[California] Introductions

[Landon Blake]

Allan,

Thank you for the introduction. I am thrilled to hear about open source
GIS being used at some level in the University of California System.

I work as a Land Surveyor in Stockton, California. I work as a volunteer
administrator and programmer on the open source program OpenJUMP.

You wrote: "The main goal I have for this chapter would be to raise the
awareness of open source geospatial tools within geospatial
practitioners in California."

I'd love to hear some ideas about how we could reach this goal.

You wrote: "I am also interested in regional FOSS4G meetups."

Meeting places can be hard to come by. I could offer my back porch in
Stockton if the weather was nice. Maybe we could arrange something after
the holidays. Perhaps a date in January would work? Or, if it was more
convenient, I could drive up to Davis... I wonder if we have any people
from Southern California on the mailing list?

You wrote: " I also like the programming ideas 
that have been posted so far on the wiki page."

My favorite language is Java. I've also been known to dabble in C#,
Python, and even a little C. Do you have a favorite language?

You wrote: "Enhancing the hard-copy 
cartographic capabilities of the FOSS4G toolset is a big interest of
mine..."

I've already started working on some Python extension scripts for
Inkscape. These scripts will enable "tools" for precision drawing needed
in a cartography. Perhaps this could be a starting point? I've created a
Google Code project called InkTech to host the source code for the
scripts. There is nothing up there yet, because I'm still learning the
ins and outs of the scripting system in Inkscape.

You wrote: "There is definitely a need for a simple, modern, and
general-purpose 
metadata editor."

I agree. Could we start with a simple GUI editor that worked with a
single metadata standard? Would we support the FGDC standard, or
something else?

Landon



-----Original Message-----
From: california-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:california-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Allan Hollander
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 5:54 PM
To: california at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [California] Introductions

Hi everybody,

I'm glad to see the formation of this list! I am a geographer and
researcher 
in a group called the Information Center for the Environment at the 
University of California, Davis. I do a lot of work on biodiversity 
informatics, and these days almost exclusively use open source software
for 
my GIS needs. Favorite tools include GRASS, MapServer, QGIS, and I am
just 
beginning to do some work with OpenLayers.

The main goal I have for this chapter would be to raise the awareness of
open 
source geospatial tools within geospatial practitioners in California. I
am 
also interested in regional FOSS4G meetups. I also like the programming
ideas 
that have been posted so far on the wiki page. Enhancing the hard-copy 
cartographic capabilities of the FOSS4G toolset is a big interest of
mine, 
and there is definitely a need for a simple, modern, and general-purpose

metadata editor.

-- Allan Hollander
   Davis, California
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