PDX-OSGEO

Welcome to the Portland, OR Chapter of OSGEO - serving Oregon and SW Washington!

News

 * We now meet on the 3th Wednesday of every month from 6:00-7:30 PM at various locations.
 * The 2013 PDX-OSGeo Unconference happened on May 2nd.

Meetings
The next meeting is May 15th, 2013, at Flightstats.

Flightstats is in the Yeon building, on SW 5th and Alder. The street door is locked (along with the elevators) promptly at 6pm. After that, you need to call me and I'll come down, so please try to get there before 6 if possible! I'll post my phone number on the door. Go up to the second floor (we have the whole floor), walk in and turn left. If you bike, feel free to bring the bike upstairs.

Past Meeting Notes

How to plan a meeting

Upcoming Events
PDX-OSGeo members are encouraged to participate.

2013
 * May 2 (Thurs) 2013 Unconference (PDX)
 * Apr. 30 - May 1 (Tue-Wed) GIS In Action 2013 (PDX)
 * Mar. 21 (Thu) GPS, Geodesy and the Ghost in the Machine: A Workshop for Surveyors and GIS Professionals (PDF) (Salem, Oregon)
 * Oct. 14-18 (Mon-Fri) NWGIS Sunriver 2013 (Central Oregon)

Past Events we participated in

 * Presentation for PLSO/ORURISA GIS in Action Conference 2012 - Open Source Smackdown - Web Mapping Clients Edition


 * Details on  2011 Open Source GIS unconference

More past events

Introduction
PDX-OSGeo is a Local Chapter of OSGeo. PDX-OSGeo has a catchment area equal to the PDX airport, Oregon and SW Washington (Vancouver, WA / Clark County, WA). Monthly meetings are held in Portland.

History
PDX-OSGeo has been around and meeting in one form or another since before February 2009 under various names. Since September 2010, we have been recognized as an Oregon-URISA Special Interest Group (SIG). Since 2010, the local chapter has coordinated an open source unconference with ORURISA and GIS In Action. There are also deep roots with our sister OSGeo Local Chapter, CUGOS. In August, 2012, we became an official OSGeo local chapter by action of the OSGeo August, 2012 board meeting.

Mission
The PDX-OSGeo Chapter strives to promote the local use of Open Source Geospatial software, particularly new users in the Oregon/SW Washington area. The group hosts monthly meetings providing presentation, discussion, and educational opportunities and focuses on materializing an annual Open Source GIS unconference.

Objectives
Monthly Meetings, usually totaling 10/year:
 * Presentations (Application and Technical)
 * Chapter business
 * Social gathering

Regional Events:
 * Open Source GIS unconference
 * Conference participation

Communication:
 * Mailing List
 * Wiki Development
 * Monthly meetings

Legal Status:
 * No real independent legal structure.
 * No real capacity to independently hold funds in other than ad hoc informal manner.
 * Affiliations with OSGeo and ORURISA help us with some of the tasks that require legal recognition as an independent entity.
 * There are currently no plans to seek any independent legal structure in the future.

Annual Reports

 * 2012
 * 2011
 * 2010

Getting Involved
The PDX-OSGeo Local Chapter is a flexible organization, join us and help steer.

Membership
Anyone who wants to help support our mission is free to become a member. List yourself on the PDX-OSGEO Member Page and you're in!

Mailing List
Please join our mailing list to make sure that you know what's going on. Sign up and participate (or just lurk for a while). We have two main lists:


 * For general discussion and announcements: http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-osgeo You do need to answer the questions (what is your favorite map and something else I think) to the extent needed to demonstrate that you are a person and have the minimal amount of GEO knowledge to not be a random spammer.
 * For planning upcoming meetings (open to all participants): http://lists.pdxosgeo.org/sympa/info/planners

IRC
We can be found on irc://irc.freenode.net/#osgeo-pdx when there is something to discuss.

Leadership
To the extent that we think that we need leadership, it is Percy. Mostly we expect everyone to step up and help on most tasks resulting in a light load for all.

How To Write WIKI
Check out WikiPedia, where else. This is a great resource for many wiki writing tips
 * How to Write Wiki

Event Set Up
Event set up notes.

SPRING GIS
SPRING is a state-of-the-art GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment. SPRING is a product of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE/DPI (Image Processing Division)...

SPRING GIS documentation

USDA - NRCS SSURGO Soil Database Migration to PostgreSQL
An example of how to get SURGO soils data into a PostgreSQL database on a GNU/Linux-based OS.

|USDA - NRCS SSURGO Soil Database Migration to PostgreSQL

The top seven alternatives to the Google Maps API
Wm Leler of the PDX-OSGeo presented this topic and Net Magazine requested that he write it up at http://www.netmagazine.com/features/top-seven-alternatives-google-maps-api Article date: 2012-06-18.

Other useful links

 * GIS Stack Exchange for any GIS question for any software
 * Slash Geo
 * Planet OSGeo

Acknowledgments
Thanks to various OSGeo local chapters and other wiki contributors whose work we borrowed and particularly CUGOS.