HI Michele,
An approach I've used in the past for similar presentations is to introduce the
phrase "Democratisation of GIS"
It helps that I'm old enough to remember the evolution of wordprocessing as a
technology, and use it as an analogy.
Go back to the invention of typewriters - people who wanted a business letter
professionally laid out either dictated the content to a shorthand typist, or
scribbled out some double spaced lines of text & gave them that. So we had a
team of professional typists providing a skilled technical service to an
organisation. Much like cartographers used to.
Along came wardrobe sized word processors & your typists became word processing
operators, providing a similar service but with more advanced technology to
help them. Like the early GIS practitioners creating computer generated maps
instead of hand crafted ones.
Then personal computers came along with word processing software - anyone could
DIY word process, even if they were not as skilled or knowledgeable as the
expert. No expensive hardware, expensive software, etc.
There are 4 requirements for functional GIS:
suitable software,
a powerful enough computer to run it, access to relevant data to use with
it, and standards to enable interoperability.
Open Source GIS has introduced similar access to the world of GIS, no longer do
you need to spend several times the cost of your computer for the software (and
keep on paying)Open Data provides access to data from local to national to
global scales, at the minimal cost of downloading it over the internet,
Your average used laptop of 5 years ago has more than enough power (or often
can have simply by adding a memory module), even every smart phone has a GPS in
it.
OGC has created, and is still creating, global standards for data formats, data
access, data sharing which enables the interoperability.
It is very unusual for anyone to hire wordprocessor operators any more - most
people who can use a computer do their own. Similarly, anyone can use Open
Source GIS software, GIS is no longer the domain of a few experts using
expensive hardware & software. Hence - the Democratisation of GIS.
I run short workshops for small community groups & NGO's on DIY GIS using Open
Source. They can't afford commercial licences for data or software but can make
good use of free stuff.
Cheers,
Brent
On Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 11:51:16 AM GMT+12, Michele M Tobias via
Discuss <discuss@lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
Hi everyone!
I got asked to give a talk at the Monterey Bay Marine GIS Users Group meeting
about the open source geospatial organizations – OSGeo, FOSS4G, OGC, etc. – and
how they fit together. Has anyone got some slides or previous talks I could use
as a reference to get started? I feel like the board might have some useful
stuff, but I’m not finding it. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Michele
Michele Tobias, PhD
Geospatial Data Specialist
DataLab: Data Science & Informatics
UC Davis Library
370 Shields Library
(530)752-7532
mmtob...@ucdavis.edu
ORCID: 0000-0002-2954-8710
Pronouns: she, her, hers
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