Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Micha Silver]

Charlie Schweik wrote:

.


This connects back to my earlier education post that Frank Warmerdam 
responded to. He asked:


"I would have thought it would be more productive to take existing 
curriculum guidelines and get project support in rebuilding them around

foss projects/products. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding?"

I agree with this point, and I think that is what some, like Tyler M  
has been suggesting. However, I find myself wondering from a 
technology-learning angle, are there more specialized knowledge needed 
in the FOSS Geo space?


What kinds of skills are needed to contribute to the further 
development of various FOSS Geo technologies (this gets at the 
"joining/recruitment" issue of new developers) or building a community 
of user-driven innovators?
And what kinds of skills are needed for users of FOSS Geo 
technologies?  E.g., Desktop or Web-based GIS? For example, if I want 
to show a student how to map using OpenLayers, what would that student 
need to know? Or what skills would a student need to have to implement 
a Map Server application?  Is the idea of a curriculum around "FOSS 
Geo technologies" -- such as a "certificate" -- a useful idea for us 
to pursue?

Charlie:

That's a fascinating idea.  Offering certification in FOSS GIS software 
(even at more than one level) would help to:

   promote the use of the FOSS GIS stack
   probably expand the user base
   directly address the problem that has been raised that it's hard to 
get started with FOSS.
   help fend off the claim that the job market requires "certified" 
professionals.


And this seems to be something that should be right up OSGeo's alley. As 
an umbrella organization for many (most?) FOSS GIS projects, the 
training know-how is right at hand. Both training material and exams 
could be online. 
If I'm not mistaken, Red Hat's RHCE is highly respected.  Organizing 
something along that line would be a valuable and worthwhile goal for OSGeo.

--
Micha


Or am I off target here? If I'm not, I'm open to ideas on how to 
mobilize a group to work on this curriculum effort... William Kinghorn 
who I met in South Africa has written ideas on "exam areas" that might 
be a start... if people want to join in this idea let me know and 
perhaps I should schedule a Skype conference call to discuss more... 
I'd also like to find someone to take the lead on organizing and 
running this curriculum effort.


Charlie


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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Charlie Schweik]

Ian Turton wrote:

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Charlie Schweik
 wrote:
  

I'm also wondering if we could get some funding somewhere to hold an invited
workshop (that pays for people to attend) to really dig into this.

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/nsf04_23/2.jsp#IID7 - I'm game to aid in
the request but I don't have any time to lead until December.

Good idea... I've just emailed an NSF officer I know to investigate this 
idea.

Charlie
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Eric Wolf]

As Ian said, the Universities are stuck in a vicious circle. Believe it or
not, faculty do try to teach a GIScience that is independent of any
particular software package. But the perspective ends up being that ESRI
provides both the tools and teaching materials in a consistent manner. If
the faculty is focusing on software-independent ideas, then using the most
readily available software makes their (and their lab managers' jobs
easier).
What is sorely missing is a suite of teaching materials for FOSS4G. Most of
the books for FOSS4G are written for programmers. If you've ever gotten near
a GIS course homed in a Geography Department, you know that the students
taking the course are decidedly not programmers. (In fact, this is also how
ESRI entrenches their software - by enable a massive array of functionality
without relying on actual programming).

I surely don't need another project right now, but I've been trolling to
find a co-author to create a cookbook-style Python geoprocessing book that
uses GDAL/OGR and other FOSS libraries. This would be considered a text for
a fairly advanced GIS course.

As for teaching labs, I think we are developing a good experience-base with
the OpenGeo LiveDVD. I used that DVD for the workshop I lead at GIS in the
Rockies on GeoServer. It worked brilliantly for a simple workshop like that.
What's missing is the ability to save the state. University labs frequently
require multiple sessions to get through and build on one another - unlike
the OpenGeo GeoServer workshop that can be cranked out in 45 minutes and is
done.

Maybe we should focus on a GIS on a stick product rather than a LiveDVD?

-Eric

-=--=---===---=--=-=--=---==---=--=-=-
Eric B. WolfNew! 720-334-7734
USGS Geographer
Center of Excellence in GIScience
PhD Student
CU-Boulder - Geography



