Open Source Computing and GIS in the UK

So, it’s 5 years since OSGeo was formed- that’s pretty cool! Spurred on by this post, I thought I would say a little bit about my involvement with OSGeo, and also rather clumsily segue this into an announcement about my impending change of job. It’s true- after years of not really thinking of myself as an archaeologist any longer, but rather ‘someone who works in an archaeological unit”, I’ve finally gone and got myself a real job. Anyhow, more on that later.

5 years ago, I was playing around with mapserver, because I wanted a way of serving data and some shiny web maps and we had no money to do it with. I sucked at it big time, with no programming experience, and barely any command line experience. My only linux knowledge consisted of messing around with a Sharp Zaurus (the best pda I’ve ever had), and I only really equated open source with “free as in beer”. I remember the excitement on the mapserver mailing list when OSGeo was announced, along with the open sourcing of MapGuide, and I also remember quite fancying the idea of a whole conference about this cool new stuff when FOSS4G was announced.

Since then, there have been so many lightbulb moments for me, such as getting the real “point” of open source, getting more involved with OSGeo via starting the UK chapter, breakthrough moments when I have really started to understand a particular program or language, getting over my fear of public speaking by talking about open source at conferences, teaching colleagues and strangers how to use this software, and getting consultancy jobs designing applications that use it.

Through that time, I’ve seen (heck, we’ve all seen) OSGeo go from strength to strength, and become a truly global organisation. More importantly though, it’s a great global community.

I should also say that my new job, as Web GIS Specialist/Lead Consultant at Astun Technology, could only have happened through the experience I’ve gained over the last five years, so thanks to everyone that’s helped with that. I’m sad to be leaving Oxford Archaeology, but massively looking forward to my new role, which I hope will allow me to keep up my involvement with OSGeo, and in particular the UK chapter.

Will I keep blogging? Yes, and hopefully more often as I learn lots of new and exciting stuff (new to me- I’m a recent very enthusiastic convert to Python-years after everyone else). Will I still be doing open source stuff? Hell, yes! Will I change the name of the blog? Pehaps…

I’ve always used Google Alerts to let me know when Archaeogeek is mentioned online. It’s very useful for checking that your posts are not used/copied without attribution or permission, for one (this happens on a depressingly regular basis, and it’s just rude).

Recently, however, via Google Alerts I’ve also found out that there are a surprising number of new Archaeogeeks (or close variants) online. Here’s the newest example. It’s not me, though I am interested in tinkering with Arduino! I find this all a little weird. When you build an online persona of some kind, whether deliberately or by accident, you have no control over who else uses your name. Site like Usernamecheck have developed for exactly this reason. As long as the other users are well-behaved it’s not too much of a problem, but what do you do if they start saying things that you don’t agree with? Not only that, but the internet is full of dire warnings about the need to control your personal “brand”, particularly for job-hunting (which I’m not, I hasten to add). How do you tell prospective employers which references are yours and which are not?

This leads me, somewhat circuitously, to a discussion I had the other day about what happens when women get married and have to change their name. In academia, where your publishing record, and hence your job prospects, are closely tied to your name via references, this can be a real problem. I’m not the only person to make the decision to keep my maiden name for work-related business and my married name for social purposes (hopefully Mr Archaeogeek doesn’t mind too much).

I’m reminded of a post I saw a while back about microformats and consolidating your online identity. I think there’s definitely a case here for wider use of this kind of technology to relate the various aspects of your persona together, be that name changes from marriage, or for different types of social networking. It could end up like a paper trail showing the development of both your real life and your online life, with various formats to describe current and past associations. Of course for it to work, it has to be widely used and accepted, but it’s worth thinking about…

Happy New Year everyone. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be inviting 2009 back for a repeat visit any time soon!

Whilst I know it was a tough year for everyone, for me the problems were compounded by health issues (of the chronic rather than serious variety). I won’t go into the tedious details, but even non-serious health problems can take over your life, make you really stressed, and generally cause a nuisance.  Thanks to a very understanding husband, and a very supportive employer, I got through it, but it wasn’t easy.

The worst of it is that having come out the other side (well actually I’m waiting for treatment at the moment) I’m not the person I was a year ago. I’ve lost a lot of self-confidence, and I think it will take a while for me to regain my passion and enthusiasm for things geospatial. I’m not saying I’m giving up (I’m still holding out for a ticket to Barcelona this September), but I want to take things slowly for a while. Maybe. Perhaps I’m just waiting for the right “cool-thing” to come along to get me back into the swing of things…

Enough self-indulgence though, I’m not after sympathy, just a bit of catharsis.  Here’s to better times in 2010!

Crikey,  that’s the first time I’ve left it nearly a month between posts! At the moment it feels a little like one of those games you play when you’re a kid, and someone shouts “red” so you go and hit the red post, then they shout “blue” and you dash to blue, then they shout “red” again, then “green” really quick before you’ can catch your breath, and before you know it you’re stuck in the middle unable to move. So what, this happens to everyone, I know, I’m not looking for sympathy.

Many exciting things have been happening though! I’ve kept quiet here about our technical consultancy, OA Digital (though if you’ve seen me speak over the last year you’ll have heard about it), but we’ve been helping to provide open source advocacy services to the Welsh Assembly Government, at the invitation of Environment Systems and One Bright Space, and we’re working on some interesting web-mapping projects involving Roman Kilns, based on PostgreSQL, FeatureServer and OpenLayers, and Planning Applications, using MapGuide Open Source.

That doesn’t leave much time for anything else, but I am also at the final stages of readying Portable GIS version 2 for general release. It has been ready for a while, but I sent it out to some testers, then what do you know, PostgreSQL 8.4 and PostGIS 1.4 came out, so I’ve got some updating to do. The new version has a much swankier interface and a proper installer (with a 500MB exe to download rather than a 1GB zip file- that’s progress).

Finally, for “fun” and in my “spare time”, I’m also working through the GeoBI offerings and Geoserver/PostGIS versioning. There are some good posts brewing on those just as soon as I can find the extra hours in the day…