Category: Thoughts

Steve Citron-Pousty joined me to talk about some of the latest trends in the spatial world. We hit on Google Glass, Esri, Frameworks, housing prices, travel, iD and OSM, naming stadiums, and of course being in an airport. The IRC log is here.

This week’s hangout should be fun. Steve C-P joins me to talk about the latest trends in the spatial world. We’re going to have fun and crowdsource the topics. If there is something you’d like to see talked about tomorrow, just add it to this Gist.

As always, we go live at 11am PDT and the video will stream live here on this blog.

Go to osm.org right now and click the edit tab. Select the “Edit with iD” and check it out.

It’s like nothing you’ve seen before. This is the tool that OSM needs to finish the map as Steve Coast said on my Hangout last week. All this is because of the Knight Foundation grant to MapBox which finally gives users tools they need to edit the map. As I said back then:

I’ve always felt OSM was held back by it’s editing tools. They are designed by nerds for geeks.

Well no longer, the editor is live and it’s gorgeous! Check out how you add a road:

Or add a park:

That’s not some crazy Potlach (now I did love that tool but it isn’t mainstream) method that only OSM users know. These are simple methods that everyone will understand. I do hope that it will also improve OSM’s biggest weakness, addressing. But in the meantime we should see lots of people start improving the map all around the world.

I have to be honest, when I first heard MapBox got a grant to improve OSM editing I thought it was a waste of time. There were already tools available, why not spend that money on something worthwhile. Well seeing iD in action, I feel like I need to take that all back. I no longer have to install Flash to edit OSM, that’s worth it’s weight in gold. I can imagine how this might look if another company did it, probably build in Silverlight with some crazy proprietary APIs. We should all be thankful MapBox took this on.

Update The OSM Blog has much more.

Nobody likes to complain more about software than Adobe Creative Suite users. But then this happened:

Adobe is pointing all of its energy towards Creative Cloud, eliminating the familiar retail box in the process. Like last year, the company is releasing an updated suite of applications this June, newly branded as “CC” apps. This includes: Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC and Premiere Pro CC.

The key here is per user, per month. No more stupid buying a new copy of Photoshop every year and complaining about how there is no new value. Now you get the new version no matter what new features are added. Microsoft is trying to do with with Office 365 but most of us realize it is just a awful implementation of SharePoint. That said they realize that people just don’t upgrade anymore and in fact I’d wager they’d rather not anyway.

So Esri has lived on maintenance agreements and the wacky ELA agreements for revenue so they are practically halfway there anyway. I think the ELA tries to capture “per user/per month” but it’s not a 1 to 1 relationship. Adobe is showing the way and I think we GIS folks need to expect that Esri will transition everyone to such a model (at least those not on ELA) in a couple years. Autodesk is probably much closer to this reality so keep an eye on your AutoCAD users down the hall and see how their do when their 100% on Autodesk 360.

Now in the rush to get on the cloud, be careful slipping on those stairs in your Salvatore Ferragamo shoes.

So the requirements doc says the application must support WMS, WFS, WCS and WTS. I hate the first three, but the four one confused me. I was unaware of WTS and Wikipedia is zero help. A phone call into the contracts person (who has no idea what GIS is in the first place) was zero help. She did say that she’d get back to me later today to find out.

UPDATE

WTS means “Web Tile Service”. It’s not WMTS but something they just made up. There is some sort of 900913 awesome in that. I’m just a bit afraid to ask the XYZ order…

Someone asked me today what their title should be. Now of course I asked what they did and they said “GIS Manager”. So of course who really cares right? Is GIS Manager a bad thing? I’ve been a GIS Manager in the past and I’m not sure it has affected my ability to get work. Heck I’ve been a “Chief Evangelist” and if that doesn’t kill your job marketability then I’m not sure what does.

So after some back and forth the meat of the argument is do we want to be known as GIS “people”? Is there some negative connotation to GIS that causes us to fear it appearing on our business cards? I look at mine right now and it says “Founder”. Now that should be the death sentence to getting any work. I mean what does a “Founder” do other than talk about being a “Founder”?

My recommendation was just stick to being a GIS Manager, no one really cares and if they do, they probably aren’t a client anyway. Job titles are funny in that we all pretend to not care, but once you see it on your business card, you become self conscious. Does changing GIS into “Geo” or “Spatial” improve your outlook or attractiveness? The real focus on improving your marketability is to make sure your CV/GitHub/Website/Blog is filled with the things that you care about in your career. Maybe it’s Python, JavaScript, .NET, Silverlight (snicker), C++, ObjectiveC, Java, PostGIS, etc. These are all things that will matter to your peers and your clients more than if your title is VP of Awesome or Chief Python scrubber.

