If you’re coming to Where 2.0 and want to talk about OpenGeo in general or PostGIS in particular, please let me know! Either drop me an email or hit my Where 2.0 profile.

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.

Update: The FundRace folks did in fact only use FEC data, the trick is, they used the original filings, rather than the FEC database dump. The original filings include a street address for each donation.

But software is only successful if users understand and use its features. And while one of our aims is to make software easy to use, sometimes you have questions that just can’t be answered by a documentation page. Even in this day of everything-over-the-web, there is still a need for answers from a real person, in a real-life classroom setting.

So, OpenGeo is now offering full-day training courses on the components of the OpenGeo Suite. First and foremost, we offer an Introduction to the OpenGeo Suite, which gives a full overview of PostGIS, GeoServer, GeoWebCache, OpenLayers, GeoExt, along with the applications GeoExplorer and Styler. We also have more in-depth full-day introductory courses on GeoServer, PostGIS, and OpenLayers.

These courses are open to all, and are designed to be accessible to a wide audience. Also, if you are one of our OpenGeo Suite Enterprise clients (Professional, Platform, or Strategic Editions), training days are already included in your package.

Below is our schedule for the next few months. All courses are held in our office in New York City, although we do offer on-site training as well.

• Thursday, March 4, 2010 – Introduction to the OpenGeo Suite
• Thursday, March 25, 2010 – Introduction to GeoServer
• Thursday, April 8, 2010 – Introduction to PostGIS
• Thursday, May 6, 2010 – Introduction to OpenLayers
• Thursday, June 3, 2010 – Introduction to the OpenGeo Suite
• Tuesday, June 22, 2010 – Introduction to PostGIS
• Wednesday, June 23, 2010 – Introduction to GeoServer
• Thursday, June 24, 2010 – Introduction to OpenLayers
• Thursday, July 8, 2010 – Introduction to the OpenGeo Suite
• Tuesday, July 20, 2010 – Introduction to PostGIS
• Wednesday, July 21, 2010 – Introduction to GeoServer
• Thursday, July 22, 2010 – Introduction to OpenLayers

We will be adding new and more advanced courses as demand dictates. We hope that our courses will be a valuable tool for any and all, whether you are a GIS professional, an enthusiast, a software developer, or a CEO.

While the interview covers a wide range of topics, here’s a quote that encapsulates OpenGeo’s software to me probably better than any white paper or business plan could:

Building a web map app is something that a technically inclined forester should be able to do, it shouldn’t require someone from the computer science department. The Web is evolving to be a place where people can put a basic set of development tools, JavaScript and HTML, to a lot of different uses. Not inventing their own language…We’re just providing some geo flavor on top.

Read the entire interview…

Geodetics are more commonly known as “lat/lon” coordinates. While you could load and work with lat/lon coordinates in earlier versions of PostGIS, the indexing and calculation code did not make any allowance for the fact that the coordinates were angular units, not cartesian units. As a result, objects that crossed the poles or datelines would not index properly, and calculations of areas, lengths and distances returned strange looking answers in “degrees” rather than meters.

With PostGIS 1.5, the new “geography” type is a 100% sphere-aware type, which can be indexed globally and returns answers in meters, using calculations on the spheroid for maximum correctness. It is built on top of a new disk storage and index format, which the existing “geometry” type will also transition to in version 2.0.

The development of the “geography” type was funded as a PostGIS core development task, by a company that chooses to remain anonymous.  Since the main geography development is complete the old task has been updated to a new version, outlining extra functions and performance additions that could be added to geography support.

We expect that the geography type will make it easier for new users to store their data in PostGIS (without having to learn about projections and coordinate systems before starting) and also allow global data managers to store and query international data sets for effectively.

Making money is a second-order concern for our organization that enables our first-order concern: putting useful tools in the hands of governments and NGOs. The revenue from professional services and support enables the continued development of the open source software, which we want to see as widely used as possible.

So, when we learn that the Amazonian Protection System is using PostGIS and Geoserver in their applications to manage and protect the rain forest, that makes us very happy.

And hearing how scientists and conservation groups have used Geoserver, PostGIS, and OpenLayers in building a decision support system for studying marine protected areas makes us sort of giddy.

And learning that the Great Lakes Commission is using Geoserver, PostGIS and OpenLayers in monitoring the environmental conditions of the Lakes make us quiver a little bit uncontrollably.

And then we have to sit down for a moment.

These are all folks who have used the tools that our team members build and maintain, to do good in the world. They don’t have to ask permission, and they don’t have to pay us, and the world is a little more understandable after they are finished than it was before. And that’s the point.

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.

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.

The GeoNode project is a partnership between the World Bank’s CAPRA initiative, OpenGeo, and other organizations from around the world.  Our aim is to take the principles and practices of openness which have empowered the modern web, and use them to build a spatial data infrastructure solution appropriate for large NGO’s and government agencies.

The GeoNode is both an organizational partnership and an open source software project, built on the familiar projects of our OpenGeo Stack (GeoServer, OpenLayers, GeoExt, etc.) as well as Django and GeoNetwork.  After several months of incubation and prototyping, GeoNode.org is the kick off to our new focus on the GeoNode community.  Look there for the latest news on GeoNode technology, partnerships, and community resources.