Category: AGI

Heavy lifting – The boring stuff behind Google and Microsoft ?

Reflecting on yesterdays plenary presentation at the AGI, and the report of it at ZDNet which completely ignored the presentations from the boring old vendors ESRI and myself!!, you would expect there to be much upset and insecurity as we all wave farewell to the GIS industry of the past replaced by the mainstream vendors…

I do sense a little bit of a wobble, but -

Of course the reality is that all the “new” exciting vendors Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc are all reliant on the data produced by the primary data providers, who in turn need to use the tools and models created by the boring old vendors. This has become know as the “heavy lifting” part of the industry, it may not be glamourous and may be missed by the mainstream press but it represents the vast majority of activity undertaken using geographic information.

So thank you Google, Yahoo and Microsoft for doing what the GIS industry should have done, in making Geographic Information more accessible with simple, well designed tools – the rockets of the Geographic information, but the “professional” industry needs to now work even harder in providing the fuel !!!

Written and submitted from Starbucks, Upper Street , London, using the t-mobile wifi network.

AGI Conference… Make or Break ?

AGI Conference

Less than a week to go the the UK’s main GIS Show and full marks to the AGI, for putting together what I think is one of the most interesting conference agenda’s in years.. If this years range of topics and speakers is not enough to get “bums on seats”, it is hard to see what else the conference organisers could have done to produce a conference to meet the needs of the GI industry in the UK.

But there is the challenge.. the UK industry is mature and dominated by a small number of large vendors, the OS and ESRI(UK) really stand out, and most users are fully aware of what is going on in the industry from the web and personal contacts – yes the industry really is that small in the UK. The AGI also represents a wide range of opinions and interests, so its often difficult to see a clear direction in its activities.

The AGI should be commended for inviting the “new” players this year, in the form of Google and Microsoft, but there is also something of a “organisation gap” as many of innovators who are very active in the UK, the likes of Steve Coast and Mikel Maron, are not traditional GIS people so it is good to see the “non-GIS” approach to using GI represented by Tom Steinberg of mySociety.

For the AGI however success will not come from positive comments, the “Bums of seats” is an important element here, as the conference and exhibition has become the major revenue stream for the AGI.

So.. if you have not decided on attending yet, its not too late – remember if you don’t go this year there might not be a conference or even an AGI next year !!

Written and submitted from the Bruntsfield Hotel, Edinburgh, using my Vodafone 3G network card.

Perceptions of Open Source

Last week the AGI Technical SIG, ran a one day workshop of Open Source in GIS, and although I very much enjoyed the presentations I was most interested to judge people’s perception of Open Source.

The day started with Martin Daly of Cadcorp debunking some of the myths of open source software, including

- Open source does not mean free !!
- Open source means I can get access to the source code, different to “freeware”
- Open source developers are not cola fuelled communists operating from their bedrooms, but mostly professional programmers employed by commercial companies to contribute to open source projects.
- In many ways open source licensing is as complex as commercial closed source licensing !!

There also seemed to be some confusion or a least frequent use of the terms “open standards” and “open source” in the same sentence. Open Standards are all about delivering interoperability between applications developed by different organisations (think AA batteries – always the same size, voltage etc) – such applications may be “open source” but may also be closed source.

Likewise some open Source applications may be proprietary in nature, offering a private way of transferring data across a network for example.

Of particular interest to me was the business case for selecting ‘Open Source” solutions rather than the more traditional “Closed source” Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) route.

From the user perspective this seems clear, lower initial capital outlay in terms of licensing although the overall Total Cost of Ownership may not be that different with potentially higher internal and external (if available) support costs.
A very unscientific poll of the people at the workshop actually using “Open Source” did seem to be made of largely academic and research users – who are perhaps capital poor but geek rich and are therefore able to work through the maze of compiling using the right code library versions etc.
It was notable that local and central government were poorly represented, it this because the issue of ongoing support is more of an issue – I’m really not sure ?

From the application developer perspective the motivation to go “Open Source” is less clear, the “many eyes” argument of a wide and skilled developer resource looking at your code was one of the arguments put forward, and although this makes sense for the small dispersed development team, I’m not sure this is so much the case for a company like Autodesk.

I have a lot of time for Autodesk and Mapguide in particular, the new open source version demoed by Giulio Pagan looks great, but it is interesting Autodesk chose to experiment with open source with MapGuide rather than Inventor or even AutoCAD ?

It appears that there is little focus of Open Source GIS client development, while MapServer and PostGIS offer a real alternative to closed source software like ArcIMS, there is no open source ArcView or MapInfo, tools like uDig are moving in the right direction but GIS open source does appear to be server centric at the moment.

And yes I do run OpenSource myself, I have MapServer running on my Powerbook !!

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

More details of UK Opensource GIS meeting

As mentioned a couple of weeks ago, The AGI Technical SIG is organising a meeting in Cambridge on the 27th April, there is now a detailed agenda.

The use of Open-Source software has become increasingly prevalent in many areas of information technology. For example, the majority of web sites run on open-source web server software e.g. Apache, Tomcat etc; operating systems such as Linux, BSD etc. have an increasing share of the market; open source web browsers are also increasing in popularity e.g. Firefox, Galeon etc. This event aims to investigate what the benefits and pitfalls of Open-Source are for the GIS community. Speakers will describe the impact of open-source software in various sectors and illustrate these with examples from both the research and commercial GIS communities.

Address
British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET

Programme
10.00 Registration & Coffee

10.30 Welcome – BAS
10.35 Introduction to Open Source in GIS – Martin Daly
11.00 Open Source GIS Server Systems – Norman Barker, Research Systems Inc.

11.30 Coffee Break

11.45 An introduction to MapGuide Open Source , Giulio Pagan, Autodesk Consulting
12.15 Census Interaction Data Service – Oliver Duke-Williams, Leeds University
12.45 ICEDS: using open source software to serve data and maps of the globe at full resolution – Jeremy Morley, University College London

13.15 Lunch

13.45 Developing an OGC Compliant Web Mapping and Download User Interface for the Satellite Image Data Service hosted at MIMAS – Gail Millin, Manchester University
14:15 MIDAS – Marine Information System based on OGC-compliant Open Source Software – Wyn Cudlip, QinetiQ

14.45 Coffee Break

15.15 CADDIE Crime and Disorder Mapping Application, Robin Brooke, Infotech
15.45 Q&A Session – Chair, Ed Parsons

16.10 Tour of BAS Facilities
17.00 Depart

AGI Member Price: £60+VAT = £70.50
AGI Non Member Price: £90+VAT = £105.75

To register visit the AGI website here