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Hi Everyone,<br>
<br>
I have been invited to join this list by Cameron Shorter due to my
recent efforts in preparing some tutorials for gvSIG. He has asked me
to post a brief introduction of who I am and an outline of my current
obsession.<br>
<br>
PREAMBLE<br>
<br>
I am a natural resource consultant operating in South-east Australia.
If you are interested you can visit my website listed below to see what
my core business involves.<br>
<br>
I use GIS on a daily basis for basic spatial analysis and cartography.
So simply, I am a user. Weened on Maptitude, I eventually moved to
ArcView 3. Over the last 2-years I have been actively searching for an
alternative for ArcView and have tried a wide variety of packages
(gvSIG, Kosmo, QGIS, OpenJUMP, JUMP, UDig, Grass, FWTools, Ilwis3, Saga
and many others).<br>
<br>
I don't consider myself an educator, per sae, just a user keen to help
others understand complex issues and to improve the quality of
information disseminated in my industry. I have run free community
forums (now defunct), supplied comprehensive lists to web resources
(now defunct) and even created an email notification service for the
natural resource management industry in Australia (<a
href="http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au/EcoAlert.html">EcoAlert</a>).
None have really taken off, considering the potential audience of up to
20,000 people. The most successful education instrument I have found is
my newsletter <a
href="http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au/EcoRamblings.html">EcoRamblings</a>.
I base this comment on the website statistics which show the most
common downloads are of this newsletter.<br>
<br>
CURRENT OBSESSION<br>
<br>
Of late, I have been particularly taken by gvSIG as it is the first
Open Source GIS package I have been able to use to complete the
workflow of a standard flora and fauna survey from data acquisition
through to map production. I posted my praises on the
gvSIG-International list server late last year if anyone is interested (<a
href="http://listserv.gva.es/pipermail/gvsig_internacional/2009-November/004167.html">LINK</a>).<br>
<br>
This post was shortly followed by a request to put something in the
OSGeo Journal, which I happily agreed, and soon after I submitted an
article based on this post. This article differs in that it better
articulates the actual workflow of a typical project by specifying all
the things done on a GIS package in order to finish a project (e.g.
data acquisition, topology checks, shapefile creation, reprojection,
mapping production, ...). It is hoped that this article will be
published in the next issue but as yet the editing process has not
begun so I not sure this will happen.<br>
<br>
The logical progression from this base was to further document how each
step in my workflow was achieved using gvSIG and so I began creating
detailed tutorials showing how I completed each step. The tutorials are
generally 10-15 pages long with copious screen dumps augmented with
arrows, circles and explanatory text. The text has been written
assuming that the reader is not GIS literate, in fact I am aiming for
the multitude of people that would love to use GIS packages, but still
rely on colour pencils on topo maps and an understanding client. In
all, I expect to have 10-15 workflow tutorials and 2-3 introductory
tutorials. The 'voice' is similar to that used in my popular newsletter
EcoRamblings (that is casual, informative, first person).<br>
<br>
A draft webpage is being prepared to get some of the tutorials out
there quickly but eventually the final webpage will be formated so the
tutorials 'hang-off' the workflow process. This more detailed version
is dependent on when the OSGeo Journal Article is to be published, as I
don't want to preempt the publication of this article with similar text
in a webpage.<br>
<br>
In order to ensure the tutorials are relevant the target audience, I am
in the process of sourcing some high resolution vector and raster data
that can be legally used as a backdrop to my tutorials. Data comparable
to what I use every day -- high resolution ECW data, cadastral data,
geology maps, vegetation maps, etc and relevant to the area I work (SE
Australia). I am hoping that if I can acquire this information it will
be able to be bundled and placed on my website for download by people
trying to follow the tutorials. I am aiming to have this information
available on a CC license. Once this dataset is acquired I will go into
full production of the various task specific tutorials. Tutorials will
be released as they are completed. <br>
<br>
I hope this information is of use. I will endevour to keep this posted
as information is released.<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p>Cheers Simon</p>
<p style="margin-left: 36pt;">
Simon Cropper <br>
Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd<br>
PO Box 160, Sunshine, Victoria 3020.<br>
P: 9311 5822. M: 041 830 3437.<br>
<a href="mailto:scropper@botanicusaustralia.com.au">mailto:
scropper@botanicusaustralia.com.au</a> <br>
<a href="http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au">web:
www.botanicusaustralia.com.au</a> <br>
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