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QGIS Workshop January 2020

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The first class of the revamped QGIS Workshop is coming up January 15th and 16th 2020. This class is going to be a little bit different than the other iterations. I’ve slowly been adding/taking away content to drive toward this being a class focused on an Enterprise Open Source implementation. It’s lead to a lot of back and forth on this end for the future of the training class.

Right now the 16 hour class covers:

  • Interface
  • Symbology
  • Geo-processing and Plugins
  • Editing
  • Layout manager
  • Raster Tools
  • Field Calculator
  • Forms
  • Processing

Day 1 is certified by the QGIS Community and I’m working on Day 2 getting certified – so I should have an answer on that shortly (so this class will support the QGIS Community). Of Course that leaves me wondering where Day 3 goes – and I’m staring down the barrel of PostGIS. Which has been my most talked about non-existent class at this point. Every time I start on it I back off and wonder if I’ve done enough in QGIS to prepare you for that angle.

Anyway – Hope to see you there! Any questions give me a shout!

QGIS 2019 Meeting Recap

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It came and went quickly.

To recap: an evil plan was hatched  3 years ago and this was the the final strategic move – a QGIS conference. The local community college gave me a room and people donated and it happened.

The night before the meeting we had a social at the Tap House. Fun story on that – I had to make a run to the airport to pick up one more attendee. As I was walking out the door I told the Bartender “Hey I’ll pick up drinks because I can’t imagine there will be more than 8 people here”. When I walked back in the door we had 25 people. Getting 25 people together anywhere to discuss QGIS is a pretty big deal – especially for Chattanooga. Oh yeah – Guido Stein (President of OSGEO us) completely saved me from washing dishes before the end of the night.

So lets talk about the conference. 11 talks. 44 people. We covered Parcels. We discussed Plugins. We had Nyall Dawson tune in from Australia for a 1 hour discussion of QGIS. We discussed using other applications with QGIS. We had Jody Garnett fly in from Canada. We handed out Coffee Mugs. We had books as prizes. We have Videos coming also – I was able to afford for someone to come in and video this.

Lets talk about the attendees. I do these for two reasons: community and “Is anyone interested in FOSS4G Software?”. There is always interest. The QGIS meeting showed me there was way more interest than I could have imagined. As far as attendees went we had people from: New York, Virginia, California, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Canada. Which means we were “international”. Of course it’s hard to gauge for local use of QGIS since very few people were local….and that’s completely fine.

Best Compliment I received: I learned a lot and felt really accepted in the community.

So we’ve got a thing. There seemed to be support for doing this next year. I need to get this more organized – because everyone had fun. All of you that attended and sent me emails, tweets, sponsored,  and other encouragement made this happen – Thank You.

Training Schedule for the QGIS Workshop for 2020

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QGIS Classes have been scheduled through 2020 – which is a first.

Changes – oh there are several:

  • QGIS Workshop is 2 days now making it 16 hours total. We’re covering everything from the interface to editing to building forms to symbology. It’s going to be a busy two days.
  • Class is still hands on – so show up with a little bit of background in GIS. We hit the ground running in this class.
  • We’re holding the class at Chattanooga State in an actual classroom. Which settles the massive issue of parking and facilities.
  • If you can’t come to Chattanooga – the class can come to you.
  • Bring your laptop with the latest and greatest of QGIS. We aren’t providing equipment (but I’ll help you get your equipment ready).

Dates for Chattanooga:

  • January 15-16 2020
  • May 13-14 2020
  • Sep 16-17 2020
  • Nov 18-19 2020

Cost: $700 for two days – and this comes with a certificate from the QGIS Community. I used to give people the option and it’s now mandatory for the class.

Registration: https://www.campusce.net/cscc/course/EventDetail.aspx?C=106

Location: Chattanooga TN

Where can you stay? Several places within 15 minutes of Chattanooga State. I would suggest downtown Chattanooga just for the fun of being in downtown. Plus if you bring significant others there is plenty to do.

Participants: Locked at 12 per class.

Anyway – I look forward to seeing you come to Chattanooga for a QGIS Class!

 

Chattanooga QGIS Conference Update

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So things are moving. Things are always a bit terrifying as this starts pulling together. I’ve been tossing updates everywhere – so here’s an update for the Blog.

