#EsriFedCon Day One – Users Will Be Happy

Posted on 23 February 2012 by

I didn’t catch the first half of the Esri Federal GIS Conference plenary but James did a good recap of it on his blog. I did, however, catch the second half and the opening of the exhibit hall.

GIS letters from the road

This year was a departure from previous years in that it wasn’t a litany of the new things coming in each component of the Esri stack. The “GIS letters from the road” theme drew attention to problems that can be solved by leveraging the entire stack as a unit. It was a good twist that made it impossible to just drop in, hear about your favorite Esri product, and drop out. I have to give kudos to Esri’s marketing team for taking it in this direction. Continue reading →

Posted in esri, FedUC, gis | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Esri Fed Conference

Posted on 21 February 2012 by

I’ll be attending the Esri Federal User GIS Conference this week. For various reasons, I’ll be attending on the “Increased Carbon Footprint Plan” and commuting to and from the conference each day.

I’m looking forward to the reprise of the DevGeo session this year as well as a number of the sessions and also meeting up with a lot of my geo-geek friends. I haven’t heard the details on #geoglobaldomination yet but I’m sure it will occur.

I’ll try to blog more during the course of the conference.

Posted in esri, FedUC, gis | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Speaking of the 84%…

Posted on 8 February 2012 by

HT to Sophia Parafina for the 84%.

UPDATE: The NSIS script at utility batch file discussed here is now on github at https://github.com/geobabbler/pgstandalone. I’ll post a readme in the next day or so.

A few months ago, I asked the following question on Twitter and got this reply from Paul Ramsey:

We are working with a Federal Government customer that had the interesting policy that users can install software as long as it makes no changes to the Windows registry. These users are currently running a mix of Windows 7 and XP. We are working with them to help manage one of their data models. In this case, it’s more about performing configuration management on the model/standard itself rather than physical databases with real data in them. It’s a topic we touched on over at the Zekiah blog here and an approach we have used successfully for years to manage the SDSFIE data standard. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, gis, postgis, postgresql | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

DC/MD/VA Area Geo-Event Scene Getting More Active

Posted on 3 February 2012 by

There was a time only a few years ago when, if you lived in the DC/MD/VA area, planning your geo-conference schedule for the year went something like this: Register for the ESRI FedUC and then start booking plane tickets for everything else. That is no longer the case with more events occurring in the area. Here’s a round-up of a few events that are on my 2012 schedule so far:

You can never have too many of these...

ESRI Federal GIS Conference (formerly known as the Federal User Conference): 22 – 24 February. This is probably one of the longest-running and largest events in the area. This year features another DevGeo session, focusing on developing applications with the various ESRI tools. Last year was the first time it was done at a FedUC and the room was packed all day. This conference is obviously an ESRI show but the last few years have included unofficial, after-hours gatherings of people working with a wide range of geospatial tools. Even if you are not an ESRI user, there may be something going on in the vicinity that would be worthwhile. Continue reading →

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FOSS4G North America to Be Held In Washington, DC

Posted on 23 January 2012 by

I’m quite happy to see (HT, Glenn Letham) that OSGEO is inaugurating an annual FOSS4G North America conference this year in Washington, DC on April 10-12, 2012.

DC is an appropriate place for this event because of the presence or arguably the single largest user of geospatial technology, the US Federal Government. I’m happy to see that Michael Byrne is the keynote speaker as the FCC National Broadband Map has been a great success story in the use of open-source geospatial tools at the Federal level. I’ve been seeing more activity within the Federal Government recently but there’s still a long way to go.

I know a lot of people in this area that couldn’t make it out to Denver last year for FOSS4G. I hope many of them come to this edition to see the state of the art in open-source geospatial tools. I know this conference is targeted to North America as a whole but, if you are in the DC area and active with geospatial technology, FOSS4G North America should be on your calendar.

Posted in FedUC, gis, open source | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Check Out the NREL Renewable Energy Applications

Posted on 16 January 2012 by

Among the items in the category of “what I care about” are renewable energy and open-source geospatial tools. So I was happy to rediscover the various online tools by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. Many of the tools have been available for some time but the recent announcement of the RE Atlas application brought me back to them. Continue reading →

Posted in open source, gis | Tagged , , ,

Sharpening the Saw*

Posted on 3 January 2012 by

I have been laying low on my blog and in social media for a few weeks. I typically go into a little bit of a “hibernation” during December as the days get continually shorter heading for the solstice. Around the holidays, I am most interested in spending time with my family.

Around this time last year, I posted my goals for 2011. Goals don’t mean much unless you go back and assess how well you did in accomplishing them. From last year, with notes: Continue reading →

Posted in gis | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments