Welcome back to the newest edition of OpenGeo Connections. Today we’re excited to announce that Matt Priour has joined the OpenGeo team. Matt has a breadth of experience in both the open source and proprietary web mapping worlds with special expertise in the front-end components of the OpenGeo Suite. He has already made a big impact working on GeoNode projects, and his responsibilities have quickly expanded to work directly with more OpenGeo Suite components.

OpenGeo’s David Dubovsky (OG): Hello Matt, welcome to OpenGeo!
Matt Priour (MP): Hi, I’m thrilled to be here.

(OG): Tell us a little bit about yourself.
(MP): I’m a happily married father of two young children, a trained wildlife biologist, and a web-centric geospatial software developer with a primary focus on client-side development. I’m also a native Texan and love living here. My wife is a veterinarian, and I used to volunteer as an emergency veterinary technician.

(OG): Great, and how did you decide to get involved in the geospatial field?
(MP): Well I’ve always loved maps, aerial photos, and working with computers. I seemed to drift toward geospatial-related interests while in college at Texas A&M University. Later on, I made heavy use of GIS/GPS in my field research for my master’s degree.

(OG): So you didn’t go to school specifically for web development or GIS?
(MP): No, not really. After utilizing GIS/GPS so much in school I had a really solid background. Inevitably I became the “GIS guy” at my first job after school. Eventually that lead to forming my own business for custom desktop GIS projects, extensions, and scripts, and finally to specializing in producing custom geospatial web apps for my clients.

(OG): And how long have you been at it now?
(MP): I’ve been working with geospatial in some form or another since 1999. I’ve been primarily focused on open-source geospatial technologies and web .

(OG): During that time what projects do you look back on most fondly?
(MP): I’ve really enjoyed any project which has allowed me the opportunity to solve an interesting problem for a client. Two such projects come to mind:
First, ParkScore, which was a demonstration project for the California chapter of Trust for Public Land. ParkScore allowed users to enter their addresses and be presented with an interactive map and results tables showing them the distance to public parks, schools, fitness centers, and other “healthily living” opportunities. Data had to be retrieved and compiled from a variety of sources using documented and undocumented API’s and displayed on a map in a rapid, per formant manner. I also developed a YUI based mapping app interface through this project that I was able to re-use on several other projects.

(OG): That sounds pretty interesting, and the second?
(MP): The second was a train tracking and incident management app which consolidated 3 separate inoperable desktop programs into a single unified map-based interface using GeoServer, GeoExt, and OpenLayers. It presented the problem of how to display large amounts of rapidly changing data with dynamic client-side filtering and specialization using OGC methods. Several GeoServer-specific vendor parameters, filter functions, and some SLD magic made this into a much more manageable task.

(OG): Wow, so you got to work with OpenGeo Suite components. Is that how you became involved with OpenGeo?
(MP): I’ve been tracking OpenGeo’s growth since it was a part of “The Open Planning Project”. This organization has done so much to promote open-source geospatial technologies and helped position it as a real alternative to proprietary systems. I was very excited when an opportunity to provide some development services related to temporal mapping for the MapStory project presented itself this summer.

(OG): So what will you be doing here at OpenGeo?
(MP): Along with the MapStory project I’ll be providing support for clients implementing, customizing or extending portions of the OpenGeo Suite.

(OG): Before we wrap up is there any interesting facts you’d like to reveal to the world?
(MP): Hmm, I can think of a few. I can do a rather good Beaker (from the Muppets) impersonation, in fact I was able to convince my wife to continue going out with me after our first date with that impression. Also I know over 100 North American songbirds by sound alone.

(OG): Wow - I honestly couldn’t say which one is more impressive! Thanks for the time and welcome aboard, Matt!
(MP): Glad to join the team!

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.

Here’s an interesting light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel perspective from GeoNode on the unfortunate news that government transparency sites such as Data are going dark soon. Instead of lamenting the end of the site, one can think of it more as a call to action. More specifically, agencies and organizations can join others like the World Bank, United Nations, and Harvard University in using GeoNode, the open source spatial data infrastructure, to “host your own Data”:

From the post:

The demise of Data is not, by any means, a blow for transparency. The problem that Data was designed to solve still remains across all levels of government and we can learn some lessons from Data. Government-as-a-service is in many ways still a nascent idea and the bugs are still being worked out. GeoNode can foster exactly the sort of openness and transparency that Data was designed to accomplish.

Data is dead. Long live open data!

The GeoNode community recently welcomed the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University (CGA) to its growing community of institutional participants. CGA has announced that it is incorporating GeoNode components into its WorldMap web mapping system, with an eye towards stronger user collaboration and better tools for data management and editing.

From the GeoNode site:

CGA was committed to building WorldMap using open source technologies. While supporting user roles and collaboration requires major development efforts, CGA was able to quickly achieve results thanks to WorldMap’s open source, interoperable architecture. By working with OpenGeo to use GeoNode as the basis for new capabilities, CGA received immediate access to key open source components supporting collaboration, mapping, metadata management, and more

While OpenGeo remains firmly committed to developing GeoNode, the number of contributors is swelling far beyond OpenGeo’s ranks. Along with OpenGeo and Harvard CGA, the GeoNode community now includes Global Earthquake Model Foundation (GEM), World Bank, and the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction (AIFDR). With additional input comes a growth in users, testers, and developers, contributing to the overall sustainability of the project and benefiting all who use it.

Read more about this collaboration.

What do GeoNode and GeoExt have in common? Both will be represented at the OSGeo Park (Hall 11.2, Booth 2c.121) of the INTERGEO trade fair and conference on October 5-7 in Cologne, Germany. Andreas Hocevar, core developer for both projects, will be talking about Web Map Printing with GeoExt and SDI Best Practices with GeoNode. He will also be available for questions on all the projects that are packaged with our OpenGeo Suite—but especially OpenLayers and GeoServer.

What else do GeoNode and GeoExt have in common? We are planning a 1.0 release for both in the next couple of days!

For the past year we’ve been excited to develop a new software project in partnership with the World Bank: GeoNode.

GeoNode aims to be the next generation of spatial data infrastructure. Some of it—such as GeoExplorer with integrated styler or data publishing through open standards—will be familiar to users of the OpenGeo Suite. What GeoNode provides on top is search enabled by an ISO metadata catalog and an integrated front-end for user management, security, data browsing, cartography, and more.

The best way to learn about it is to try it yourself on the live demo!

We are almost ready for our 1.0 release, and we need your help testing GeoNode. So please, make an account and give it a shot. If you find any issues, please don’t hesitate to report them on our project Trac. We’ll be squashing bugs and redeploying regularly in the upcoming weeks.

Our hope is to have a robust release candidate available for a grand unveiling at FOSS4G this year. See you there!