North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

FOSS4G

QGIS 3.2: Metadata

· ·

On the heels of the “document your data” post  I’m about to turn my writing towards QGIS 3.2.

One of the things you should worry about with your data is documenting. Why did you do what you did with attributes and fields? Amazingly enough – most of my clients don’t know or just go “OK” and add whatever they think they need. They are busy. Busy people sometimes don’t slow down enough. In the case of your data – slow is better.

Which brings us to – Metadata. I don’t know the current state of metadata in the world. I searched the internet. My eyes went crossed as I read things and I restarted this post.

If you look at 2.18 (Current Long Term Release), metadata in QGIS looks like this:

 

qgis 2.18 metadata

Not bad considering the this is a newer development in the life of this Open Source Desktop.

If you take a look at QGIS 3.2:

qgis 3.2 metadata

You can write metadata. You can save it. You can reload it for later editing. This was a funded feature for QGIS by Arpa Piemonte ( The Italian EPA – which I would assume is comparable to the US EPA) and implemented by North Road. How excellent is that? Actually – very excellent. Imagine if my fellow users here in the US pitched in for development? Good things will happen.

So my next go around I’ll most likely be using this feature for documentation. For fun I might document parts of the current project and see how it blends with the FGDC Metadata standards.

Any documentation is better than none – so write!

Southeast FOSS4G Knoxville Updates

· ·

FOSS4G Logo

First off – Tickets are live.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/foss4g-knoxville-2018-tickets-47279397952

There is a charge this year to help with lunch and parking. Last year lunches were about 6 dollars and parking was 5 dollars. The fee plus sponsorship money should help with everything remaining balanced. If the fee is an issue – please let me know and we will work something out.

Sponsorship:

Right now we’re at $300 dollars promised and I have $100 of that in my hands. If you want to sponsor – it’s not that glamorous of an affair – we’re not having vendor booths but we will give you all the recognition we can before the event , at lunch, and as it ends. We’re attempting to start a FOSS4G movement in this area and so far it’s working. I’ll probably have a cut off for donations because I don’t want to make money off this – this is a break even affair.

Speakers:

Right now we’re at 2 speakers and about 3 more have promised to come and speak. So – please – if you want to hang out with your peers. We’re Shooting for 20 minutes and 5 minutes for questions. Which should give us room for about 14 or so speakers. Maybe a hair more or a hair less. I haven’t worked that schedule out yet – BUT I’m getting there.

Email List:

To help with keeping people informed  we have an email list and you can add your name to get updates. I’ll also be emailing the OSGEO US, OSGEO Discuss, and Southeast OSGEO lists also as this develops.

Wiki:

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/20180813-knoxville-foss4g

 

Please come hang out in Knoxville August 13th 2018 and enjoy the group. Last years even was fun and packed with a ton of information.

 

Knoxville FOSS4G 2018 – August 13th 2018

· ·

It’s on.

Website: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/20180813-knoxville-foss4g

Date: August 13th 2018

Location:
Plant Biotech Building
UT Ag Campus
2505 EJ Chapman Dr
Knoxville, TN 37996

I guess it might be safe to call this the Second Annual FOSS4G meeting in TN. We’re headed back to Knoxville on August 13th 2018 for another day of Free and Open Source excitement for GIS. Last year we had about 50 people turn up to hear talks ranging from OSM to LIDAR to Image Classification.

We’re also looking for Sponsors. Right now we have 3 and some money has already been promised. Most likely this even will cost $10 this year to offload some of the headache I got to experience last year as “Money Juggler”.  Depending on sponsors this $10 may drop. Registration will be open soon – that’s on my list for next week once I get a few more things settled.

Good people – if you are in the area turn up and come to this. It’s a good time. Good Discussion. Come see how you can benefit from FOSS4G in your world.

Southeast FOSS4G meeting

· ·

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.

 

 

Contact