Is this thing on?

YVR and the Indoor Mapping Experience - FME UC 2017

One of my 2017 professional goals was to get out there and do some presentations. It's easy to do when you love talking about a project you've been working on for the past 3 years.



This one of two presentations at Safe Software's FME International Users Conference. Heard once about every 3 years, it's a GREAT conference, one of the best I've gone to. If you get a chance, go.



Ping me via Twitter or LinkedIn if you are interested in learning more about Indoor Mapping and GIS.

Friday Miscellaneous

A couple of things:

Cool Open Data Site: City of Burnaby

Career/Life Advice: via Lifehacker

March highlight: Off to Reno Nevada for the AAAE 2017 GIS Conference

Kudos: FME Presentation by Tim Albert of the Victoria Airport Authority

Me today, trying to wrap up stuff....

Oh hi there!

Man, it's been awhile.

So... yeah... about blogging. Pretty much dead here. Between the great job I have at the Airport, and the better little family I have at home, this little activity has fallen off the rails.

But if you are reading this, thank you. I've never been a good writer, more of a reader. I think I was hoping I'd used this to mull over my geo-related thoughts, but finding the time, if it ever was a priority, hasn't really happened.

What I have found that The Spatial Community on Slack is a fantastic resource, filled with really good people from all sorts of geo companies, groups, positions. As someone juggling an enterprise GIS system, it's a fantastic resource. Maybe better than Twitter now - especially now that the Orange Douchebag has become President and my Twitter stream is filled with rage & despair on the state of affairs south of the border.

Anywhoooo, if you are into anything GIS and geo-related, as a professional, go join the Slack group. You won't regret it.

That and reading up on the latest GeoHipster interviews.

LINK: After the Gold Rush

After the Gold Rush



Nice post from one of my favorite financial bloggers on why he keeps at it.

ESRI UC 2015 Thoughts Part 1

Lots to share, and generally I'll post a bit here about what I took in, if only to make sense of everything I saw and did in San Diego.

In the meantime, you might enjoy this.... ESRI's flickr album of the UC.



And what's a post without a couple of gifs? ;)

How I felt when I got on the plane to San Diego early Sunday.

And when I got back Friday night.

When I read the BC Gov't is joining GitHub...

More info here. (Part of the BCDevExchange Program)

In the spirit of open source projects and development, perhaps a good project might be for a new replacement to the Ministry of Education's BCeSIS program; let's open source the $1.5 million investment the Saanich School District made into the OpenStudent program!

Farewell Templeton

It was nice to have an actual office for once. Back to the cubicles in a brand new building. 

Waiting for ArcMap to display my map

Damn highway dataset of BC was indexed too... <sigh>

Best GIS Career Advice I've Read So Far...

From Thierry Gregorius, via GeoHipster: 

Over the years there has been much discussion and debate about what career a GIS professional should aspire to, or what a GIS career even is. In my opinion you need to have at least one skill that nobody else has. I once called this the “geomatics striptease” — what expertise and value is there exclusively to us geospatial folks? I came to the conclusion that, if I had to strip off my non-exclusive layers, my naked self would be a geodesist and cartographer. No other field does these things, or at least not as well.

There may be a few other exclusive skills in GIS or geomatics, but many so-called geospatial expertise areas also reside in other professions. They’re not unique and this can be a danger area for career development — unless of course you want to become a multi-disciplinary generalist. In which case, sure thing, go ahead and become that ‘architect’ who orchestrates input from different fields. But whatever you do, it needs to be a conscious decision, and it requires focus. If you dilute yourself too much as a professional you’ll become the Swiss army knife that people only use when there’s nothing better at hand.

So to stay relevant, build a unique skill, stay focused, and never grow up. If you do those things, nobody can eat your lunch. 

(bolded emphasis mine)

So true. Find some focus, & make yourself indispensible. Helped my own GIS career over the years.

Also good, along this vein of thinking, Cal Newport's "So Good They Can't Ignore You".