On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Ian Turton  wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Peter Batty  wrote:
>
> > I think that programs to encourage greater use of OSGeo products in
> > universities would be a great idea too - ESRI dominate in this area at
> the
> > moment, but this would be another way to get the word out to a broader
> > audience.
>
> Currently universities are locked in a vicious circle with GIS
> software in that the students demand we teach them on ESRI software
> because that's what employers want and employers use ESRI software as
> that is what the universities are teaching the students on.
>
> The fact that ESRI are giving the software away for free (or nearly
> free) doesn't help. I'd love to teach more (undergraduate) students
> with FOSS but first I have to find technician time to install the
> software on all the lab machines in the university (which is where
> ArcMap is provided) for just one course (and any way why can't I use
> Arc like everyone else will be the question). Of course we're supposed
> to be teaching techniques not software packages but you still spend
> most of your time sorting out the software issues.
>
> So *I* think that universities are a lost cause and we should focus on
> high schools - but in many states ESRI has got there before us and has
> signed deals with the state to provide arc in schools at no cost to
> the school. When I query teachers as to how the kids will do their
> homework they usually shrug and point out it's too hard for them to do
> on their own or that they can use the school library. May be
> elementary schools are the winnable battlefield?
>
> Ian
> --
> Ian Turton
> These are definitely my views and not Penn States!
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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Mateusz Loskot]

Eric Wolf wrote:
> I surely don't need another project right now, but I've been trolling to
> find a co-author to create a cookbook-style Python geoprocessing book that
> uses GDAL/OGR and other FOSS libraries. This would be considered a text for
> a fairly advanced GIS course.

Eric,

You may want to look at Chris Garrard's work:

"Geoprocessing with Python using Open Source GIS"

http://www.gis.usu.edu/~chrisg/python/2009/

The slides make a kind of cookbook-style book, I think.

Best regards,
-- 
Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net
Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org
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RE: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Rafal Wawer]

Hi Eric,
Maybe we should focus on a GIS on a stick product rather than a LiveDVD?

We (CASCADOSS project) have been using our own distro for the training. You 
will find it here: http://cascadoss.competterra.com/cascadoss.php?livedvd_en
I am not entirely sure, but I think Compet-Terra developed a verison working 
from the USB-Stick.
Some excercises based upon this LiveDVD: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Wawer_Rafal

Best regards:
Raf


Dr. Rafal Wawer
K.U.Leuven
R&D Division SADL (Spatial Application Division)
Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2224
BE-3001 Leuven-Heverlee
Belgium
tel. 0032 16 329731






-Eric

-=--=---===---=--=-=--=---==---=--=-=-
Eric B. WolfNew! 720-334-7734
USGS Geographer
Center of Excellence in GIScience
PhD Student
CU-Boulder - Geography



On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Ian Turton 
mailto:ijtur...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Peter Batty 
mailto:pe...@ebatty.com>> wrote:

> I think that programs to encourage greater use of OSGeo products in
> universities would be a great idea too - ESRI dominate in this area at the
> moment, but this would be another way to get the word out to a broader
> audience.

Currently universities are locked in a vicious circle with GIS
software in that the students demand we teach them on ESRI software
because that's what employers want and employers use ESRI software as
that is what the universities are teaching the students on.

The fact that ESRI are giving the software away for free (or nearly
free) doesn't help. I'd love to teach more (undergraduate) students
with FOSS but first I have to find technician time to install the
software on all the lab machines in the university (which is where
ArcMap is provided) for just one course (and any way why can't I use
Arc like everyone else will be the question). Of course we're supposed
to be teaching techniques not software packages but you still spend
most of your time sorting out the software issues.

So *I* think that universities are a lost cause and we should focus on
high schools - but in many states ESRI has got there before us and has
signed deals with the state to provide arc in schools at no cost to
the school. When I query teachers as to how the kids will do their
homework they usually shrug and point out it's too hard for them to do
on their own or that they can use the school library. May be
elementary schools are the winnable battlefield?

Ian
--
Ian Turton
These are definitely my views and not Penn States!
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Fwd: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Bruce Bannerman]

Peter,

You make a very good point as to the value of marketing.

Thinking back to the early '90s when I was a MicroStation / Intergraph / GDS
user, the factor that attracted me across to using ESRI software at the time
was their marketing approach.

Where Bentley and Intergraph were focusing on technology and the benefits of
the latest widget, ESRI Australia were quietly selling their software by
focusing on how it was being used to solve real world problems. The people
managing the organisation at the time encouraged organisations to show how
they were solving their day to day problems (oh, and by the way, we used
product 'x' to do this). In Australia, ESRI AU appear to have now reverted
to focusing on the technology.


Perhaps that is something to try, demonstrating how the application of the
technology has solved problems, rather than focusing on the OSGeo technology
explicitly?



In addition to the other good suggestions to come out so far, I'd like to
see a good consistent and integrated Architecture developed for OSGeo
applications.

It can be rather daunting for someone new to FOSS4G to understand how the
various pieces fit together and what application or library should be used
where.

It would be particularly helpful to Enterprise Architecture types to
understand and feel more comfortable with a 'quality' integrated OSGeo
applications stack.

I know that Paul Ramsey has put together a few documents and I have some
mind maps (tracing applications and high level features) that are getting a
bit dated. Perhaps we can get a few of us together in Sydney to discuss this
further.