Official Stuff

Website: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/20191000-QGIS-US

Date: October 25th 2019

So the first big thing: A Social. I’m headed down to the Tap House this week to make sure everything is arranged for a social On October 24th.

Talks

Talks are rolling in for Friday. There is still room to submit a paper if you wish. The big one is I’m hopefully (and I’m at the mercy of the internet) is I’ve got Nyall Dawson on Video from Australia speaking first.

Here are some of the abstracts that have been submitted:

  • QGIS: It’s all about Form(s) – QGIS comes with the ability to create forms to help you input data or capture data. You can build simple forms to help users avoid misspellings and help speed up data capture. You can also build forms where data entry is dependent on previous data entered as well as forms where data entry depends on other GIS data. Building Forms in QGIS is easy, powerful, and easily done if you have no programming experience. I’m going to attempt to talk you through the easiest to make forms plus one difficult form to show you how easy this can be (or hard depending on how the demos work).
  • Using QGIS with TN’s 911 Database Standard – Henry County 911 recently moved away form their COTS system and started using QGIS, PostGIS, and Fulcrum to collect and maintain the county’s 911 data. This talk covers some of the in’s and out’s of switching software, tools, and workflows.
  • EcoValuator:  EcoValuator is built on python and provides a simple means of estimating the dollar value of a study area, based on the land cover types in that study area, and on your ecosystem service of choice. This presentation will cover background information about the project, what are ecosystem services, how the EcoValuator works, challenges of using the QGIS python API, and demonstration of the plugin in action.
  • Building a cloud-based mapping and analysis solution based on Openlayers and CesiumJS. 18 month ago our team felt the need for having a next Gen cloud mapping solution. We did not want to leave it all to ArcGIS Online, so we decided to build our own. It is designed to make maps, analyze data, add custom database solutions, and to share maps and data with fellow users.Take a look behind the scene of the journey of putting it all together and learn how far we have come and what are our ideas in terms of connecting Open Source solutions like QGIS and GeoServer.

…..and more are coming.

This is the third meeting I’ve put on since 2017. All meetings are centered around FOSS4G with this being the  first QGIS focused one. I’ve had emails and conversations from all over the US on this meeting. One thing that keeps coming up is people want more open source GIS meetings. The tough part is it has to be a community run affair or someone (yours truly) jumps up and puts this together. I really need to start earlier and shoot for bigger – BUT – there’s only so much I can do. We have the FOSS4G NA meetings that are well run and much bigger – but this seems to scratch an itch. How does this get bigger? I have no idea and I’m open to suggestions.

Anyway – the clock is ticking. The more the merrier at this thing so please make plans to attend.

 

 

TN 911 Server Updates

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The TN NG911 server got an upgrade this month with some quality assurance checks. After working with Henry County for the last bit we’re into more “what if” scenarios.

  • What if we ran checks for misspelled addresses or improperly labeled addresses?
  • What if we started filling out the fields we weren’t filling with out with our ArcGIS/Geodatabase setup?

Working with Chad Howard (911 GIS Guru for Henry County TN) we’ve started playing with data problems. One thing I learned is that the amount of quality assurance checks at the county level are lacking – not because anyone didn’t want to do it it’s just hard working with a basic arcgis license to do anything significant. That’s where postgis comes into play. I’ve got a total of three checks on the addresses planned with two implemented as of right now.

What if you accidentally add two address points with the same geometry? A red circle appears in one of the layers in your database (and in your QGIS session) alerting you to the mistake. What if you accidentally misspell an address street name and that doesn’t match a street? A blue circle appears. If you look at the example it looks like someone can’t spell. Actually the old setup was adding spaces to names. So instead of “Main” you had “Main “. That’s an easy enough fix we can do in a bulk edit.

I expect these next set of checks to slowly become irrelevant over the next bit as the client takes full advantage of QGIS’s forms for data entry. Once again we’re hitting spaces as opposed to nulls in the data in 80% of the cases. We should only have 4 pre-directionals – well at most 8 –  but for this county they only have 4.

We can bulk edit the spaces away in the database. It’s nice to have this table sitting in the qaqc schema just to check occasionally but I do expect that to drift off in significance the more we use Fulcrum and QGIS’s Forms for data input. These checks check everything from street types, names, to directionals. Like I said – over time these start drifting off in significance but it’s nice for now.

Anyway – more quality checks are planned but we’re over he first hurdle to making this even more useful and easy.

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