Even the Esri Salesman seems to realize his title doesn’t matter. “How many ArcGIS Servers can I put you down for?”

Steve Coast joined me to talk about his Kickstarter project, GPS Art Poster. Selling GPS data as art to the general public can only mean lots of fun for Steve as he tries to convert locations people email him into extent boxes to clip the GPS data. We also caught up on OSM news, the OSM Plus conference in a couple of months, and other interesting projects he is working on. The IRC log is here.

I get asked quite a bit about how to get started using Python with Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop or Server and specifically if there are any good books out there. Generally I give a couple books, but not one I’d recommend that everyone get and especially one that is focused on ArcGIS itself. Well I was given an opportunity to review the Programming ArcGIS 10.1 with Python Cookbook eBook and I might have found something I can recommend to everyone. But that’s with a small caviot. It is aimed at beginners so if you are already familar with Python or ArcPy, you’ll quickly realize this book isn’t for you. But if you’ve never used Python or ArcPy, you’ll feel right at home.

First off, this book is for ArcGIS 10.1 so you can take advantage of the latest Esri ArcGIS Desktop features with Python. It’s nice in that it builds you up to authoring scripts rather than just give you code to copy and paste. I think this is something that will give you long-term sustainability in your python programming rather than just a mashup mentality that won’t help you improve your productivity. The examples in the book are really well written and easily understandable compared with the Esri documentation. Here are a couple areas that caught my eye.

• Create custom Geoprocessing tools with Python: These are simply ArcPy methods to help you get a grasp of how to create the scripts and how to run them. This is bread and butter ArcPy so a good foundation is key. The example though are really basic so you’ll quickly head to Esri’s documentation to learn more. I wish there was more depth here but at least you’ll learn how to create them and in turn go out on your own to make the scripts you need yourself.
• Automated map production: I’ve made no secret of my love of AML and ArcPlot (well I hate ArcPlot but I love scripting maps). With Python you can now automate your maps quickly and easily compared to the DS Mapbook hacks that people used to use. The book goes into how to create and export PDFs of your maps when you need to create a map set. I swear this is a skill ever Esri Desktop user needs to master.
• Queries and Database Management: Goes into how to use ArcPy and python to create proper database syntax and how to select features using Python/ArcPy. Plus you get a basic intro into using Python with databases (filters, updates, delete). The section like others is clearly just and introduction so you’ll quickly look for more examples on Esri’s site.

There is a chapter on fixing broken data links in MXDs using Python, creating Add-Ins for ArcGIS Desktop and error handling. Good basic introduction and hopefully things that will cause you to look into the Esri documentation deeper.

So the bottom line here is this is a great introduction to ArcPy with ArcGIS 10.1. But if you’ve already started using either Python or ArcPy, you’d be best to use your time/money elsewhere. The style of the scripts seems to mimic the Esri style so I’m guessing the author is very familiar with ArcPy. I don’t write my scripts this way but at least it should help you move from the book to Esri documentation quickly. For those who just want to get started though, this should be a great way to move forward. Programming ArcGIS 10.1 with Python Cookbook is $15 on Amazon as a Kindle Book or available on the Packt Publishing website as an ePub book for $24. Both very reasonable. Reviews seem to be mixed from what I’ve read. Either people seem to embrace the simplicity of the book or are turned off by the beginner focus. I feel that if you need the help, this book will get you there.

Dave Bouwman joined me to talk about GIS developers or developers who know GIS or some combination of that. We hit on the idea of hiring GIS Analysts to become programmers and how Dave approaches that task. We talked about APIs and ended with a weird discussion about Pinterest and Samsung refrigerators. The IRC chat is archived here.

This week’s hangout got switched around. Steve Coast will be next week because he’s apparently shipping a million GPS maps out tomorrow. So stepping up is the big man himself, Dave Bouwman. We’ll be talking about GIS development, technology trends and how they impact location and anything else people come up with on IRC. Generally you need to pay Dave big bucks to pick his brain, but tomorrow all you need is your fingers (hmm, not sure where I’m going with this).

Anyway, we go live an hour earlier than normal (10am PDT) but do you really want to wait all that time to hear Dave talk about his love of Canadian baseball?