The Open Planning Project

In preparing some data for our next round of training courses, I spent a fair amount of time today processing and cleaning the US Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) database for 2008. The FEC is extremely good about releasing their data, even though it looks like they have to dump it out of a very old database system.

I processed the three main files, and then converted the associated code tables into side tables, so the whole thing is pretty self-contained and hopefully self-explanatory. I had originally hoped to fully replicate something like the FundRace site from 2008, but since the FEC data only has zip-code as a location entity, that is not going to happen this time around. I assume the FundRace folks also had access to a nationwide telephone directory or some other way of taking name and zip-code and using that to leverage out an actual street address.

If you are interested in playing with the FEC data and don’t feel like spending a couple hours mucking about in Perl to get it into tables, I’ve placed a PostgreSQL dump file online. Candidates are linked to individuals via committees. The FEC model has a lot of complexity hiding in it, with some committees not associated with candidates, and so on, so using the data correctly will probably require a little care.

The US National Weather Service has a lot of weather to watch! They have sensors all over the continent, and in space, ranging from simple thermometers to orbiting satellites. When weather happens (and let’s be honest, weather is always happening, it’s happening on me right now) it happens fast — how does the NWS take in the whole situation at a glance and make decisions? On a map, of course.

The NWS Central Region Headquarters has built a test-bed for putting their situational information onto web maps, and the toolset they used is the OpenGeo suite of applications: PostGIS, Geoserver, OpenLayers. They also used raster-data standby GDAL for handling gridded data conversions.

A paper on their work (”Development of Web-based GIS Applications for Decision Support and Situational Awareness“) was presented by Brian Walawender at the  American Meteorological Association Annual Meeting this week.

Course Description:

This week, OpenGeo released version 1.0 of our OpenGeo Suite.

When we initially announced the OpenGeo Suite, it was a notion — a collection of individual software pieces we would professionally support as a whole. Now, it’s a product in the conventional sense — one download that provides all the pieces in a simple installer for Windows, Mac, or Linux:

• GeoServer — a geospatial data and map server;
• GeoWebCache — a map accelerator;
• OpenLayers/GeoExt — user interface libraries for building map applications;
• (New!) GeoExplorer — a browser-based map composer and publisher;
• (New!) Styler — a WYSIWIG editor for map styles (SLD);
• (New!) Recipe Book — code samples and documentation for building your own map applications;
• Full documentation for all components; and
• (New!) Dashboard — a unified administration panel for starting and managing the components of the OpenGeo Suite.

Up to this point, we have concentrated on clients already adept at downloading, integrating, and using the pieces of the Suite. With version 1.0, anybody can start publishing their data and building applications right out of the box.

This ease of entry aligns with the OpenGeo mission.  As an organization, we want to democratize mapping. That means offering tools available under non-discriminatory legal terms, like open source. It also means lowering barriers so that more people can use, build, and grow these tools.

Both novice and expert benefit from the seamless integration of the OpenGeo Suite.  By placing everything together in one place — software, documentation, examples, administration — the Suite offers a central resource to navigate, configure, and support the various pieces of your mapping application.

At a decision making level, we provide a corporate entity tightly bound to the software, providing support, expertise and training services to the community of users and administrators.

Version 1.0 is the first step in a long journey, but we know where we are going. Every day we ask ourselves: can we make our product easier to use? can we make it easier to learn? can we make it easier to try? We would love your feedback, so download the free 30 day trial and let us know what you think!

We’re looking forward to an exciting 2010, meeting those goals and growing our community.

Our OpenGeo division is on the hunt for a talented systems administrator to help develop their suite of open source geospatial solutions.

The OpenGeo team develops spatial web services based on Java and clients in JavaScript. Our primary technology stack consists of Linux, Postgresql with a spatial extension, Jetty or Tomcat to run our servlets. We use webservers for static content and proxying. Additionally, we provide a few services to the projects we are involved in, such as Trac, Wordpress, and build bots for automated testing. A system administrator dedicated to this team provides a platform for running these services, as well as a supporting role for a team of 9 highly dedicated software developers and outreach engineers. There may also be some consulting work for clients, either to avoid scalability issues or to help debug problems on production servers.

The position provides you with the chance to design the infrastructure that you think is best suited to get the job done. A good candidate should therefore be analytical, self-driven and able to handle multiple tasks. We emphasize understanding fundamental concepts and being able to find more information, as opposed to experience with advanced tools. For instance, you should be familiar with /proc and the various tools used to extract information from this resource, as well as manually query HTTP based services.

Full job description..

