North River Geographic Systems Inc
Spatial Problem Solving
Wednesday, September 14, 2016 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM
The Comet Pub & Lanes
2619 N Decatur Rd Decatur, GA 30033
Please note we’re holding this month’s social on Wednesday because Thursday is league night at Comet.
Come out to enjoy the various activities, food and drink at this successor to Suburban Lanes in N. Decatur.
It was a crazy week.
I’m right at one year when I moved back to Chattanooga. I’m bad about anniversary dates – as in the small things will stick with me at times bigger than the big dates. Something will be bothering me and if I think long enough – there’s a small bookmark in my life I’m approaching. Anyway – one year ago I moved into this crazy neighborhood much to the dismay of my family. Change is good. Life is Change.
A year ago I decided I was going to make some much needed business changes – and that started and overall it’s been a pretty decent change. The changes made me a bit more hopeful for the future and I don’t feel like I’m in this strictly for the money – BUT – money did move up a few notches on the list thanks to a lot of advice.
Anyway – Monday started out with me learning more on PostGIS/PostgreSQL. A job with a client is going well – we just couldn’t get one thing to work. Figured it out. I took that victory to then decide to go talk at the North East Tennessee GIS Meeting. What was I going to talk about? This move out of ESRI for a utility client into QGIS/PostGIS/Fulcrum. So I started writing…
My presentations tend to take 2 forms: They are terrible or pretty decent. I’ve done terrible ones. I’ve done awesome ones. I’ve learned more from the bad ones than the good ones. I had 20 minutes so I made 10 slides. No graphics. Decided to do more demos than presentations. Which is awesome I think – as long as you have internet……
I dove back into Geohipster on Monday and got one interview done with Regina Obe – the fastest interview I’ve ever done by the way. That was a fun email exchange. Anyway – look for that on geohipster.com on Monday.
Things started getting weird on Wednesday – a new potential client popped up and they are neck deep in ESRI – server, mobile, etc. Which is fine – they need help so we started the discussion. With the changes in business my decision to either help them or not is easier – there are things I like doing and things I don’t. I’m in the middle of researching their problems. I can give them a yes or no and be happy with decision.
NetGIS meets in Kingsport TN – it’s a nice drive 90% of the time. The area is beautiful. I had decided to leave early and goof off. I didn’t leave early. The time for the meeting also bumped back just a hair. I made it though…..45 minutes before the meeting started and in I walked. I also spent the time in the car listening to Pandora. What do I listen to?
On the drive up I received word a GIS Peer had passed away. I knew Leonard Slote well enough to go have a beer with him and talk smack about software. He was out riding his bike and was hit by a careless driver. Probably dead at the scene but he was declared dead after they arrived at the hospital. Life is so short. I went canoeing on Wednesday and with one careless goof I dropped my paddle and just about tipped over in some unfriendly water. I served with Leonard on a GIS Conference Committee. Which also made me think about how many Boards and Committees I’m on now.
None. That’s how many. It’s incredibly nice. How can you be a guy who is contributing and shaping the Geo World if you aren’t on any boards? I think the Geo world is getting along quite well without me being anywhere in the mix. I left all the boards and obligations a while back. I do a few things for fun currently – but they are insignificant in the greater scheme of things. I might start integrating myself back in slowly. Maybe. I haven’t quite decided if it’s worth the effort.
Live Demo’s are awesome as long as you have internet. Which I didn’t have. Well…….Scrub the Fulcrum one because I didn’t plan for anything but a live demo. Which is fine I’ve got another 11 or so slides and I can show a few things on Fulcrum to make it more interesting.
