Between the Poles

Where 2.0

Where 2.0 will be taking place May 12-14 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott.  This is a major geospatial event of the year.  There are sessions by many of the important folks in the geospatial industry including many open source geospatial sessions. I would encourage you to try to make it.

Autodesk  and Google are diamond sponsors this year.  Several of us from Autodesk will be presenting at the event.

Monday, 05/12/2008
1:30pm - 5:00pm Creating Web 2.0 Applications on an Open Source Geospatial Platform
 Location: Salon F
Jeremiah Mcknelly, Chris Claydon, Geoff Zeiss
The tutorial is aimed at developers and others who are interested in the business and technical aspects of developing software on a Web 2.0 open source geospatial platform. No background in web development is required. The workshop will include both business and hands-on technical aspects of developing web mapping applications.

Tuesday, 05/13/2008
Convergence of Architectural and Engineering Design and Location Technology: Implications for eGovernment
11:40am Location: Salon A-F
Geoff Zeiss
The convergence of architectural and engineering design, location, and 3D simulation technologies is being driven by productivity and efficiency in the construction industry. But convergence will also enable governments to create a simulated urban environment that will have important implications for citizen involvement, urban planning, emergency planning, and first response.

Wednesday, 05/14/2008
Digital Cities
2:30pm Location: Salon A-F
Doug Eberhard
Where the world will conceptualize and realize more sustainable cities through the convergence of digital modeling, simulation, visualization, web services and human collaboration.  In our local cities and global economies today, we continue to see increased demand and democratization for richer visual information and communication moving from analog to digital, 2D to 3D, to 4D and beyond.  For people and organizations involved in the planning, design, construction and operations lifecycle of our cities, there is an even greater demand for interoperable “digital city” models with the right levels of detail and accuracy needed to make collective, trusted and timely decisions about existing and proposed conditions. 

Intermap Seminar on Geospatial Data in Engineering

Intermap Technologies will host a free webinar on Geospatial Data in Engineering Thurs and Fri of this week.

When engineers and architects design buildings and infrastructure, they can no longer do this in isolation.  They need to take into account location.  Sustainability initiatives such as LEED certification is one of the major drivers for this, but in different countries other drivers often government legislation are the primary motivators. For example, in the UK right to light is an important driver, in Germany noise abatement, and in many jurisdictions 3D zoning regulations such as view protection are important drivers.  Intermap Technologies is a primary provider of high precision DSMs and DTMs captured via aerial overflights and radar.  In this webinar we will discuss the implications of technology advances in software together with high precision geospatial data is enabling the modeling of urban environments.

North American Webinar
Date: Thursday, May 8
Time: 8:00 a.m. PDT; 9:00 a.m. MDT; 10:00 a.m. CDT; 11:00 a.m. EDT

European Webinar
Date: Friday, May 9
Time: 14:00 CEST

Moderator - Kevin Thomas
Primary speaker - John Weeber / Larry Starling
Subject matter experts - Geoff Zeiss, Neal Niemiec

To sign up go to Terrainscapes .

OSBOOTCamp 6 June 2-3 in Ottawa, Canada

The OSBOOTCamp 6 will be a two day event focusing on open source geospatial software, hosted at Careton University, in Ottawa, Canada.  Come and hear industry experts present talks on web mapping, GIS analysis, OSGeo projects and more.

This year OSBOOTCamp coincides with GeoTec 2008 Jun 2-5 in Ottawa, so you can catch both while you're in Ottawa.
 

GIS Development: Interview with Lisa Campbell

In GIS Development April 2008  there is an interview with Lisa Campbell, who is responsible for Geospatial Solutions at Autodesk.  It is worthwhile taking a close look at this interview because Lisa gives her perspective on some of the important things that Autodesk is doing in the geospatial/infrastructure management domain. 

• Geospatial is no longer an isolated domain, it is showing up everywhere including in design and 3D visualization.
• CAD and GIS are tightly coupled. The workflow at utilities, telecommunications companies, and local governments means that CAD users need geospatial capabilities.
• Autodesk has integrated CAD and GIS so that CAD users can do the geospatial things they need to do with their CAD desktop, including managing data with a spatially-enabled database management system.
• Autodesk is the first public geospatial software company to bring an open source product to market.
• Autodesk's strategy for interoperability is based on FDO, which means that you only need one copy of your data no matter what format it is in.

