January 18th
OpenGeo is always eager to help advance open source geospatial software projects. When Andreas Hocevar told us that the GeoExt community was planning a code sprint for GeoExt 2.0 we were happy to get involved. The sprint is still in the planning stages and, unfortunately, not fully funded. Though many have contributed, we’re hoping others will join us in sponsoring this event.
GeoEXT and ExtJS 4
GeoExt enables building desktop-like GIS applications through the web. It is a Javascript framework that combines the GIS functionality of OpenLayers with the user interface of the ExtJS library provided by Sencha. GeoExt currently works with ExtJS 3 but that does not utilize the new features in ExtJS 4 (charting, harmonized API with Sencha Touch for mobile applications, and others). The upcoming code sprint will target developing GeoExt 2.0 to work with ExtJS 4 in order to leverage the newest features.
Participants
Representatives from the following companies have confirmed attendance and sponsorship:
- OpenGeo
- Camptocamp
- terrestris
- Mapgears
These organizations have provided core developers for GeoExt 1.x and have experience as service providers building applications with ExtJS 4. We’re excited to work with them again as we help develop GeoExt 2.0
Sponsor search
A week-long gathering of eight developers calls for a budget of $52,000. This covers travel, accommodations and partly the developers themselves. While much of this cost is being borne by the participating organizations we have not been able to close the gap.
We are looking for sponsors to help. Sponsors will be named explicitly and are encouraged to input their priorities for desired functionality in GeoExt 2.0.
Call for sponsorship
The participating organizations would like to invite all organizations and users utilizing GeoExt to sponsor the code sprint. Becoming a sponsor ensures the benefits from the new functions that will be implemented.
March 5th
Thanks to OpenGeo’s Whit Morris and Jonah Bossewitch from the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) the two organizations co-hosted the NYC Open Mapping Sprint last weekend.
Jeremiah Trinidad-Christensen opened space for the sprint in Columbia University’s Lehman Social Sciences Library. There, most of OpenGeo’s international team met with people from Columbia, MetaCarta, NOAA, and beyond.
Highlights
OpenLayers developer Chris Schmidt came to the sprint. He joined members of our own JavaScript team and a developer from CCNMTL in working towards the upcoming OpenLayers 2.8 release. Several patches were also made towards GeoExt core.
Our GeoServer team made progress cleaning legacy code from the GeoServer codebase. This work eases the lives of plugin developers who would otherwise have to modify core classes. Look for configurable extensions building on these improvements starting to be available in GeoServer 2.0.
Lastly, we took some time to explore PostGIS’s geocoder project, which uses the TIGER United States census data set. Existing commercial geocoding services are tied to restrictive terms of service agreements. At OpenGeo, we are interested in providing a more open geocoding option.
February 24th
OpenGeo has embarked on a company-wide retreat this week. Since the members of our team work in six different countries on three continents and across ten time zones, we are quite used to working together remotely. With OpenGeo growing in size, however, it is worthwhile for all of us to meet in one physical location for the first time to articulate our roadmap and goals for the future.
So we’ve alighted at a small farm in upstate New York, spending the next few days working hard and playing hard. While we are not coding much (we’ll be code sprinting this upcoming weekend), we are meeting together to decide how we can most effectively pursue our mission in our world. We will detail the results of this meeting in the weeks and months to come.