North River Geographic Systems Inc
Spatial Problem Solving
If you’re in or around Atlanta tomorrow – show up!
We’re on the west side of Midtown this month for drinks and small bites at Little Trouble in the Westside Provisions District. Little Trouble is on the lower level, beneath Marcel.
Take MARTA (1 or 12 bus) or rideshare if you can. Free parking is plentiful (deck behind Yeah Burger is your best bet).
So today I pick my car up from the repair place – 3rd bumper in 6 years. First time it happened I was mad. Second time I just sorta stood there. This time I laughed and went “whatever” and pushed it back into place.
Consultants/Businesses with large clients drive me nuts. You see some people and they just scream “OH YEAH I WAS A CONSULTANT FOR 3.5 MINUTES AND LANDED GIANT INTERNATIONAL ABC COMPANY AND I’M KNOCKING DOWN 6 FIGURES”. I’m not quite that lucky. I’ve had some large clients. I’ve more small ones than large ones. I even have one that will argue over a $20 dollar charge on the invoice.
A few weeks ago I found myself trudging up a driveway to a possible client. House calls can be the worst. I had been referred to someone through someone else who had heard I was good with computers. This person had called in a panic as there were multiple things wrong with her computer/gis setup. She’s a one person shop. I’m a one person shop. I get it. Since we were in full “holiday season” swing I had decided I’d just make a trip up and as a “Happy Holidays” sign of love for my fellow man – no charge. The problems I was presented with were 15 minutes total. Maybe 30 if we traded stories about things.
As we stood there I caught her husband coming home out of the corner of my eye. He walked past her office carrying a lunch pail. I kept working and talking. He passed again with a drill. I kept working. He passed again with a screw driver. We kept working. I was done – 17 minutes total. Which I should have a standard charge for walking in the door BUT – I don’t want to fix computers. A few years ago I was fixing a friend’s computer and stumbled upon a set of photos that were not meant to be seen. I closed the lid and gave it back. That ended the joy of computer repair.
We were sitting there talking and her husband yelled “BLARGH HOLY CRAP”. I was putting cords back up as she left and I said “NO CHARGE Merry….Chris….” and she bolted. About 20 seconds later she ran past the door. 10 seconds after that she ran back in and “Randy I need your help”.
Her husband was laying in one direction in the driveway. His ankle was more or less pointing 180 degrees in the opposite. The truck he drove home wasn’t sitting in the driveway anymore. It had rolled over him, over the mailbox, and into my car – specifically the bumper. He had been under the dash when the brake turned loose with a screwdriver banging on something. He was lucky. Oh so lucky. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been working on my car with it not properly secured. I’ve been crawling under transmissions. Pulled rotors.
“Randy I think I hit your car”.
I’m not worried about the car.
“How does my ankle look?”
I’d prefer to not talk about that now – it’s different.
“How different?”
Well…it’s – probably OK…….It’s 2017 they can do anything these days with feet.
“I’m sorry about your car”.
I’m not worried about the car.
We shoved him into his wifes car and off he went to spend a few weeks in the hospital. Broken this and some broken that. Me and a neighbor shoved his truck out of my bumper.I threw my laptop into the passenger seat and just sat there. Had my car not been sitting there it would have most likely run over the neighbor’s Nativity scene. Which made me chuckle more than it should have. “Yes Baby Jesus – two camels, 3 wise men, and a 99 chevy long bed came to visit you this fine Christmas morn”.
I went back up last week to do some GIS work for her last week and the complaint was “You have to let me pay you”
I’ll invoice you – don’t worry about it.
“…but last month….”
I’m not worried about last month, or the car, or whatever I’d charge. That was on the house. Seriously. Think of the stories we now have.
We meandered up stairs to see her husband. It’s amazing how they can wrench an ankle back into place. He’s walking next month hopefully.
Which was how I picked up another client in January. Not a 100,00k a year deal. Not a deal where I’m breaking new ground on GIS work or running some weird docker python virtual environment and slinging code. I’ll most likely been making points, calculating acres, and making sure the GPS work. Overall not bad. More clients are a good thing even if they are small.
When I get the car back I guess I’ll have to wash it since I’ll have this nice new bumper. The fun never ends in the small business world.
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
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This month come on down for some food and a brew at Victory Sandwich in the heart of Decatur! It’s probably less than 100 steps from the Decatur MARTA Station.