Bruce Bannerman









> -Original Message-
> From: discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org
> [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Peter Batty
> Sent: Saturday, 3 October 2009 12:32 AM
> To: OSGeo Discussions
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo
>
> A good discussion and one which is important for OSGeo's
> future. I agree with Cédric's initial statement that "The
> OSGEO is very developer centric and probably need more input
> from management, end user, marketing etc..." and I think that
> the responses to this thread reflect that. Most developers in
> my experience are skeptical of the value of / need for
> marketing (in the open source and closed source world), and
> we've seen a lot of that in the responses. I used to think
> that way too, but over time have come to appreciate the value
> of marketing more. Unfortunately the software business has
> many examples where a company became dominant despite having
> software that was inferior to its competitors, Microsoft and
> ESRI being two of these.
>
> Ultimately I think that a primary measure of the success of
> OSGeo has to be in the number of people using its products,
> and it is surely in the interests of developers to get more
> users too - which should result in more funding for further
> development, etc. I think that improved "marketing" would
> actually have much more impact in terms of getting more
> people using OSGeo products than anything we can do on the
> development front - there is always a long list of things to
> do, of course, but in general the current functionality of
> most OpenGeo products is very competitive, the main thing
> holding back broader usage is just that most people in the
> broader geospatial industry don't know about them (and/or
> they have misconceptions about open source software, etc).
>
> And thinking of marketing as taking people to fancy events
> etc is wrong (in this context at least) - I would say that
> better terms for what OSGeo should be doing in this area
> might be outreach and education (in various senses).
>
> One thing we are weak on in general is documentation on user
> projects / success stories. For example, last week I talked
> at the AGI conference in the UK and afterwards got an email
> from an attendee which said:
>
> "During your talk you mentioned that you use PostGIS a lot
> and I was wondering if you could let me know about your
> experiences with it? At the moment we have our data on
> different servers and in different formats and I'm trying to
> get it all into one place.  We have recently got SQL Server
> 2005 so I don't think we will be going for the 2008 spatial
> version for a few years.  Therefore I have been looking into
> PostGIS which seems to be the perfect solution.however, I'm
> struggling to find people who have used it on a regular basis."
>
>
> We need to make it easy for people to connect with existing
> OSGeo product users, not a "struggle".
>
> When I chose to use PostGIS for my startup a couple of years
> ago, a critical factor in that decision for me was attending
> FOSS4G and talking to others who had used it. I think that
> the direction that FOSS4G goes in is another key decision in
> terms of OSGeo's marketing strategy. I know there are people
> in the community who want to keep the event small and
> intimate and focused on the existing developm

Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Next 5 years for OSGeo

[Chris Puttick]

- "Eric Wolf"  wrote:


> 
> Maybe we should focus on a GIS on a stick product rather than a
> LiveDVD?


Jo Cook wrote you a Windows one of those already :) - so you could even give to 
the students for ongoing use of the tools and data. And of course that is about 
as functional a toolset (in toto) as exists for GIS, open or closed source...

http://www.archaeogeek.com/blog/2009/09/01/portable-gis-version-2-released/

Cheers

Chris

PS This email is of course marketing so those who don't want any shouldn't read 
it ;)


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Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] desktop gis comparison at code sprint foss4g

[Jody Garnett]

Hi Andrea:

That may be a good topic for a BOF session; I would recommend the code
sprint stays focused on you know ... coding :-)

Jody

On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 6:48 PM, andrea antonello
 wrote:
> Hi all, but mainly QGis-sers and gvSig-gers (I am now speaking as uDig-ger).
> In Italy in November we have our annual GFOSS conference and this year
> we proposed a workshop in which desktop GIS are compared.
> So what should happen, is that we create a list of tasks that then are
> shown/compared on every GIS during the workshop, in order to highlight
> the strenghts of every GIS and hide the weaknesses behind the
> availability of other possibilities.
> At the Italian conference QGis/grass, gvSig/sextante and
> uDig/JGrass/Axios will be put into the game, which is why I mainly
> address those groups now, but obviously others are welcome.
>
> I would really love to give this thing a ride before the November
> conference, since it is a first try for me. Therefore I was wondering
> if some QGis and GvSIG poweruser would be available during the
> Saturday codesprint for comparison on some tasks together with the
> uDig team.
>
> That said, I would love to hear from anyone what he would like to see
> tested in such a comparison, browsing from the easiest line creation
> to the most particular and odd reprojection.
> For that I just opened a small subsection in the uDig code sprint
> area: 
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2009_Code_Sprint#The_desktop_comparison_tasks_list
> Feel free to add whatever comes to your mind.
>
> Thanks,
> Andrea
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