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Last month, a few of us at OpenGeo attended the GEOINT Symposium in San Antonio where, for the first time, open source received some serious attention. There were two panels on open source technologies and multiple keynote addresses highlighting the benefits of open source and the need to reduce software licensing costs.
Our COO, Eddie Pickle, sat on a panel moderated by John Scott, Co-Chairman of RadiantBlue and Dr. Christopher Tucker, USGIF Board Member. He used the opportunity to offer his thoughts on open source geospatial technologies and discuss open source adoption. Eddie highlighted the TsuDAT project as an example of a collaborative, open source GeoNode application. Zoom ahead to 38:00 minutes in the video below to see Eddie discuss OpenGeo’s experiences developing, deploying, and supporting open source solutions.
The video also offers some interesting perspectives from other panelists who discussed their experiences implementing and using open source technologies. Questions start at 58:00 minutes, enjoy.
This week Paul Ramsey will fill in as keynote speaker at the the Illinois GIS Association Fall Conference at Northern Illinois University. This year’s conference theme is “GIS without Borders” and has a special focus on open source geospatial software. The conference takes placeOctober 18th and 19th. Paul’s keynote, entitled “The Unknowns,” will explore the culture of open source and why managers should explore open source in their organizations.
If you’re in the area and haven’t had the opportunity to see Paul speak then now is your chance. The keynote is scheduled for 9:00am on October 19th. Online registration for the conference is still open!
We’re back from FOSS4G and have been reflecting on our jam-packed week in Denver. Our only regret is that we were so busy we missed some of the plenaries, workshops and talks that we wanted to attend. In case you’ve found yourself in a similar situation or would like to review an OpenGeo presentation we’ve compiled the materials below.
First two videos that we’re lucky that the organizers captured:
| Paul Ramsey | An exploration of open source business models |
| Mike Pumphrey | Why your product sucks |
And next (almost) all of the materials presented by the OpenGeo team:
| Paul Ramsey | An exploration of open source business models |
| Paul Ramsey | State of PostGIS |
| Sebastian Benthall & Rolando Peñate | Designing a better SDI |
| David Winslow | GeoServer Scripting with Python and RESTConfig |
| Bart van den Eijnden | Introducing GXP: Webmapping made easy |
| David Winslow & Alyssa Wright | Mapnik2GeoTools |
| Paul Ramsey | Tips for the PostGIS Power User |
| Mike Pumphrey | Why your product sucks |
We had a great week in Denver and have always felt that FOSS4G is the most interesting and informative conference of the year. FOSS4G certainly proved to be no exception. If you had a conversation with someone at our booth, or at a presentation, and would like to follow up please feel free to Contact us. See you in Bejing!
Friday started off with the “Open x 4″ panel, which had theoretical potential, but failed in the usual way panels do: lack of focus and excessive collegiality. For me the highlight was Peter Batty’s impersonation of Steve Coast (very convincing, in my opinion!).
Friday was also “PostGIS day” after a fashion, with 5 PostGIS-specific talks in a row. I started the series, with Tips for the PostGIS Power User (and here’s a link to the State of PostGIS talk I gave on Wednesday).
I was followed by Steven Singer with a talk on PostGIS replication. Really, a talk on PostgreSQL replication, since PostGIS support in PostgreSQL “just works”. The takeaway is that there are a couple means of replication available, the streaming replication available since PostgreSQL 9.0, which is suitable for replicating an entire instance, and the table-based replication available from packages like Slony and Skytools. For some use cases, like sharding, it makes more sense to use a table-based set-up. For other use cases, like high availability, using streaming replication of the whole instance is better.
Next up, Pierre Racine from Laval University gave an update on the new raster support in PostGIS. Raster will be released at PostGIS 2.0, and will bring a whole new toolbox for GIS analysis in the database. There was an incredible amount of excitement at Pierre’s talk, as the reality of the power of raster/vector analysis sunk in with folks in the audience. I predict that most of the new features added from 2.0 onwards are going to be in the raster side, as there are so many interesting areas for new features (contouring, surface fitting, density mapping, map algebras, etc, etc, etc).
After lunch, PostGIS day continued with Jim Mlodgenski presenting on the Stado (formerly GridSQL) parallel query system for PostgreSQL. Jim recently updated Stado to support PostGIS, which is a huge development. I was particularly piqued to hear this talk, since it is a direct response to my keynote at PgCon where I noted that an area of pain for PostGIS is the single-threaded query process in PostgreSQL. With Stado we can now leverage as many nodes as we want in processing spatial queries. For BI and spatial reporting, this is huge.
