Tomorrow, I’ll be heading up to the Towson University GIS (TUGIS) conference with 500 or so of my closest Maryland geo-friends. It has been restructured into a one-day event and the program seems to be very content-rich as a result. I am particularly happy to see more open-source content this year. There’s an intro session featuring PostgreSQL, PostGIS, QGIS, and GeoServerpresented by Salisbury State University. Salisbury was once known as a bastion of Manifold so they’ve got a long history of thinking outside the Arc. Additionally, there is a session (by Towson University) discussing the use of GDAL, OGR, and Shapely in the development of a spatial service.
One thing I like about regional GIS conferences like this is that they tend to focus more on solutions to real-world problems instead of the latest technological bells and whistles. I spend so much of my time with my head in Federal requirements that it’s nice do a reset and get different perspectives on how geospatial technologies are used. I am particularly interested to hear the keynote from Learon Dalby of Sanborn and formerly of the Arkansas GIO office. I had the pleasure of working with Learon and the AGIO team on a project a couple of years ago and am impressed with what they accomplished.
I appreciate the new format of TUGIS as a one-day event is much easier to fit into the schedule. I’m looking forward to it.