OpenGeo

OpenGeo welcomes our latest GIS intern Byron Bobadilla, a developer working on a geoportal for Guatemala’s Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), a national initiative based on open-source GIS tools.

Ultimately, the goal is to use the philosophy and technology of the GeoNode project to build a Guatemalan resource that encourages institutions to publish spatial data on the web — enabling open sharing of data between governments, businesses, and citizens.

In our Q&A with Byron, he discusses the challenges of SDI development in Guatemala, and the advantages of using open-source tools.

What are you working on while at OpenGeo?
Constructing a new geoportal, way more efficient than the one we currently have, with the tools provided by the OpenGeo Suite. The current system, based on MapBender, is too slow and not very intuitive. This new tool—based on OpenLayers, GeoExt, GeoWebCache, GeoServer and PostGIS—hopes to solve the usability and performance issues we’ve been having.

How are you finding the OpenGeo Suite tools so far?
We’ve already implemented GeoServer in Guatemala, as well as MapServer, but found GeoServer easier to use and configure. Initially, I found it a bit difficult working with the JavaScript libraries, but the OpenGeo fellows and excellent documentation have been a great help. As for GeoWebCache, in very little time I’ve been able to work well with its configuration and setup. It makes it really simple to get an instance up and running.

What are the current challenges for Guatemala’s SDI?
The current system isn’t satisfactory. Few people know about it and the ones that do get easily lost, giving up quickly. With this new system, improvements in usability and performance allow easier and more efficient access to all the geospatial information in Guatemala. This geoportal will enable free Guatemalan spatial data  access for all institutions and the general public.

We currently have all this information spread across shapefiles and other files on disk. The information itself will be decentralized, allowing each institution to take care of the bits that they own, while simultaneously providing a single access point through SEGEPLAN [Secretaría de Programación y Planificación de la Presidencia, the Guatemalan government institution driving SDI development].”

How do open-source tools help this kind of initiative?
Open-source tools greatly facilitate access to technology. I see OpenGeo as a great alternative, especially in developing countries where access to proprietary licenses might be prohibitive due to paid software acquisition policies. I believe professional support is key. Specialists in these kinds of projects are needed, independent of the immense volume of information and documentation already available on the internet.

Byron’s internship with OpenGeo is made possible by support from the World Bank. His work with SEGEPLAN includes the development of open source GIS software, geodatabase administration tasks, and web-GIS development with PHP. Byron is a systems engineer who began working with GIS at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala.

Thanks to Gabriel Roldan for the translation of this interview.

You may have noticed that we have recently rebuilt our website. Here are some new sections you might find helpful:

• The OpenGeo Suite Matrix now explains the differences between our three OpenGeo Suite contracts: Basic, Professional, and Enterprise.
• The Core Development Roadmaps describe the features we plan to build into the projects we support (GeoServer, OpenLayers, PostGIS, GeoWebCache, and GeoExt) as part of our mission. You can hire us to develop these features; because they are on our roadmap we will work for a reduced rate.
• We have devoted part of our website to tell you more about who is on our team. Many of our team members are luminaries in the open source geospatial world, and we want to tell you all about them.

Take some time to explore the new website today and tomorrow, as we will be updating its content often over the coming weeks.

OpenGeo has embarked on a company-wide retreat this week. Since the members of our team work in six different countries on three continents and across ten time zones, we are quite used to working together remotely. With OpenGeo growing in size, however, it is worthwhile for all of us to meet in one physical location for the first time to articulate our roadmap and goals for the future.

So we’ve alighted at a small farm in upstate New York, spending the next few days working hard and playing hard. While we are not coding much (we’ll be code sprinting this upcoming weekend), we are meeting together to decide how we can most effectively pursue our mission in our world. We will detail the results of this meeting in the weeks and months to come.

We are thrilled to welcome Paul Ramsey to the OpenGeo team.

Paul has made a name for himself in the world of open source geospatial software as the founder of Refractions Research and leader in the PostGIS, GEOS, and uDig projects, for which he was honored with the Sol Katz award in 2008. A director of OSGeo, he has throughout his career been a vocal proponent of the robustness of open source geospatial software.

Paul joins us as a PostGIS expert. At last able to offer consulting and support for that software, we can now endorse PostGIS as the root of our OpenGeo stack. We welcome also his experience as OpenGeo grows to a new stage of social enterprise–and his eminence and eloquence as an advocate for the Open Geospatial Web.

You can find Paul’s thoughts on joining OpenGeo on his blog.