I’ve been sitting here for 2 hours trying to decide how to tackle this conference wrap-up on FOSS4G 2017. I’ve written and deleted and re-written and deleted it yet again.
Lets try this – I hate conferences. Mostly. I don’t hate the FOSS4G ones. I love them. It may sound like I’m about to take a trip into gushing over a conference and the attendees and the people that put it on. I will just a little.
I seek out different these days for conferences. My first GIS conferences was in 1996. I flew out to Palm Springs for my First ESRI users conference. There were about 3 thousand people there. I talked to a lot of people. Goofed off. Went to technical sessions. Learned quite a bit and came back. I did two more of these in the 2000’s and to be honest I can’t remember much about them and I’ll blame that on a decade’s worth of living vs the conferences being terrible. I’ve almost stopped going to state conferences. After 25 years I’ve almost seen it all on that level. Not that I’m some sort of “geo-genius” – to the contrary I’m not that smart. I just want different out of my conferences.
I started slowly getting involved in FOSS4G (Free and open source Software for Geospatial) back in 2013 and finally had my chance to attend an international conference – the one in Boston last week. So why even go? Randy you said you were tired of conferences. I am. I’m not tired of Community. That’s one of the things I’ve really been lacking. That’s the one thing I found in the QGIS crowd and the PostGIS crowd. Community – Plus I get to meet the people that build the software. Plus I get to carry on conversations with those people and come back and go “Oh boy – I got to meet……” 
There were something like 1150+ people at this conference. 44 of the 50 States were represented. 48 countries were represented. They were able to pull in a massive pile of Sponsors. Who you ask…..IBM…..Carto….Mapzen…..Boundless……You know – companies that work with open source software in some capacity. Even ESRI was there. What? Weird right? Trimble was there. Names you recognize from other places.
It’s the cool thing about this group of people – you can sit and talk to everyone. A one sentence Nutshell of what I did?
Confession – I was on the Workshop Committee. I did do a workshop. Which – this sounds more impressive than it is – but I did get to teach at Harvard. Which sounds awesome and Harvard is a pretty cool place to see. 
The kicker on this conference (and as I’m reading back this is getting way too long) that in order to pull it off you’ve go tot have a community of people willing to do it. Boston stepped up. They were able to land Richard Stallman to come and talk. Below – Michael Terner and Richard Stallman (I’ll let you pick who is who).
The ESRI Conference had a theme which was something along the lines of “The Science of Where” which I swore they’ve used before. If you tagged this one with a theme it should be “The Warmth of Community”. I’ll be babbling more on this conference over the next week. I’ve cleaned out my suitcase. I’ve been washing clothes – and I’ve been trying to get caught up.
My hats off to you Boston. I hope to come back at some point. Dar Es Salaam you have me wondering if I can make it over.
For those that didn’t know it – FOSS4GNA came to Raleigh NC in 2016. Part of the thought was “Community Building”. So to help that along – I joined forces with some good people and put on a meeting in Knoxville.
It was quite the affair. We had between 36 and 42 people attend. We had 10 presentations. Which – you might be going “That’s not that big”. It wasn’t. This was put on with minimal effort and minimal advertising. It was huge because everyone that came wanted to be there. People wanted to speak. We had people from Alabama, North Carolina, and two people from Florida. We had a majority of attendees from TN.
How much can you do with NAIP and QGIS? A lot. So much so I’m a bit embarrassed by how much I didn’t know.
Ever Processed LIDAR data in SAGA? We did. The state of TN had a LIDAR meeting the day before – Oh how I wished they had seen these talks.
Running a small business is hard. Maybe it shouldn’t be – but for me it is. I enjoy getting out. I enjoy like minded individuals. So that’s why this community is so important to me. I need people to talk to – so I’m making an attempt to push the envelope in that area. I dont’ want to join a board. It’s not an us vs them thing. I could care less if you’re using ESRI Software – but I’d like for you to have a few extra tools in your toolbox though. I’d like for you to join in the discussion and talk to a developer. Talk to other users. Introduce people to other people. Learn something – and it doesn’t have to come at the expense of an online class or a book. It’s just conversation – but it’s oh so important.
To wrap this up: Sponsors for the event.
Another event? There’s another coming to Knoxville in 2018. There is a strong possibility you might see a FOSS4G flag planted in Savannah soon. Keep watch – it’s about to get fun.
You can’t start a revolution sitting back and hoping someone does something. Hope isn’t a strategy.