(My only regret about taking in Jim’s talk was missing GeoGlobalDomination: The Musical, which was going on at the same time.)
Finally, the most anticipated talk at FOSS4G, the review of new PostGIS 2.0 features from Regina Obe and Leo Hsu, my collaborators on the PostGIS steering committee. Though dense with SQL, the presentation got folks juices flowing: 3D support, new functions for slipping and snapping geometry, raster of course, topology models, the replacement of geometry_columns with a view, and more.
The conference wrapped up with thanks for the local committee and organizers, and very well deserved: the program, the venue, the parties, everything was excellent.
During the closing plenary, I was especially happy that my long-time Victoria colleague Martin Davis received the Sol Katz Award for his work on the JTS geometry library and work in supporting computational algorithm development throughout the geo open source community.
I’ll wrap Saturday into this final post: the code sprint was very well attended, and I was impressed to see folks in MapServer and OpenLayers with laptops cracked open and code being hacked. The PostGIS team huddled and coordinated our goals for the 2.0 release, setting a feature freeze date (end of November) and a first beta date (early January). But I personally only had the energy for one trivial bug fix, it’s been a long (and enjoyable) week.
Thanks everyone for an amazing FOSS4G!
This year FOSS4G is starting off with two full days of workshops, with gives things a bit more of a slow build to the full plenary and tech sessions from Wednesday to Friday. I woke up bright and early, raided Starbucks, and then delivered my PostGIS workshop to a full classroom of about 60 people. We covered basics of what a spatial database is, using spatial SQL for doing GIS analysis, and some of the new features of PostGIS like the “geography” type. Questions ranged from basics of SQL to queries about the standards coverage of spatial databases in general. I hope my core message got through: regardless of what database you use, moving from desktop GIS to spatial SQL is intensely liberating and empowering for geospatial professionals.
At lunch I sat at a random table and talked about open source with folks from the government, and was somewhat surprised to hear them say that open source is still considered a “second best” or “down market” solution. I thought that, at this late date, folks all up and down the hierarchies of organizations were aware that open source powers some of the largest information organizations in the world: if Silicon Valley and Wall Street are building their critical systems on open source (and they are) surely government can get with the program too!
Tomorrow is another day of workshops, and the “introduction to geospatial open source” for managers and decisions makers, which I will be attending with great interest, as an observer and as a panelist in the afternoon. I’m looking forward to improving my understanding of how open source is perceived at the managerial level.
There’s something thrilling about walking the streets of a large city and randomly running into people you know. The tribes of open source geospatial are converging on Denver this weekend, and in restaurants and on the patios, groups are forming, huddling around the glow of backlit screens, changing incantations: CSS, HTML5, Javascript, Scala, Ug!
For OpenGeo, this was a propitious day, our first international partner meeting. Representatives from over a dozen OpenGeo partner firms gathered at the Sheraton to share experiences and strategize about how to keep pushing open source geospatial into the mainstream. Check out the picasa album from the event.
For me, the surprise was how similar the partners were in many respects. Mostly mid-size (20-200 staff) working within a geographical territory, mostly in system integration, mostly working with a mix of proprietary and open solutions, mostly having some very notable large clients within their area (national agencies, military, etc). Everyone was very up on the technology, and already had some substantial clients engaged with open source one way or another. While there were many horror stories shared about conservative customers wedded to their proprietary software, everyone had an upbeat view of the future: the overall trend is towards more interest in exploring and adopting open source.
Tomorrow the conference begins in earnest with the first two days of workshops. I’ll be teaching the Introduction to PostGIS from 8 to noon, so look for me staggering out of the Sheraton at lunch, clutching my poor tired vocal chords!
We’ve done it again! Five of the OpenGeo workshops at FOSS4G have sold out. This response has us even more excited for this year’s conference.
Don’t worry, there are still plenty of opportunities at FOSS4G to learn about OpenGeo. Tickets are still available for the Opening Data with GeoNode workshop, and for more in depth discussions, there’s always our Meet The Experts sessions.
