19.08.2016 07:25 · Notes · conferences, meetings
Next week I will be in Bonn (Germany) for FOSS4G 2016. This will be my first trip to a conference of that scale.
Together with Victor Olaya we will run a workshop on Processing. And as the QGIS project decided to hold another hackfest in parallel with the conference, I will also work on QGIS improvements and bugfixes.
17.06.2016 13:41 · Notes · qgis, conferences, meetings
Presentations and videos from the 10th Spanish FOSS4G (Jornadas SIG Libre) and the 2nd QGIS User Conference are available:
The workshops were not recorded, one had to go to Spain if interested :-).
27.05.2016 06:08 · Notes · qgis, conferences, travels, meetings
The second (and first for me) QGIS User Conference is over. More than 150 participants, 9 workshops in three parallel sessions, 18 presentations from people all over the world: two incredibly busy days flew really fast.
Workshops from QGIS core developers and the most experienced community members were interesting and useful for both beginners and those who have been using QGIS for a long time. Personally, I managed to attend four workshops:
18 presentations on a wide range of topics once again confirmed that QGIS turned from a “pet project” into a full-fledged competitor of such well-known products as ArcMap and MapInfo a long time ago. It was very interesting to listen to reports on the migration of government agencies to QGIS as well as on using QGIS in conservation and educational institutions. Presentations about new QGIS features, plugins, and other related developments, such as QGIS Server clients, were also captivating.
Many thanks to the organizers for their hospitality and impeccable organization of the conference.
21.05.2016 16:35 · Notes · conferences, travels, meetings
Actually, I’m on a train right now, and this post should be published automatically.
I am going to take part in the 2nd QGIS User Conference and QGIS hackfest. The conference should be really interesting. Even though this is only the second event, the conference program is extremely rich. There are presentations demonstraing how QGIS is used in real-world applications in different areas, workshops from QGIS core developers and advanced users, an overview of new features, etc. It is quite difficult to decide where to go and whom to listen to; almost all talks and workshops are intriguing.
22.03.2015 13:12 · Notes · conferences, travels, meetings
On March 18-20, Kharkiv hosted the annual GIS-Forum “Education, Science, and Production”. It was the fourth conference and the second one I participated in (the first time was last year).
This year there were minor organisational issues: the opening on the first day was delayed for about half an hour due to some problems with the equipment and with the joining of remote participants; most of the speakers were hard to hear despite the presence of a microphone and speakers; and there was no Wi-Fi.
The talks were different: both outright trash and very interesting. This year, the works presented at the student competition and the results of the competition itself left a mixed feeling. Firstly, some works were presented for the second time without any improvements or changes. Secondly, the selection of the winner in the category “Best ideas for GIS application”… From my point of view, the selection process and criteria were not transparent, and the results were strange. Though, two strong presentations still won prizes.
This year’s workshops attracted more participants, but they were not active at all, just like last year. However, the discussion organized by Daria and me was quite lively. We didn’t even have enough time to cover all the planned topics.
I want to say thank you to the organizers for their hospitality and interesting program. Hopefully the next anniversary Forum will be even better.
06.10.2014 17:34 · Notes · qgis, travels, meetings
The 12th QGIS developers meeting, which took place in Essen (Germany), has ended.
In my previous posts (day 1, day 2, and day 3), I have already covered the main points, and now I will go into a little more detail about the most interesting results.
Four types of certificates are planned: QGIS User, QGIS Professional, QGIS Trainer, and QGIS Developer. Also, PSC will issue so-called “grandfather” certificates. The TAO online platform will be used for assessments.
A complete update of the QgsGeometry class, which is responsible for the spatial component of objects, is planned:
The first batch of changes has already been implemented, and new functionality is expected to be included in the QGIS 2.7 code base. The work was supported by the Canton of Solothurn.
In fact, there were many more interesting and active discussions, and some topics appeared on the agenda spontaneously (for example, support for SAGA and OTB in Processing on Debian builds). In addition to broad discussions, there were also “narrow” discussions where specialized problems were solved (such as downloading data from the Portuguese iGeo portal), and participants periodically organized into groups to solve problems together and/or find and fix bugs.
Also during the meeting:
Many thanks to the organizers and LinuxHotel staff for their hospitality.
04.10.2014 19:03 · Notes · qgis, travels, meetings
Today was a very busy day. A smaller number of commits from developers (20 today vs. 40 yesterday) was compensated by active discussions:
QgsGeometry class (support for Z/M values and curves)Work on updating the documentation and the website also continued. We decided to skip the documentation update for QGIS 2.4 and focus on writing documentation for the upcoming QGIS 2.6 instead.
03.10.2014 20:25 · Notes · qgis, travels, meetings
The second day of the QGIS hackfest is coming to an end.
The documentation team has continued to update the documentation and website, with over 30 commits today. The developers have not lagged behind - the number of commits is approaching 40. As always, Martin is a delight: thanks to his efforts, the rendering speed of a simple symbol renderer has increased significantly. Depending on the data, the speed increase ranges from 19 to 31%.
Also today we discussed:
Due to numerous requests from users, Tim has proposed changes to the QGIS release process (more details in QEP #3).
02.10.2014 20:36 · Notes · qgis, travels, meetings
The first day of the 12th QGIS Developer Meeting in Essen has passed. Actually, it’s not really correct to consider it a full-featured day of the meeting, because most of the attendees were just arriving today. Moreover, today Linuxhotel was hosting an event and we were not able to fully use its infrastructure.
But all this did not prevent us from getting to know each other, communicating and even (there were such maniacs) doing something. For example, Otto, Richard, and Yves started documentation update. The day ended with a joint dinner at Haus Großjung.
02.10.2014 05:19 · Notes · travels, meetings
After a long break, I’m going to the QGIS developer meeting again. This time in Germany.
I’m in Boryspil now, almost two hours before boarding… Wi-Fi is not very good here: one 15-minute session, then you have to reconnect.