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Missoula GIS "Book Club" Week 1 Review

  • 05/07/2014 9:02 PM
    Message # 1550236
    Anonymous

    After a delayed start during our QGIS Week 1 meeting due to some technical issues with the Webex and project we had a productive work session.  Our discussion was primarily focused on how QGIS references and handles coordinate systems, projections, and transformations.  By the end of the meeting we had more questions than answers; however this provided the group with a specific task for Week 2.   We also generated a list of common tasks, tools, and procedures that most of us perform with Esri products in order to find their equivalent in QGIS.  The topics included:

    • Projections
    • Editing
    • Working with Tables
    • Geoprocessing Functions
    • Managing and finding plugins

    For Week 2 Mike Sweet agreed to do some research regarding projects and Jamie Robertson would focus on editing.  The rest of the group also agreed to do some investigation on those two topics.  The Week 2 meeting is again scheduled for Tuesday (May 13th) at 4 pm, we will be meeting in the Board Room of the Missoula Public Library.

    Best,

    Kyle Balke

  • 05/08/2014 8:47 AM
    Reply # 1550413 on 1550236
    Anonymous
    Kyle Balke wrote:

    After a delayed start during our QGIS Week 1 meeting due to some technical issues with the Webex and project we had a productive work session.  Our discussion was primarily focused on how QGIS references and handles coordinate systems, projections, and transformations.  By the end of the meeting we had more questions than answers; however this provided the group with a specific task for Week 2.   We also generated a list of common tasks, tools, and procedures that most of us perform with Esri products in order to find their equivalent in QGIS.  The topics included:

    • Projections
    • Editing
    • Working with Tables
    • Geoprocessing Functions
    • Managing and finding plugins

    For Week 2 Mike Sweet agreed to do some research regarding projects and Jamie Robertson would focus on editing.  The rest of the group also agreed to do some investigation on those two topics.  The Week 2 meeting is again scheduled for Tuesday (May 13th) at 4 pm, we will be meeting in the Board Room of the Missoula Public Library.

    Best,

    Kyle Balke

    Kyle,
    I must have missed the invite or announcement, I probably would've joined you.  I might be of some help with QGIS in some regards.  A little background, I am a developer who occasionally contributes to GDAL/OGR which is the data abstraction engine for QGIS.  It (usually) provides data access to raster and vector datasets.  It also provides coordinate system support (via OGRSpatialReference) and projection transformations through OGRCoordinateTransformation using the proj.4 library.  My experience in GDAL is mostly on the raster side, although I've committed code for warping/reprojection, coordinate system and coordinate transformation support, and some vector support.

    As for using QGIS, I do that nearly daily, but I am not a GIS analyst.  I am using the QGIS API to handle map data for a program I am writing.  I fire up QGIS to check my work frequently.  I have not written any plugins, but they seem pretty simple.

    Let me know if I can be of some help.  I'd like to make the meeting, but I'm not sure I can swing 4:00.

    Thanks,

    Kyle

    GDAL/OGR: http://gdal.org
    PROJ.4: http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/


    Last modified: 05/11/2014 12:39 PM | Anonymous
  • 07/01/2014 5:41 PM
    Reply # 3036104 on 1550236

    I came across this and thought it might be of interest:

    http://www.gislounge.com/self-paced-introduction-qgis-course/

    Seems like it could be intended as both an intro to QGIS as well as an intro to GIS in general based on the topics they list, but nonetheless there might be some helpful information in there.

    Michael

  • 07/02/2014 7:38 AM
    Reply # 3036470 on 1550236

    Thanks Michael!  Good find.

    For other communities, I found the "Book Club" approach to be very productive.  It provided focused time to dive into a single topic.  I would have never had made that much progress on my own.  While things have slowed due to "summer in Montana" I look forward to taking on the next "book". 

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