Outside of Denver there are other opportunities to meet OpenGeo team members. This week, Eddie Pickle will be at the MIL-OSS conference in Atlanta to discuss GeoNode, and its collaborative abilities. If you’re in the Atlanta area and want to find out about GeoNode, or how the military is using open source technologies it will be a worthwhile conference to attend.
Later in September we’ll be attending the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) annual conference, followed by exhibiting at GEOINT in October.
Will you be attending these conferences? Want to set to set up a meeting, become a partner, or get involved in open-source communities? Contact us to find out more. The schedules are filling up quickly!
Hope to see you out there.
Want expert advice about our open source projects from our real live developers? Come by booth #12 during FOSS4G next month and take advantage our Meet the Experts sessions. In addition to their workshops and tutorials, the OpenGeo Suite developers and team members will be available to answer questions and hear your feedback at the following times throughout the conference:
Wednesday, 9/14/2011
Thursday, 9/15/2011
We hope to see you there!
There will be plenty of opportunities to learn at this year’s FOSS4G Conference. We’ll once again be attending en masse—not only are we Gold Sponsors but we’lll have nearly two dozen OpenGeo team members in attendance. Along with the first ever OpenGeo Partner Event , we’ll be presenting at nine workshops and tutorials so we’re sure to have an exciting (and busy!) week.
Remember to register for the conference, workshops, and tutorials. If previous years are any indication, they have a habit of filling up. If you’ll be at the show, come by booth #12 to see what’s new or get involved with the communities we work with. Look for us in our signature brown t-shirts. Want your own? Come to one of our workshops, we’ll be giving out t-shirt vouchers there!
Here’s a list of all of the events we’re involved with, all at the Sheraton Denver Downtown:
| Date | Event | Start Time | End Time | Location | Speaker/Attending |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/12/2025 | Introduction to PostGIS | 8:00:00 | 12:00:00 | Windows | Paul Ramsey & Sam Smith |
| Web Mapping with GeoServer | 13:00:00 | 17:00:00 | Tower Court D | Mike Pumphrey | |
| OpenLayers Application Development | 13:00:00 | 17:00:00 | Windows | Tim Schaub | |
| 9/13/2011 | Developing OGC Compliant Web Applications With GeoExt | 8:00:00 | 12:00:00 | Windows | Andreas Hocevar |
| Opening Data with GeoNode | 8:00:00 | 12:00:00 | Silver | David Winslow & Jeff Johnson | |
| A complete open source web mapping stack | 13:00:00 | 17:00:00 | Tower Court D | Sam Smith, Ian Schneider & Alyssa Wright | |
| 9/14/2011 | An exploration of open source business models | 9:10:00 | 9:30:00 | Ballroom | Paul Ramsey |
| State of PostGIS | 10:00:00 | 10:30:00 | Windows | Paul Ramsey | |
| Designing a better SDI | 10:00:00 | 10:30:00 | Denver | Rolando Peñate | |
|
The State of GeoServer |
13:00:00 | 13:30:00 | Windows | Justin Deoliveira | |
| Tutorial: GeoServer Scripting with Python and RESTConfig | 13:00:00 | 13:30:00 | Century | David Winslow | |
| Introducing GXP: Webmapping made easy | 15:00:00 | 15:30:00 | Tower Court B | Bart van den Eijnden | |
|
GeoScript - Spatial Capabilities for Scripting Languages |
15:30:00 | 16:00:00 | Tower Court D | Justin Deoliveira | |
|
Scripting GeoServer with GeoScriptScripting GeoServer with GeoScript |
16:00:00 | 16:30:00 | Tower Court D | Justin Deoliveira & Tim Schaub | |
| Exhibitor Reception; Birds of a Feather; Poster Session | 17:30:00 | 20:00:00 | Ballroom | Rolando Peñate | |
| 9/15/2011 | Tutorial: Map Caching with GeoWebCache | 10:00:00 | 11:30:00 | Century | Gabriel Roldan |
| OpenLayers Mobile | 10:30:00 | 11:00:00 | Windows | Tim Schaub | |
| Mapnik2GeoTools | 13:30:00 | 14:00:00 | Silver | Alyssa Wright & David Winslow | |
| Tutorial: Working with GeoScript | 15:00:00 | 16:30:00 | Century | Justin Deoliveira & Tim Schaub | |
| 9/16/2011 |
Tips for the PostGIS Power User |
10:00:00 | 10:30:00 | Windows | Paul Ramsey |