I don’t even know how to write this up – but given the last few days it warrants some mention – although not a lot. It’s almost entirely self serving except I will stop short of any “I am so SMRT”. I’m not.
Many of you probably go “What do you do everyday?” and as I just put my cat down from an exciting back rub – I would answer “Geospatial stuff with data”. Most of my clients are desktop oriented and through the years they’ve been getting more complicated. When I started life as a business I remortgaged my house to buy ArcGIS….errr….ArcINFO. I worked. I had some spectacular successes and failures that could only be viewed with the help of popcorn and koolaid.
Over the last few years I’ve switched to almost all open source. I say that and I had to break out my increasingly outdated ArcGIS license the other day for some data issues. I’m on the ‘Commercial support for QGIS’ list*– I became*active with the community and pleaded my case and was placed on it. There are a few of us in North America on it. I do QGIS classes – probably my noisiest spot for the last bit – but I much prefer working. When I was a “commercial gis software” Business Partner I had three clients because of that designation. I’ve gotten two because of the commercial support for QGIS list. I should hit three this year. Maybe four.
I had a phone call from a prospective client last week that was the one I’ve been wanting. They had decided to forego the usual GIS setup and dive into QGIS and PostGIS. They had built a database and I’ve spent the last 24 hours realizing I don’t know enough on databases….again…and I know like 500% more than I knew last year. QGIS isn’t a problem – I’m learning more and hope 2016 is my year of writing a plugin. The kicker – this wasn’t a decision where they had purchased software and went “This won’t work”. This was their first choice.
It’s not that exciting – once we get the database worked out and the QGIS installs finalized there may be 20 or so people working off and on building*geographic data. The description of the problem from the client*was a commercial setup would be the equivalent of hiring an employee. In my world the desktop reigns supreme still and it might be dying – but very slowly. So how did the person*(and I’m not mentioning clients names) find out about QGIS? – the local gov’t office was using it as opposed to buying more commercial software.
If you’re on the QGIS list and you watch there are pretty big*installs occurring outside of North America with QGIS and PostGIS. Here in the US the QGIS list isn’t that noisy*– Except it’s changing. Slowly. When I work for someone I’m generally offering services. I’ve only had one person demand commercial software. So I keep moving forward with my goofy open source hippie software. So this install we are working out will be not massive – but of good size. After a few weeks they should start seeing a return on investment that exceeds what I’m getting paid to do. The nice part once we get over the technical hurdles I can help them answer questions and make plans with the help of this open source software. I can be a Geo Person. I can worry about Data (with a capital D) because this is going to be a stable setup.
So it can be done. With this client under my belt it can be done even easier. You can roll out a GIS setup and help your company/group out…and not lose anything in the process. I used to go into these situations going “If you feel you need to switch you can – this is all commercial software friendly”. This time I didn’t mention it. They are here to stay.
So like I said – not that exciting…..BUT – exciting. QGIS….PostGIS…..Maybe Geoserver/Mapserver? I’m sitting at the ground floor of a clients discovery of GIS through open source software.
It sort of is exciting.
And there – I went the entire blog article without saying ESRI.
أكثر...
Many of you probably go “What do you do everyday?” and as I just put my cat down from an exciting back rub – I would answer “Geospatial stuff with data”. Most of my clients are desktop oriented and through the years they’ve been getting more complicated. When I started life as a business I remortgaged my house to buy ArcGIS….errr….ArcINFO. I worked. I had some spectacular successes and failures that could only be viewed with the help of popcorn and koolaid.
Over the last few years I’ve switched to almost all open source. I say that and I had to break out my increasingly outdated ArcGIS license the other day for some data issues. I’m on the ‘Commercial support for QGIS’ list*– I became*active with the community and pleaded my case and was placed on it. There are a few of us in North America on it. I do QGIS classes – probably my noisiest spot for the last bit – but I much prefer working. When I was a “commercial gis software” Business Partner I had three clients because of that designation. I’ve gotten two because of the commercial support for QGIS list. I should hit three this year. Maybe four.
I had a phone call from a prospective client last week that was the one I’ve been wanting. They had decided to forego the usual GIS setup and dive into QGIS and PostGIS. They had built a database and I’ve spent the last 24 hours realizing I don’t know enough on databases….again…and I know like 500% more than I knew last year. QGIS isn’t a problem – I’m learning more and hope 2016 is my year of writing a plugin. The kicker – this wasn’t a decision where they had purchased software and went “This won’t work”. This was their first choice.
It’s not that exciting – once we get the database worked out and the QGIS installs finalized there may be 20 or so people working off and on building*geographic data. The description of the problem from the client*was a commercial setup would be the equivalent of hiring an employee. In my world the desktop reigns supreme still and it might be dying – but very slowly. So how did the person*(and I’m not mentioning clients names) find out about QGIS? – the local gov’t office was using it as opposed to buying more commercial software.
If you’re on the QGIS list and you watch there are pretty big*installs occurring outside of North America with QGIS and PostGIS. Here in the US the QGIS list isn’t that noisy*– Except it’s changing. Slowly. When I work for someone I’m generally offering services. I’ve only had one person demand commercial software. So I keep moving forward with my goofy open source hippie software. So this install we are working out will be not massive – but of good size. After a few weeks they should start seeing a return on investment that exceeds what I’m getting paid to do. The nice part once we get over the technical hurdles I can help them answer questions and make plans with the help of this open source software. I can be a Geo Person. I can worry about Data (with a capital D) because this is going to be a stable setup.
So it can be done. With this client under my belt it can be done even easier. You can roll out a GIS setup and help your company/group out…and not lose anything in the process. I used to go into these situations going “If you feel you need to switch you can – this is all commercial software friendly”. This time I didn’t mention it. They are here to stay.
So like I said – not that exciting…..BUT – exciting. QGIS….PostGIS…..Maybe Geoserver/Mapserver? I’m sitting at the ground floor of a clients discovery of GIS through open source software.
It sort of is exciting.
And there – I went the entire blog article without saying ESRI.
أكثر...