I got a chance to attend the 3rd Annual QGIS User Conference at A Coruña, Spain.
This was the meeting point of over 100 QGIS developers, users, and trainers from all over the globe. It was the first time I met the QGIS community in person, including some of the people whose work I have admired for years. The event took place over 3 days – 2 days of workshops and 1 day of talks. I am putting some of my notes, takeways and links to resources shared on other channels (twitter, telegram, email) for the benefit of folks who were not present
Workshops
Automating GIS Workflows
I taught this intermediate level workshop on Day 1. The workshop covered batch processing, graphical modeler, atlas and processing python scripts.
Data Visualization and Cartography in QGIS
Kurt Menke taught this workshop which was a whirlwind tour of a whole range of cartographic techniques and tools. Matteo Ghetta who wrote the DataPlotly plugin gave a demo of some supercool hidden features. Kurt has made the full workshop materials, including data, solutions, and power-point deck available publicly
QGIS Server with Python superpowers
Alessandro Pasotti’s QGIS Server workshop was fairly advanced. I do have some sys admin experience in the past and knew the basics of the QGIS Server architecture. I was able to follow the materials and get the various server configurations working. The materials are below
There were other workshops on parallel tracks that I could not attend, but almost everyone has shared the workshop materials publicly. Putting the links to the workshop resources below
Taking full advantage of drone imagery with QGIS
Workshop by Jorge Gustavo and Lene Fischer
Using social media data with QGIS
Workshop by Stefan Giese
Image processing and Land Change Detection with QGIS Workshop
Workshop by Josep Sitjar and Lluís Vicens
QGIS Model baker – model driven creation of QGIS project files
Workshop by Andreas Neumann, Matthias Kuhn
Talks and Presentations
Day 3 had a packed schedule of talks, 2 keynotes and 2 parallel tracks with of 20 minute presentations.
Update: Videos from all talks are now available online on av.tib.eu.
- Keynote: My QGIS Journey by Joana Simones
- Open Source GIS in Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture (Poland) by Michał Drożdż
- Have built a plugin for GPS Tracking. The core library of GPS communication over COM port is pretty robust but rest is very specific to Poland. Considering making is available in the plugin repo.
- An Overview of the QGIS Certification Program by Kurt Menke
- Details of the program are a bit hidden at http://changelog.qgis.org/en/qgis/about/
- Because data is outside – QField, the future of QGIS on mobile devices by Marco Bernasocchi
- You can use Dropbox to setup sync from desktop to mobile.
- Mesh layer: why we need another GIS data type? by Peter Petrík [Presentation]
- A brand new data type and first-class support for NetCDF/GRIB files to view and animate weather, numeric and scientific data. This was one of the biggest takeways from the conference.
- Behind the scenes of QGIS.org by Andreas Neumann [Presentation]
- Some eye-popping stats and good overview of the IT infrastructure behind QGIS
- SLYR or: how I learned to stop worrying about ESRI Symbols! by Mario Baranzini
- Converts .style files to QGIS XML. Looked pretty useful. [plugin]
- Configuring INSPIRE schemas and digital land use planning with QGIS and PostGIS by Sanna Jokela [Presentation]
- Used the QGIS Model Baker plugin to get the PostGIS schema to configure QGIS attribute fields and Relations settings.
- Organisation specific layout plugin by Raymond Nijssen
- Built a plugin to migrate a shipping client move from AutoCAD templates.
- Had the QGIS team add python API bindings for Print Layouts. Now you can add buttons in QGIS Print Layout as well.
- How to setup an SDI using QGIS and FOSSG for people in remote islands with limited internet access by Ilaria Marengo
- An SDI talk that was actually inspiring! Dr. Ilaria’s outlined the challenges with working in extremely remote areas and how she runs a data center that hosts and serves data for folks on the island as well as outside.
- Earth observation data processing in QGIS with a python API by Andreas Rabe and Benjamin Jakimow
- Implementing the toolbox for EnMap Hyperspectral satellite in QGIS Processing
- Very cool to see QGIS as a platform of choice for both visualization and processing (using the Processing API)
- Closing Keynote: Ecology of the QGIS ecosystem by Victor Olaya
- This would be the one to watch on the video. Victor was very articulate and made good points about open-source ecosystem.
These are just from the talks I could attend and find the materials online.
Kudos to the Spanish QGIS Association for organizing this wonderful event. Luigi, Carlos, Carmen and others put in a lot of sweat to create an event with the perfect balance of learning and networking in a beautiful town.
Below are some of my pictures from the trip!