My slide show started out with a brief intro and going “I’m not on any boards” – but then I realized 2 or 3 people at the meeting had been with me on a board and – eh – I probably shouldn’t point out I left the board I was with them on so – no worry I’ve got 10 or so slides. I started second guessing my presentation and went down to 9 slides. For the final slide I actually went so far as to mock up a budget on the Full ESRI deployment vs a Hybrid Open Source/ESRI deployment. The problem with that is when you show someone two numbers (60k vs 5k) that are so wildly different people immediately start questioning WHY….the explanation when you’re in room full of ESRI software users and people who worry with budgets is interesting. I glossed over that one – It’s a good slide – it’s just a hard pill to swallow. I’m going to rework it and present it differently. The numbers stand on their own – it’s just hard for a lot of people to see the numbers. Overall my presentation was sorta Meh. It will get better.
So the big deal – there were 4 presentations at the meeting. 3 of which inadvertently mentioned QGIS. One from a vendor (our data can be pulled into QGIS), one from a student (I did my entire project in QGIS), and mine (I’m rolling out a full QGIS PostGIS Deployment for a water utility). A few years ago that wouldn’t have happened. The other presentation covered LIDAR in the state of Tennessee and I had the chance to reference this discussion in front of a guy who can help in the process. Right now I’m building a brief tutorial of processing LIDAR in GRASS.
A Meeting with no plan on a theme in heavy ESRI territory had 4 mentions on FOSS4G. FOSS4G is making a dent in the world of GIS. You could go so far as to say “I’m in the middle of nowhere TN and we had 4 mentions of Free and Open Source Software for GIS”. On the drive back I received a conference announcement where their entire workshop offerings are ESRI based. If you’re planning a conference – seriously PUT SOME FOSS4G IN IT. It’s 2016. You do your conference and yourselves a dis-service if you don’t. Period. Change is good.
Friday I was just sitting here going “It’s been a weird week and I’m tired” and my email beeped “Can you come talk at our meeting?”. Yes – what do you want me to talk about? “Anything you want”. Heh. Will I have internet access?
Date: July 21, 2016
Link to Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/geospatial/
Address:
Torched Hop Brewing
249 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta, GA
Greetings all!
By late July, I hope everyone will be adequately adjusted to the heat and allergies, and finally recovered from the Esri UC, if you were lucky enough to attend. To kick off summer, MAGS will return to Midtown on 7/21, to enjoy the setting of the new Torched Hop brewpub on Ponce.
Torched Hop is in the former Old Spaghetti Factory space, a 5-block walk or ride east from the North Avenue MARTA station (and a block west of Krispy Kreme). If you drive, there’s a fair amount of street parking in the vicinity, as well as free parking in the Camden Apartments garage behind Torched Hop.
The too long didn’t read version is “It’s mostly Free”. This post is more targeted to the new user or the curious user because I’m getting a lot of questions these days from those good people.
To be sorta honest I don’t care what software you use. I’ve got ESRI clients and FOSS4G clients. I have some that are a mix. I really enjoy a mix of FOSS4G and Commercial software just for the flexibility.
To be completely and entirely honest (which you may not be used to with consultants) – I care. If you walk into the door with nothing I’m going to push you in a FOSS4G direction. We will start with QGIS and work PostGIS into the Mix. If you walk in the door a full ESRI shop I’m going to suggest we mix it up a bit with some FOSS4G. Why – because you need to break out of your shell.
A few of my clients (who appeared on my doorstep over the last bit) went the route of “We are picking QGIS because it’s free”. I always groan a bit because while it’s free – it’s not free. Just because you have software doesn’t mean you have a Geographic Information System. Software is one component in a long process of spending money on a functional GIS. As I tell people all the time – “It’s the process”. Process trumps software and if you don’t have a plan to get from Point G to Point S it doesn’t much matter what you are using. So yes – Free – but – that’s only one part of the big picture.
I was going to do a top 10 reasons to used QGIS. Everyone loves a list but the more I thought about it the more I drifted into a top 15 and then it dwindled to 12. Then shot up….etc. Finally I just went with 5…..
