OpenGeo

Update: O’Reilly has posted the videos from the Ignite talks by Sophia Parafina and Paul Ramsey.

All Points Blog today features a write up of the first day of Where 2.0 2010. In this review, Paul Ramsey’s Open Geostack session is prominently mentioned.

Also in that entry, Adena Schutzberg Joe Francica noted Paul’s contribution in the evening Ignite session:

…Paul Ramsey did have an entertaining way of explaining that mapping errors are compounded as more and more applications are built on top of base maps which they themselves may have been compiled from poor quality data.

The solution: why not just create your own base map instead of relying on those made by others?

Paul Ramsey, OpenGeo’s spatial database wizard and frequent poster to this blog, was recently interviewed by Matt Ball for V1 magazine. It’s a good read, and we think you’ll enjoy it.

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…

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.