Open Source Computing and GIS in the UK

Last weekend was the second Wherecamp EU Unconference, this time at the University of Nottingham. A mighty good time was had by all, I think! It attracted a different crowd to the previous event, back in February in London. There were less of the “big names” there, but a lot of new faces, which is encouraging. Again, the Unconference format worked well, with people doing talks on a range of subjects, some only after being persuaded to the night before!

There was a good contingent of open source and OSGeo-related material. Thanks go to the Centre for Geospatial Statistics at the University, who have been heavily involved with OSGeo (particularly the UK chapter) over the last couple of years for this – it was a great chance to give some new people the old “Introduction to OSGeo” talk, and also my hastily knocked together “10 open source geospatial myths debunked” (both will be up on slideshare when I get chance).

Of the talks I got to attend- I most enjoyed Jeremy Morley’s talk on Vernacular Geography based around people’s perception of place- what they call places, where the boundaries are, and whether they like a place or not. There was some interesting discussion on an open database of vernacular place names- though I think this would be better fitted with one of the existing efforts around place names rather than something new and separate. However with all this linked data goodness we keep hearing about, maybe being separate doesn’t really matter, as long as we can link things together.

Otherwise, of course OpenStreetMap got  a few mentions- a stand-out was on accuracy in OSM, and efforts around measuring this in various ingenious ways. Antony Scott did an interesting talk on (paraphrasing) “Things I got stuck on with open source web mapping and how I fixed them”. The conclusion from both his talk and audience reactions was that we still have some way to go with ease of use and documentation.

Thanks should also go to the AGI who provided us with geobeer money on Friday night!

All in all, a great couple of days- thanks to all involved.

… and… relax!

We’ve just completed a really intense GIS project covering the entirety of the North-West of England- which we’ve been working on since Christmas. This week is the first time I have come up for air since before Christmas, and it’s been really great! I’ve been working on integrating the new free Ordnance Survey data into our nascent SDI, and updating our sites map with new features, and new data from some of our other offices. It might not look like much, but there’s lots of open source goodness in there! My colleague Lucian, who knows much more about PostgreSQL than I do has put in a function that automatically updates this map when a new project is added to our archives database. Next steps- more data integration- with our grey literature server, and sites from our two French offices, and adding the raster mapping from the Ordnance Survey to our SDI.

Anyhow, it’s great to be back in the land of blogging- I hope to do a post soon on how to deal with this great new data now it’s available, and also to recap on the great OKCON 2010 conference that I went to at the weekend!

On Friday and Saturday I attended the inaugural WhereCampEU “un-conference” in London.  The short review: if one comes anywhere near you- go for it! It’s well worth it and I enjoyed every minute.

The slightly longer review: since there were no themes or papers organised beforehand, I guess it was a good opportunity to take the temperature of a certain part of the UK/EU geospatial community. So we got lots and lots of OpenStreetMap papers and iPhone apps! Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a bad thing, but personally, the papers that stood out for me were Steven Feldman’s talk on Business Models and how we are all f*cked without one, and, as always, Bob Barr’s talk on the true cost of “Free” data.  That particular talk was timely, coming just before the deadline for the consultation on freeing Ordnance Survey data.

On business models- Steven gave the talk twice due to popular request (one advantage to the un-conference format), and got remarkably different responses. The gist was whether you could come up with a one-minute elevator pitch on your business, your customers, and your prices. If you can’t do that, then you should be able to. There was quite a split in the audience.  On one hand there were people who are genuinely trying to make a business out of what they do- who have mortgages to pay, employees to pay, and kids to feed, who can see the point in a business model, and on the other hand there were people with well-paid day-jobs and a lucrative sideline in making iPhone apps who couldn’t see the point. That’s an over-generalisation, but I have work to do, so forgive me. I did start musing about doing a 140 character “tweet-pitch” too but maybe that’s just jumping on the bandwagon!

Overall, at the end of the two days I didn’t feel like I’d been at a conference, even though it was just as packed and even more fast-paced than usual. It was just more relaxing and informal, and the lack of corporate salesmen helped too! The venues were fantastic, as was the food, and the evening geo-beer was much appreciated. The team were keen to point out that next year’s “un-conference” (if it happens) should be somewhere else in Europe. At the time there weren’t that many takers, perhaps because there was a UK bias to the attendees, but I’m sure the enthusiasm and positive feedback will percolate around and we’ll get some volunteers.

After that I spent a couple of days being a tourist in London and catching up with old friends. As a test, I did my London navigation with a zoomable paper map, which I can say works very well and is pleasingly analogue (no batteries or data costs). Crikey though- who needs that many Starbucks, Costa and Caffe Neros?

This week British Telecom ate our SDSL line, meaning we’ve been without phones, email or internet for 2.5 days. Thank goodness for Broadband dongles, though part of me feels uneasy at how impossible it was to do much work without being able to quickly check things on the internet or consult with colleagues.

In the mean time though, there have been another set of interesting posts on my current topics of interest soap-boxes, namely file formats and the openness thereof, and open source business models. Most of them are from Mr Ramsey, but my boss makes a very good point here in response to the argument “who do I sue if things go wrong”? (Answer- no one, check that license before you click on “accept”). Really, if we want to make a change we have to keep banging away at these two issues.

Have a nice Easter everyone, and don’t eat too much chocolate…