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Boundless (ex OpenGeo) released OpenGeo Suite 4.0 this week:

Boundless is proud to announce the release of OpenGeo Suite 4.0. This version reflects deep changes that have occurred in the platform, while still supporting the functionality that our customers rely on. This release brings many new features and improvements, including the following component upgrades: PostGIS 2.1, GeoServer 2.4, GeoWebCache 1.5, support for OpenLayers 3 and the inclusion of the OpenGeo Suite QGIS plugin.

Of course upgrades to the standard server components but now with desktop (QGIS) integration. Get a load of this:

Our new plugin for QGIS allows for seamless management and publishing of geographic information from this popular desktop tool to OpenGeo Suite — connect to PostGIS, GeoServer, and GeoWebCache right from your familiar desktop environment to manage your geospatial deployments.

Don’t care for the command line? Just fire up QGIS and work with the server data in everyone’s favorite desktop GIS client. Rip and replace was never easier and QGIS and OpenGeo Suite go together like chocolate and peanut butter (still a Halloween candy hangover around here)!

Remember the OGC REST API standard blowup earlier this year? Yea, great times. It reinforced the notion that the OGC is run by those who donate the most to the organization. Smartly it was withdrawn and we can all go about our business without some crazy new standard being rushed through. Cameron Shorter highlighted a new initiative at the OGC to try and address these issues brought up by the REST debacle.

You may remember the contentious proposal for the GeoServices REST API to become an OGC standard? After strong community concerns, largely focused on duplication of existing standards, the motion to approve the proposed standard was withdrawn. The fact that the proposal progressed as far as it did, to the point where it was almost ratified as a standard before being blocked, was a primary driver leading the OGC to initiate an “Ideas for OGC” (Ideas4OGC) review, aimed at re-baselining OGC priorities and processes.

The OGC has the Ideas4OGC initial recommendations on their wiki page:

Formally kicked off on June 20th, 2013, the Ideas for OGC (Ideas4OGC) process has collected a broad set of comments, recommendations and constructive criticism from across the membership, the public and OGC staff.

Yea they heard us. Head over to that wiki page and read up and input your comments. Sounds like they are totally rethinking how they operate on this kind of stuff. Hopefully this means that any new standards proposed will have to go through a process that is open and meaningful, rather than a rush job so one company can prove their software is OGC compliant. This gets a thumbs up from me!

Minecraft and planning. Seems so right doesn’t it?

The Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design has announced a project where the topographic site for Stockholm has been reproduced in Minecraft and people are invited to rebuild the city virtually.

Blockholm opens on 24 October and allows people to realize the city they always dreamed of. It is interesting as it allows a form of modelling and design rarely practiced on a large scale in city planning.

What’s really awesome is you can follow the builders live on this web map. That map itself is built using Leaflet.js and is of course mobile compatible. Backend awesome is built on PostGIS with some FME help. I love the simplicity of it all!

We all need an elevator pitch

You get the question all the time:

“What do you do?”

You pause and then respond:

“I do GIS for [insert organization].”

Doing GIS is what we do I suppose. I’m not sure that most diciplines have this problem:

“What do you do?”

“I do accounting for [insert organization].”

I’ve been talking to my group that we need to be better at elevator pitches. Not so much that I expect them to close deals with VCs in a SFO hotel lobby, but it better describes why we do what we do. My job has many roles so I have multiple pitches I give when I need to. But “doing GIS” isn’t one of them.

“What do you do?”

“I ride unicorns on rainbows for URS Corporation.”

See isn’t that better?

Last week I was lucky enough to give the keynote at the GIS in the Rockies conference in Denver, CO. It was a bit of a different talk from me than I’ve given in a while. Less snark and more practicality. The conference committee video taped (why do we still say “taped”?) it and you can watch it below. Geoff Zeiss was at the keynote and wrote up his take on my talk.

The slides are on Speaker Deck.

Thanks to Juan Marin, CTO of Boundless (OpenGeo) for joining me to talk about Boundless, open source in Government and a bit about Juan’s history in the geospatial world. We also go into some of the plans for the OpenGeo Suite and other open source discussions.

Join me Friday at 9am PDT with Juan Marin, CTO of Boundless (OpenGeo). Juan and I will talk about Boundless, open source in Government and a bit about Juan’s history in the geospatial world. We’ve got lots to talk about so make sure you join us this Friday! You can sign up for a reminder on the Google+ Event Page

This fall has been a busy time for me and I’m enjoying it. Less than two weeks ago I was able to give the keynote at the 2013 North Dakota GIS Users Conference in Grand Forks, ND. This trip was special for a couple of reasons; I picked up some UND Hockey gear, got to meet a ton of new people, and now I can safely say I’ve been to all 50 states. Yes, North Dakota was the last one on my list after an airplane malfunction allowed me to add a night in West Virginia to the list earlier this year. You might say I had a fracking good time up in North Dakota (get it?) and I’m totally looking forward to going back, especially since the weather was beautiful. Must be like that year-round.

This week I’m headed to the 2013 AGIC Education & Training Symposium up in Prescott, AZ. I do love myself a symposium, that’s for sure. It’s basically the Arizona State GIS conference but I guess you can’t call it that. I’ll be giving a talk on Using OpenStreetMap in your GIS Project which will be full of practical points on getting the most value out of OpenStreetMap.

Next week I’m keynoting the Manitoba GIS User Group 2013 Conference (I guess not everything is a symposium) on October 2nd. I’ll be giving a talk on staying relevant to technology changes but still calling yourself a GIS professional. Again, lots of good stuff but I don’t want to spoil it. I can guarantee that there is 100% no pictures of cats in my presentation.

And lastly, I’m keynoting the GIS in the Rockies 2013 conference in Denver, Colorado October 9 and 10th. I’ll be giving the same talk as the MGUG conference but there won’t be any French in the slides (or jokes about Maple syrup). We’ll look at ways to embrace the new cool tools everyone is using but keeping within workflows that are usually out of your control.

Thanks to Steve Citron-Pousty for joining me live from FOSS4G to talk about FOSS4G, QGIS 2.0, Boundless/OpenGeo, and other geo topics. Steve had been preparing all week to bring us his insights into FOSS4G and what you should know what is going down. We also talked about all the new company names, board members, and other business of geo topics.

Steve Coast joined me to talk about his move to Telenav, the MapClub initiative, and the status of his Kickstarter project. MapClub is a new organization to assist in getting things done in the OpenStreetMap project.