It’s official!  We are pleased to announce that GeoServer has been accepted into incubation at the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).  Putting GeoServer under the same roof as all the best geospatial projects in the open source world is a great advance for the project.  While GeoServer is not yet an official OSGeo project, just getting accepted in to the incubation process is a firm indicator that we are on the right track.  The process makes sure that we meet all of OSGeo’s standards for a diverse community, a robust governance structure, and clean code that others can rely upon.  We believe GeoServer has all of these, but additional validation from a third party like OSGeo signals to the world that it is so.  Thanks to the incubation committee and the board for approving our application, and to Richard Gould for serving as our mentor.  And of course to the whole GeoServer community for taking us here.

If you missed attending FOSS4G, you can now experience a part of the conference via videos! Here are the talks that we gave that were captured by the video team from FOSSLC:

• Geoserver: Past, Present and Future [0, 1]
• The State of PostGIS
• Styling with SLD
• Geoserver In Production
• WMS Performance Shootout
• OpenLayers Vector Mayhem
• Beyond Nerds Bearing Gifts [1, 2, 3]

Happy viewing!

I hope it was no surprise that my keynote at FOSS4G this week was partly about open source business models and the whole product, because that’s what I’ve been thinking about (and to an extent, blogging about here) for the last six months or so.

And the good news (to me) is that the concept appears to be striking a chord among right folks: managers and system integrators. We are getting lots of good feedback at the booth from those folks in addition to the regular stream of highly technical folks who are happy to chew the fat with our team of core developers.

On the business side, I think the system integrators are the really important ones. They can move from coming to clients with three or four different projects pulled from different places with different support options to coming in with just one infrastructure piece, the OpenGeo Suite. And on top of that, they can make use of the facilities of GeoServer and GeoExt to build nice tightly focussed business apps. The sales proposition for them with conservative customers gets a lot cleaner: the business app the client wants plus a single infrastructure piece with simple support story.

I have also been hearing tales of woe about the local distributors for the Leading Brand elbowing out independents for services work, which will seed a nice collection of disgruntled folks looking for an alternative.

So the challenge comes back to us: execute, execute, execute, on the technical side of polishing the Suite into a whole product worthy of the mainstream market, and on the business side signing up local partners to carry the message forward.

We've been busy this week, both in the office and around town:

• Today, Nick Grossman of TOPP Labs has been tweeting from the Open Cities Conference, where he spoke about participatory planning. Tomorrow, Nick is playing moderator at "Using Powerful Web Apps to Build a Livable Streets Movement" panel at Walk 21. For those attending, it's the Thursday 2pm session in Room 802. Looking forward to great discussion with innovators Joe Froehlich of UbiGreen, Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix, Nathan Freiter of The Extraordinairies, and Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR.
• Kim Wiley Schwartz of Livable Streets Education is speaking at Walk 21's "Creating and Sustaining Successful Safe Routes to Schools Programs." The Safe Routes to Schools movement has made great strides over the past few years, and this session promises best practice ideas for schools and program strategists. Thursday 4pm session in Room 914. 
• Aaron Naparstek of Streetsblog is moderating Walk 21's "How Local Livable Streets Advocates Are Using the Internet to Build a Movement." Panelists include Robin Holzer of the Houston Citizen's Transportation Coalition, David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington, Mark Abraham of Design New Haven, and Lisa Peterson Bender of Twin Cities Streets for People. Friday 9am session in Room 802.
• OpenGeo is getting ready for FOSS4G, where they will be easy to find.
  
• Also, don't forget to pick up your own copy of the current GOOD Magazine, where TOPP has been highlighted as a member of the 'GOOD 100'. We're beaming with pride!

OpenGeo’s had a busy month as we have been ramping up to drive our technology and business in exciting new directions. Here is a quick preview of what is in store for us:

The OpenGeo Suite Installer. In an effort to bring open source geospatial software to new markets, we are unifying the OpenGeo Suite into one tight package. Soon we will be releasing a distribution of PostGIS, GeoServer, and GeoWebCache with a easy installer, an improved data importing interface, and an integrated Styler application based on Openlayers and GeoExt.

The GeoNode. In collaboration with the World Bank’s Central American Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA), we have been building the next generation of SDI technology with modern web principles in mind. This summer we have built a simple data clearing house with GeoServer and GeoExt. Soon we will extend it with reporting tools useful for disaster risk management experts in the field, as well as uploading and styling workflows. Keep an eye out here for updates on the GeoNode’s technical and community development.

Training and FOSS4G. We are improving our training curriculum and giving several workshops on our stack. We will have a strong presence at FOSS4G this year, and are eager to spread the news and knowledge of our latest open source developments, like GeoExt, to the rest of the open source geospatial community.