FRUGOS for Managers wrap-up

[BrianT]

FRUGOS-ians:


On Friday afternoon we hosted a program for over 40 GIS Managers in
downtown Denver. The focus was on web mapping, specifically PostGIS,
GeoServer, and MapServer, with a little bit on the cloud (e.g. Amazon
Web services).

Thanks goes to Bruce Rindahl for highlighting his PostGIS/SVG work and
Randy George (http://www.cadmaps.com/gisblog/) discussed the
possibilities of combining Amazon Cloud services with geo open source.

Matt Krusemark of DRCOG (Denver Regional Council of Governments),
discussed their pending launch of a web mapping portal for their
members powered by GeoServer. Given their constituencies--city and
county governments--I believe this is a big deal since it will be
excellent exposure of GeoServer to a sector dominated by proprietary
vendors.


Below are some of the organizations attending folks represented--

AMEC
Arapahoe County
BLM
Booz-Allen
CH2M-Hill
City and County of Denver
City of Aurora
City of Boulder
City of Westminster
CO Dept of Agriculture
CO Dept of Transportation
Denver Regional Council of Governments
Denver Water
Idea Integration
Leonard Rice Engineers
NOAA Park County
Sun Microsystems
SWCA
The Piton Foundation
United Power
University of Colorado
USGS
Walsh Environmental


Briefly put, it represents why the Front Range is the premier hub of
GIS in the country with a cross-fertilization of public and private
organizations, big and small, and to judge by their mere presence,
interested in open source, the geo web, etc.

We did some survey work and uncovered a couple of (unsurprising)
points--

1) IT/Sys Admin burdens are a significant impediment. A couple of
folks confessed that just getting access to a web-enabled server to
experiment with geo-web technologies was a supreme hassle. (Of course
most know you can install most packages on the average laptop, but
this wasn't the crowd to start going on about personal Apache web
servers, port 8080, etc....)

2) Folks want training. And more than one respondent mentioned
OpenLayers training specifically.

Hence, what I propose is we work on a Spring program with a focus on
OpenLayers training. I know we have more than a couple of OL gurus on
the list. The idea would be a 2hr program with the first 30 minutes
showing off advanced OL apps (streaming big data AJAX-like, editing
with FeatureServer integration, etc.), then we'd do 90 minutes of
"Getting Started" training.


WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU--

1) If you have OL apps you'd like to show off...get in touch

2) If you have meeting space: think 20-25 people with excellent
wireless bandwidth for everyone...get in touch.

(We've been sniffing around a couple of public library systems that
seem to offer meeting space, if you're in Boulder or the Fort, let us
know what's on offer up there).


Optimally we'd like a program in all of the major Front Range hubs
(C.Springs, Denver, Boulder, Ft. Collins), with a rotating cast of
presenters and instructors. My feeling is once folks gain traction
with the front-end interface, then running back-end services powered
by Open Source becomes more compelling...


Reply to this thread with your thoughts.


Brian

[Dylan Hettinger]

Thanks for hosting this, Brian. It was encouraging to see so many people interested in open source GIS tools. I think you just hit on the head: "once folks gain traction with the front-end interface, then running back-end services powered by Open Source becomes more compelling..." I think that theory is spot on.

dylan

[Sean Gillies]

Hi Brian,

Good training is worth paying for, but it doesn't have to be an arm
and a leg. I'm thinking about the Zope Boot Camp [1] that Chris
Calloway has run for the Triangle's ZPUG group. Now, before you go
running in terror from the words "Zope" and "Boot Camp", hear me out.

Chris finds a domain expert with teaching skills and community spirit
and hires them to instruct. People pay to attend. I think it was about
$500/seat for a *week*. I've seen commercial training going for $500/
seat an *afternoon*.

FRUGOS might consider hiring an OL guru to teach a one or two day
session, and charge tuition to cover it. Somebody with serious cred, a
developer. OpenGeo touts themselves as the FOSS4G support company,
perhaps they're interested in training?

Cheers,
Sean

[1] http://www.zope.org/Members/cbc/camp5

--
Sean Gillies
Software Engineer
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World
New York University

[Brian Timoney]

Sean:

Good training is worth paying for indeed, no argument there. But here
are some prominent factors I think would drive decision-making--

1) "Open Layers" doesn't have the name recognition amongst managers to
have them sign off on market-value training. (Or, in this climate, any
training...)

2) Many of our GIS brethren labor under the yoke of "bill-ability":
can they get an afternoon off for training? Maybe. Can they get a week
off? Unlikely.

3) The majority of those "into" geo open-source are self-starters who
thrive on web tutorials and the problem solving/trial and error cycle.
There's a much larger audience that's wired to be walked through various
examples, assured they work, and only then experiment with their own
variations. The latter audience is the one I think we should reach out
to.

4) We shouldn't underestimate the empowering effects of showing a broad
audience of GIS Analysts that one can make a 3-layer web map in 30
minutes with free tools that can be used internally or externally.
Perhaps a subset of this audience will eventually be interested in
streaming features using AJAX from PostGIS, but many will blissfully be
content with pumping out their 3-layer maps.

So I say let's encourage that bliss...



Other ideas?


