Wow,

I don’t understand how folks can attend conferences and still have enough energy left to blog about them.

I really enjoyed GeoTec this year. It was a great chance to put faces to names, like Paul Spencer, who I’d been working with for over a year without having met. I got to talk to many traditional GIS folks that I hadn’t seen since I was sipping the ESRI kool-aid full time, spend time with new online acquaintances like Peter Batty, and touch base with geo-friends that I spend more time with than my family (or so my wife says). I even got to annoy Ed Parsons with a pitch for an open protocol extension to XMPP for geospatial data collaboration. He seemed un-phased

Apart from general connections, a few conversations stood out for me: one with someone who had quietly implemented a disconnected GIS solution based on MapServer (extremely similar to a MapGuide app we have inhouse), another with someone who was looking to eliminate ongoing licensing fees by re-implementing their web-based GIS using MapGuide Open Source, and a series of conversations with government representatives who were looking at publishing using KML and GeoRSS.

There were certainly folks at the conference who were convinced that open source geospatial and neogeography were inconsequential. Various analogies occur to me — cough ostriches — but mostly I am sad that these people don’t see that change brings opportunity. The good news for me was that the buzz around real implications of these topics was much higher than last year.

Apart from the excellent sessions and yet another note-to-self about procrastination, one thing that I’m taking away from GeoTec is asking for KeyNote/iWork on our office “accessibility-testing” Macbook. Ed Parsons’ presentation was incredibly visually appealing, and I’m soooo tired of bulleted text.

As an aside, Autodesk was honoured for MapGuide Open Source in the GeoTec Media Geospatial Leadership Awards, beating out heavy-hitters like Google in the category: Geospatial Innovator Award - Given to a geospatial tool developer that has created new software or hardware that expands the possibilities of the geospatial industry. The Autodesk folks I spoke to there felt that the award should go to the MGOS community, but personally I am happy to see Autodesk’s decision publicly validated.

-J

P.S. Here’s a crib sheet if you ever meet me: I’m usually a pretty quiet and easygoing type. However, when it comes to my passions (like geospatial technology) it’s pretty hard to get me to shut up, or to hold back on my opinions. I also tend to make rather outrageous statements “tongue-in-cheek”… so PLEASE don’t take me too seriously.

Update: Dale has posted his take on GeoTec (as promised below)

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We (meaning Paul) have just published a set of ten excellent presentations that have been given early acceptance through a democratic process.

It’s clear from the quality and diversity of presentations that FOSS4G is the one conference you need to attend this year if you want to understand how Open Source Geospatial is disrupting the traditional GIS marketplace and leading innovation in previously unimagined areas. Make sure you check out the great hands-on workshops and labs, and subscribe to the presentation submissions RSS feed for some interesting reading.

If you’re thinking about coming, make sure to register and arrange your accomodations/travel soon. Victoria has lots of rooms, but you might not get one in your preferred price range if you don’t book early.

-J

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GeoTec Event is a relatively large geospatial conference held in Canada. The show is fortunate to have a couple geobloggers attending: Ed Parsons is doing the opening keynote and Peter Batty (along with Ed and a couple other luminaries) is going to be on the opening panel. Hope I get a chance to talk with them. If any other geobloggers (even low-output ones like me) are going to be there, drop me a line…

Traditionally, GeoTec has alternated between BC and Ontario, but this year the western show is stopping in Calgary and co-locating with GeoAlberta. It’s not as technical as the vendor shows or events like Where 2.0, but it’s a great chance for traditional GIS folks to connect and learn from others.

This year I’m going to be part of two presentations.

The first is an “Introduction to Open Source” full day lab, where I’ll be working with Bob Bray from Autodesk, Paul Spencer from DM Solutions, and Samuel Smith from Refractions Research to introduce users to one of many potential open source software stacks. In this case: PostGIS, uDig, MapGuide Open Source, and DM Solutions’ Fusion (not yet released).

The second is an integrated case study entitled “City of Nanaimo Chooses Open Source Geospatial and Finds Success,” which is pretty long-winded, but sounded good at the time. Again, working with Samuel Smith and Paul Spencer, we’ll show how the City of Nanaimo is making use of open source tools (PostGIS, FDO, MapGuide Open Source, and Fusion) to deliver user-friendly services to our staff and residents. This will show integration points between traditional proprietary tools and the open source tools that we have implemented where it makes sense. Because most of the audience will probably not be familiar with open source geospatial, we’ll also be doing an introduction to OSGeo and the tools that the City of Nanaimo is using.

As much work as I put into getting ready for these conferences, I always find myself getting my slides finished off the weekend before, so it’s time to stop procrastinating and get back to work

-J

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Several suggestions have been posted to the Yahoo Pipes team — anonymously — about how they might enhance their spatial support, and it appears that they are listening. Today, they posted two interesting announcements:

• Spatially-enabled feeds are previewed in Yahoo Maps
• KML output is supported

I’m really impressed with these advancements but a good blogger always finds something to complain about.

I did a few tests and, while their spatial support appears to have become a bit smarter, it still has a long way to go. Click on any of the images below to go to the source…

The first test I did tests whether a simple points-based GeoRSS feed will automatically show up as location-enabled:

No dice; it isn’t that intuitive

The second test added a LocationExtracter into the stream:

Yes! It works! And… in Google Earth ™ too:

OK, so giddy with my success, I decided to test a somewhat more complicated GeoRSS feed with polygons:

So much for enthusiasm. Not even centroids…

Oh well, I guess if there wasn’t anything left to work on it would be out of beta.

I have to say that the editing experience in Pipes has improved greatly since the last time I played with it a few weeks back. Smoother with far fewer glitches. Great job on the interface…

… but I still always pick the wrong end of a pipe to move.

-J

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