These are important perceptions, that are having important implications for CAD users in the utility, telecommunications, and local government sectors.

Autodesk University 2008

Autodesk University is occurring Dec 2-5 in Las Vegas, and I would encourage you to attend if you can especially if you like the technical side of things.  Last year we had over 9 000 people at Autodesk University, if I remember correctly.

Also we're doing something new this year, we are asking you to help us select the sessions for AU.  All of the session abstracts that were submitted by the deadline have been uploaded to the AU 2008 Session site. Topics are organized under 19 tracks, which are either an industry or a product.  If you are thinking about attending AU, take a look at the session abstracts, and then Vote for AU Sessions that you would really like  to see.  The deadline for voting is Saturday, May 3, 2008.

Over the next few weeks, we will review your input and whittle the sessions down to the number we can actually physically accommodate in the Venetian Conference Center in Las Vegas.

Registration for AU will start on August 15th, and one week earlier for AU members.  Class schedules will be available for review by August 1st.

Open Source Geospatial Event of the Year: FOSS4G in Capetown

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO is hosting FOSS4G in Capetown, South Africa, Sep  29 - Oct 3.  In February of this year South Africa adopted a national policy on open source, National Open Source Policy in Government , so this is an opportune time to increase awareness of open source gesopatial in Africa.

According to the head of government communications in South Africa "All new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS."  It is intended by April that CSIR and the State Information Technology Agency will setup a project office by to assist in implementing FOSS throughout South Africa.

Autodesk and Google have already signed up to be sponsors of the 2008 event.  In 2007 about 700 developers and users of open source geospatial software got together in Victoria, Canada. 

North American Pioneer: British Columbia Introduces Cap and Trade for Large Emitters

Under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Cap and Trade) Act announced yesterday, large emitters will face caps on their emissions.  In what may become a continental carbon market, large emitters will be able to buy and sell emissions allowances or buy offset units.  The concept is to make it financially beneficial to cut greenhouse gases.  British Columbia is the first province in Canada and the first jurisdiction in North America to implement a cap and trade system.  This follows British Columbia's pioneering carbon tax that was passed earlier this year.

Open Source Developers: Hobbyists or Paid Professionals

There are many misconceptions about open source that many of us encounter, one of which is that open source developers are hobbyists working in the garage in the evenings and weekends.  A recent report Linux Kernel Development: How Fast It is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It  from the Linux Foundation reports some statistics for GNU/Linux that may surprise many people.

Who develops Linux ?

This is really a massive development effort, something like 1,000 developers working for more than 100 different corporations.  Most of these developers are being paid to work on Linux, it is estimated that between 70 and 95 percent of these developers are being paid for their work.

Who sponsors Linux ?

Many of the Linux developers are employed by major corporations including,

1. Red Hat, 11.2 percent
2. Novell, 8.9 percent
3. IBM, 8.3 percent
4. Intel, 4.1 percent
5. LF, 3.5 percent
6. SGI, 2.0 percent
7. MIPS Technology, 1.6 percent
8. Oracle, 1.3 percent
9. MontaVista, 1.2 percent
10. Linutronix, 1.0 percent.

How Fast is Linux Developed and Released?

Equally impressive, on average 3,621 lines of code are added to the kernel tree every day, and a new kernel is released approximately every 2.7 months.  Since 2005, the kernel has been growing at a steady state of 10 percent per year.

Microsoft and the Open Source Community

The relationship between the open source community and Microsoft continues to evolve.  Last Tuesday Brad Smith, Senor VP at Microsoft, gave a presentation at this year's Open Source Business Conference that struck quite a different tone from what he said in an interview with Fortune a year ago, according to a blog by Charles Babcock.

High Resolution Geospatial Data

If you need high resolution geospatial data from the world's leading commercial sources including high resolution imagery from Digital Globe, vector data from Navteq, DEMs from Intermap, and weather data from Weatherbug, take a look at High Resolution Geospatial Data.