[Southeast-US] Update on QGIS Users Group Meeting - Chattanooga - June 20th

[Randal Hale]

So the meeting actually went quite well. We had 7 people attend with one 
gentleman driving from two hours away (because he didn't know anyone in 
the area knew about QGIS) from Huntsville Alabama. So a special thanks 
to Richard Duivenvoorde for adding that announcement to the QGIS 
website. That's how he knew about the meeting.

We did a small intro to QGIS - so at this point most everyone can at 
least open data, symbolize it, and stand a good chance of making a map. 
I did my portion with 2.15 - so I had a chance to show them come things 
coming down the pike with the next release. We even dove into a broader 
discussion of FOSS4G - which is actually making me do a 10 or so long 
slide show on Open source in the GIS world. Everyone there was overly 
familiar with ArcGIS - QGIS was a new thing they had played with but 
didn't understand. So If nothing more we got some people talking and I'm 
pretty sure I've converted 10 more people.

The group expressed interest in continuing these technical meetings. So 
there will be more and we'll have an ongoing discussion on that coming 
up over the rest of this week. My whole goal is to keep it centered 
around QGIS in some form or fashion - but we might deviate off into 
drones or openstreetmap. We finished up at a local brewery and talked 
for about an hour or so.

Anyway - it looks like there might be a QGIS users group with some 
staying power in the area. It will just take a little bit of work but 
nothing terrible. So next meeting will be in the works and announcements 
coming shortly.

Randy

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Randal Hale
North River Geographic Systems, Inc
http://www.northrivergeographic.com
423.653.3611 rjhale at northrivergeographic.com
twitter:rjhale     http://about.me/rjhale