organising the webinars for us. The webinars will be in English and open and free to all on first come register basis. These webinars are also run  jointly with UCGIS and ASPRS. Details below
Tangible Landscape: open source environment for geospatial learning, science, and community engagement

August 31, 2016 (Wednesday)  at 6 PM (GMT)

Presented by Helena Mitasova, Anna Petrasova, Brendan Harmon, Vaclav Petras, Payam Tabrizian
Ross Meentemeyer Center for Geospatial Analytics, North Carolina State University, USA

In this webinar we introduce Tangible Landscape – a new type of modeling environment for interacting with geospatial data, analyses and simulations using maleable 3D physical models. We will describe the concept, show various options for hardware set-ups in a laboratory or at outreach events,and discuss technologies for creating 3D landscape models. The system is powered by open source GRASS GIS and it is designed as a platform for developing new applications. We will illustrate its capabilities using case studies in which we have explored how dune breaches affect the extent of coastal flooding,the impact of different building configurations on cast shadows and solar energy potential,and the effectiveness of various landscape designs for controlling runoff and erosion.We will present different types of interaction including molding polymeric sand, placing markers,and drawing with laser pointer. We will demonstrate how these tangible interactions can be used for collaborative decision making or engaging geogames. The most recent (and exciting) development includes coupling tangible landscape with an immersive virtual environment, which allows users to virtually step into the modeled landscape. We will show Tangible Landscape in various settings such as outreach events and conferences engaging diverse audiences such as children, scientists, and software developers.We will conclude by introducing the Tangible Landscape on-line community and inviting everyone to join and share their own ideas about hardware set-ups, new applications, software development and modes of interaction.

Details at https://geospatial.ncsu.edu/osgeorel/tangible-landscape.html

More details and how to connect will be updated at http://www.geoforall.org/webinars/

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