The Maryland’s Geospatial Conference (
#TUgis2017) is on March 20/21, 2017. I first attended TUgis in 1990, and it is always a great conference. It is not too large, so it is great way to have extended time with people. So, if you had a technical question for someone from say ESRI, you could simply stop by their booth and have a chat.
This year I was asked to support the pre-conference workshops. I will be presenting two workshops with the help of my students. If you recall, my students are quite good at instructing others about GIS technology. I’m really looking forward to the conference and interacting with people during the workshop. Keep in mind, this is not something we are just throwing together – we’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to effectively move people through the material so that beginners do not get lost, and more technically savvy people are sufficiently challenged. We are fanatical about making sure people’s learning experience is excellent.
A description of the courses are found here:
Spatial SQL: A Language for Geographers: Are you stuck in a rut of only knowing how to use a GIS GUI? Do you want to learn how to automate tasks, but are afraid of computer programming. If so, SQL is the most powerful tool you can learn to help you perform complex GIS tasks. This hands-on course is designed to teach you how SQL can replicate many database and GIS tasks. We will start at a very basic overview and then proceed to more advanced topics related to GIS.
Topics to include:
Spatial is NOT Special
SQL Data Types
Traditional SQL
Spatial SQL for Vector and Raster Analysis
Spatial SQL for Classic Geographic Analysis
For this class, we’ll be using spatiaLite which is the spatial extension used with SQLite. This is a great way to get started, as it is very similar to the functionality of Postgres/PostGIS. If you want to move to enterprise GIS with Postgres or even Oracle or SQLServer, you’ll be in really good shape.
Python for Geospatial: If you are in the field of GIS, you’ve probably heard everyone talking about Python, whether it’s Arcpy in ArcGIS or special Python packages for doing things in open source. In this hands-on workshop you will learn how Python is used to perform GIS analysis. The workshop will be an introduction to Python, with emphasis on integrating multiple Python plug-ins with ArcGIS and open source GIS.
Topics to include:
An overview of Python (variables, statements, I/O, writing code)
Python plug-ins for Geospatial (numpy, geocoder, pygal, Postgres)
A Taste of Arcpy
A Data Analytics Project with Python (for this, we will geocode addresses using Python, perform analysis with open source GIS, take the results into Arcpy to do more GIS analysis, compute statistical results with Python calling Excel, and then create charts and graphs of the results for use on the Internet—without ever opening up a single GIS product.)
If you want to learn more about how to use GIS technology, check out the 9 courses at gisadvisor.com.