TUGIS

TUgis Wrap-Up

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Earlier this month, I attended TUgis, Maryland’s annual GIS conference. It was my first time attending since I gave the keynote address in 2017. That was due primarily to the conference being moved to early August – a reasonable adjustment due to the fact that the venue is always Towson University and the new timeframe takes advantage of the fact that students are still away on break. That timeframe also happens to usually coincide with my family’s annual vacation. The other reason for my long absence was the pandemic.

This year, the conference occurred right before our vacation, so I was able to squeeze it in – though I had to leave halfway through the second day to finish travel preparations. For me, the conference was a chance to catch up with a number of people I hadn’t seen in quite a while – all of whom I mentioned over on LinkedIn. I especially enjoyed catching up with a couple of my former Fulcrum co-workers whom I had worked with for my entire tenure there. Those were exceptionally meaningful years for me and I feel like we grew a lot together.

As for the conference itself, I attended the public safety special interest group and a few other sessions. As a recovering programmer, it’s always interesting to see the software solutions people develop – either from scratch or customizing some other software. At TUgis, that other software tends to be some form of Esri application, though there were a few mentions of open-source tools as well.

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Belatedly, TUgis 2017 Keynote Text

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In March of 2017, I gave the keynote address at TUgis, Maryland’s geospatial conference. Despite a few requests, I’ve been remiss about posting the text until now. The following lengthy block quote is the address as I had written it. It differs slightly from what I actually said, but I can no longer recall the on-the-fly changes I made. The original text is pretty close, though. It was written before some of the announcements by Microsoft and Amazon later in the year, but that simply serves to illustrate the pace with which trends discussed here are moving.

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TUGIS 2017

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Yesterday, I attended TUGIS 2017, which was the 30th installment of Maryland’s annual statewide GIS conference. It was a great experience as there is a lot of innovative work going on in Maryland. The one-day format is specifically designed to be a high-value experience. Attendees trade the minimal impact on schedule for the fact that they will certainly miss some content they want to see. I think it’s a fair trade-off.

I also happened to give the keynote address at the conference. It was quite an honor to be asked to address so many geospatial practitioners who are working to tackle pressing issues in Maryland. Thanks to Ardys Russakis and the conference organizing committee for inviting me.

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Thoughts On TUGIS 2015

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I spent yesterday at TUGIS, Maryland’s GIS conference. It is an annual, one-day event, held at Towson University. As such, it is a bit of a sprint, especially when bracketed on either end by a double-beltway commute. The day started with the plenary which included a brief talk by Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor Boyd K. Rutherford, who reaffirmed the new administration’s commitment to the importance of data and metrics in decision-making. Julia Fischer, the current MSGIC Chair, also gave an update on MSGIC, including its renewed focus on advocacy and on providing free or low-cost GIS training in Maryland. The plenary wrapped with a keynote by Dr. Chris Tucker of the MapStory Foundation, who discussed the importance of capturing temporal change data as a way of visualizing our history.

mdcrabflag

From there, it was all about tracks and sessions. I won’t go into a blow-by-blow of everything I saw but I attended the Public Safety, Lightning Talks, and Application Development tracks. I generally saw two flavors of content: “JavaScript all the things” or “Look at this really cool thing I built with ArcGIS without programming.” There was also an undercurrent of open data as Maryland’s open data sets drove many apps I saw.

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The Best Thing I Saw at TUGIS 2013

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I spent the day yesterday at Towson University attending the TUGIS 2013 conference. The new one-day format was a firehose that showcased the diversity of geospatial work occurring across the State of Maryland. The keynote by Learon Dalby was well-received and the content of the conference was generally substantive. While the day was a sprint, there was one workshop that really caught my attention more so than I would have thought from its title.

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Off to TUGIS

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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.

Brian Timoney's favorite state flag

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

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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.

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