It I use the QGIS Class I teach as a blueprint (and I’ve been re-writing it for 2.14.1 and adding extra chapters) for why I tell people to USE QGIS it’s the following:
If you decide at this point you want to use QGIS sit down and get a plan. Use a lot of words like shareholder and stakeholder but look for people who want this to happen and who want their work life to get better and more informative. Don’t start off going “Well the software is free”. You get this foggy discussion of “This is going to be really cheap because of free software”. It’s not going to be as cheap as you think. It helps you aren’t spending a ton of money on desktop software – but that frees you up to leverage that money in another direction – like better data…or GPS Data collection…or a server…
…….and then finally: 5. It’s FREE. Yeah it’s free. It’s an investment…and it just so happens it’s financially free to get this started. When I was an ESRI Certified Trainer I always felt a bit guilty (but it was good business) in seeing someone buy tens of thousands of dollars of software only to call me in for training classes that ran upwards of 500 dollars a day per person. Most times they had no plan or barely a plan so the training “helped” some but not really. The QGIS class is a bit different as I’m running it cheaper and different goals these days. If your budget is tight there’s nothing wrong with going “we’ve got to start out cheap” – just realize there are at least 4 other reasons to pick it that are better (in my opinion) than “It’s FREE”. Just so you know – I went from ArcGIS Enterprise….Desktop…Professional…..whatever it is called to QGIS/PostGIS. I went from Commercial to “Free” for my GIS life and Services. Why? 1 through 4 above.
There are 50 other reasons to use QGIS. I listed 5 and really 2 are repeats and for me because it’s all community oriented. To me it’s also fuI have slightly loftier goals than moneyn…each release brings more functionality (fun is not a good reason to pick software) and more stability. Some might go “It Crashes”. Yes it does. Find me software that doesn’t.
Anyway – if you stumble upon this article while searching for more information. Join the QGIS listserve. Call or email if you want – that seems to happen a lot these days and I like answering questions.
Happy QGIS’ing! Download it and give it a shot. You can Dooooooo it.
I was debating this post most of the weekend – so I decided to set the egg timer at 20 minutes and run with it. Why show up at FOSS4GNA 2016? I’m saying “SHOW UP” and I know that’s not a good enough reason. Here are some statistics from the 2015 conference.
So you don’t want to show up because you’ve never been to one?
Almost 60% of the people there haven’t been to a FOSS4GNA event. 2015 was my second event.
I know what you’re thinking. I bet this thing is going to be full of those people – developers. I’m not going to understand half of what they are saying as they gulp down coffee and point excitedly at a half put together presentation they started 15 minutes before the presentation.
OK – so there are a lot of those people there – developers. Except – these good people are developing for you also. You can actually walk up to them and go “What were you thinking” and they will tell you. The one thing I was struck by in 2015 were the number of Government folk there – Open Source GIS just isn’t for Universities and Developers and people with weird itches to scratch. There were a lot of local government people from management down to technicians with GIS problems to fix and data to maintain. Probably the most interesting guy I met was a guy from LA County (county employee) who was going to use QGIS on a tablet for data display/collection. Another guy worked for San Francisco and he was throwing Geoserver on anything he could to decrease their reliance on ArcServer.
Are you alone at this thing? I consult and teach so I fell in the 13%. There are a ton of people there building commercial products. You’ve got the University people filling you about 16% of the group. I’m pretty sure a lot of Gov’t fell in the 17%. It’s a good mix of people. You are going to have a lot in common with most everyone there.
Finally as my egg timer is about to beep….
So I use FOSS4G in my consulting life. I’m using it almost 90% of the time these days if I have a geo problem to solve. If you skip to the last line – close to 10% of the the attendees don’t use it. They were there out of curiosity. I have several clients gleefully using it to maintain all their GIS data.
So show up. Come to Raleigh and look at the 10 workshops and close to 100 presentations on open source GIS.
oh and Thank you Eclipse Foundation for collecting this information….
Beep
