[OSGeo-Edu] Introduction -- Simon Cropper (Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd)

[Simon Cropper (Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd)]

Hi Everyone,

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.

PREAMBLE

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.

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).

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 (EcoAlert 
<http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au/EcoAlert.html>). 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 
EcoRamblings <http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au/EcoRamblings.html>. I 
base this comment on the website statistics which show the most common 
downloads are of this newsletter.

CURRENT OBSESSION

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 (LINK 
<http://listserv.gva.es/pipermail/gvsig_internacional/2009-November/004167.html>).

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.

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).

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.

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.

I hope this information is of use. I will endevour to keep this posted 
as information is released.
-- 

Cheers Simon

Simon Cropper
Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd
PO Box 160, Sunshine, Victoria 3020.
P: 9311 5822. M: 041 830 3437.
mailto: scropper at botanicusaustralia.com.au 
<mailto:scropper at botanicusaustralia.com.au>
web: www.botanicusaustralia.com.au <http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au>

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