Brian

--













-----------------------
The Timoney Group
518 17th Street
Suite 1000
Denver, CO 80202

Ph: (303) 929-3722
Fax: (303) 571-4304

www.thetimoneygroup.com
-----------------------

[Chris Helm]

I'd like to add that its important to remember that most GIS Analysts have little, or no, experience Javascript, much less even know what Ajax is. Also there tends to be a scary lack of knowledge in regards to any OGC protocols (ie Setting up WMS, WFS), or what web-services actually are. Of course this could be a gross generalization on my part, but this stems from my having taught a "Web-Mapping" class last year and having dealt with this serious lack of basics.   

I would venture to say that it would be very much worth everyone's time to break any training into 2 or 3 sessions, the first focusing on basic knowledge needed to work with OpenLayers and WMS (JS, MapServer or GeoServer, Apache2, etc.), the second could focus on actually building applications. A third class could be added to look into exploring FeatureServer, TileCache, or DB connectivity.

Also, If possible I would be interested in seeing a show of hands from people who'd be participating in the training, and how much they'd be willing to pay for it. If there 10 - 20 people that are willing to spend a few days then I think it would be very much worth it. I don't have "serious cred" but could very much hold my own when it comes to developing OL apps of different types, and I'd be willing to lead at least one session.

Chris  

--
Christopher W. Helm

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
1617 Cole Boulevard
Golden, Colorado 80401
ph. 303.275.4639
fx: 303.275.4675

[Sean Gillies]

On Jan 28, 2009, at 9:46 AM, Brian Timoney wrote:

>
>
> Sean:
>
> Good training is worth paying for indeed, no argument there. But here
> are some prominent factors I think would drive decision-making--
>
> 1) "Open Layers" doesn't have the name recognition amongst managers
> to
> have them sign off on market-value training. (Or, in this climate, any
> training...)
>

I was having a great morning, and you have to remind me that GIS
managers aren't the free-est of thinkers.

> 2) Many of our GIS brethren labor under the yoke of "bill-ability":
> can they get an afternoon off for training? Maybe. Can they get a
> week
> off? Unlikely.
>

That's why I said one or 2 days.

> 3) The majority of those "into" geo open-source are self-starters who
> thrive on web tutorials and the problem solving/trial and error cycle.
> There's a much larger audience that's wired to be walked through
> various
> examples, assured they work, and only then experiment with their own
> variations. The latter audience is the one I think we should reach
> out
> to.
>

Agreed. The same kind of people who attend ESRI or other proprietary
software training.

[karsten]

Hi there,

I am operating a small GIS consulting business in Seattle and a member
of your neighboring OS group CUGOS. I wanted to trow in some of my
experiences in regards to teaching OS (web) GIS. I was thinking about
the idea for a while last year and after presenting a couple of free
webinars on that topic (which easily filled up with 30-40 people each
in a couple of days after announcement on some GIS email lists and on
linked-in). I finally did go ahead and taught my first full 3 day
class in December 2008 and had 7 (paying $900 each) people enrolled.
The class was an introductory class for intermediate GIS users
(analysts) with no prior exposure to OS source GIS nor to web GIS. It
started off with an introduction to OS tools (desktop and Web)
licensing and OS culture and resources. The class was about 60% hands
on and focused on exercises. The idea was that everyone will install
and configure a OS web GIS stack including Mapserver, PostGIS and
OpenLayers and along the way publish some WM Services. A little more
info on what it was about on it can be found ion the announcement of
the next class here :) http://www.terragis.net/gis-classes/os-web-gis/
.
Being myself much less of a programmer than an GIS generalist (or
Analyst, specialist, script hacker, power user or whatever one can
call it) at first O wasn't sure how that would play out but in general
it worked great. I had a wide variety of attendants ( from
intermediate GIS user, to managers to programmers with no OS
experience - well had I known that one of the attendants was a former
computer science professor I would have been more scared as a poor
Geographer myself :) ). But seriously it worked out well and everybody
liked the hands on approach.
I feel that the OS community has to get out of the mode that people
think about it its "do-it-yourself" only and that there is not much
commercial support , training etc available. One manifestation of this
is that there are less resources for users then for developers. It
will go ahead a long way if there is more focus on the (future) users
and not (almost) exclusively on developers. My thinking is to get it
out to the users and not to focus on bringing it out to more
developers first but to more users. One we have more users , more
demand , more developers will follow to join in automatically.
Also I', sure I think that the (perceived) state of the economy will
help to have decision makes to more seriously looking and consider OS
GIS options. I have been quoting the NASA ROI study quite often and
that sparked interest for sure: Geospatial Interoperability Return on
Investment Study (2005). National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, Geospatial Interoperability Office. 80
pages.www.egy.org/files/ROI_Study.pdf

But basically the quality of OS products / software will speak for
itself once you get the people to check it out and invest (at least
their time) in it.
Cheers
Karsten

[Jan Van Sickle]

Karsten,

I agree with you.

And I find your email helpful.

Thank you,

Jan

Mr. Jan Van Sickle
GPS & GIS
303 915 4669

[Don Alcott]

Brian,

Sun Microsystems might be able to provide a room - shall I check with
my OpenSolaris and Sun contacts?

Best regards,
Don Alcott

c 720-266-7497
w 303-395-2767