What?

Our first OSGEO local chapter meet up! We will chew the cud, show you some cool stuff and start to get people familiar with the brilliant FOSS GeoSpatial products out there!

We'll go through installing some software and getting it to a point where you can have fun with it.

How Much?

There will be a door charge of R50 to cover costs & refreshments. That and an open mind are all you need to bring. If you're staying for the QGIS session in the afternoon you can bring your laptop (Windows, Linux or Mac!)

Where?

St Davids Marist Inanda College
36 Rivonia Rd
Inanda
Sandton

Map and Directions

NB: We'll be in the Prep School computer lab.

When?

November 29th
Presentation and workshop segment: 9am to 12pm
QGIS Bug Party! 12h30 onwards

Who

Your friendly presenters for the day will be:

Tim Sutton (tim at linfiniti.com) - QGIS hacker and FOSS GIS junkie extraordinaire. Tim eats Weetbix for breakfast because it sounds like Linux. He once rewrote Nkosi Sikelela in C++ because he was feeling patriotic.
Graeme McFerren - (graeme.mcferren at gmail.com) - GIS researcher and FOSS4G user. Mmm, aspire to be like Tim then.
Gavin Fleming (gavinjfleming at gmail.com) - I enjoy my daily FOSS4G fix and telling people how great it was. I'm a 'geoinformation scientist' at Mintek and love to see cutting edge and useful geospatial applications emerging.
Brendon Wolff-Piggott - (brendon at integratedgeodata.co.za) - Water resources consultant and FOSS GIS enthusiast. I wish there were more hours in the day to keep up with FOSS4G.

Presentation and workshop segment

Install PostgreSQL and PostGIS : Gavin

create user account
create a database
load the bits that finish off the PostGIS setup (plpgsql, lwpostgis, spatial_ref_sys)
use shp2pgsql to load a shapefile into PostGIS
perform some basic spatial queries
show inserting geometries
show extracting geometries

Install geoserver : Graeme

install java 1.6 from apt
grab standalone GeoServer binary
extract to opt
export JAVA_HOME=/usr
start geoserver
create a datastore
create a couple of feature types using PostGIS backend
create a WMS layergroup with a few layers
demonstrate the result in geoserver's openlayers browser

Install uDig : Gavin

Connect to GeoServer WFS
create nice styling (SLD) for layer
paste into geoserver and reload

Install QGIS : Brendon

Pull in WMS layer from geoserver
Pull up postgis layer
Demonstrate editing and topological editing
Demonstrate thematic mapping options
Demonstrate attribute actions
Demonstrate plugin manager

QGIS Bug Party

As a preview release there are still various bugs that need resolving and various elements (e.g. translation) that may be incomplete. On Saturday the 29th in Johannesburg, South Africa, members from the Africa OSGEO chapter will be holding a QGIS Bug Hunt Party. We would like to invite people from around the world to virtually participate. Each person attending will get a free copy of QGIS 1.0.0 Preview 2 absolutely free of charge! Sorry no shrink wrap copies available. Preview 2 is the second in a series of preview releases we are making before we release the Stable QGIS 1.0.0 with long term support. We are going to great lengths to polish up QGIS 1.0 for you (inside and out) and we really appreciate all the feedback we have received thus far. Its virtually impossible to ship any software completely bug free, but with your help we can add just a little more shine to the polish! We need your help to:

test on different machine configurations (bring your laptops!)
validate existing bugs on each platform
mark bugs that can no longer be replicated as ready for closure
create new tickets for bugs that have not been reported yet (please search first to avoid posting duplicates!)
mark bugs that are duplicates
provide additional diagnostics so that developers can replicate issues

The idea is not to try to *fix* the bugs, but rather to do a QA session on the bugs in the bug tracker. In the process you will learn how to interact with an Open Source project the Right Way i.e. filing good quality bug reports.

I will start off with a simple show and tell covering:

where to find the QGIS (and other OSGEO projects bug tracking sites)
creating an account so you can file non-anonymous bugs and feedback on any OSGEO project bug tracker
how the bug tracking system works - what the various input fields in the QGIS tracker mean

The approach will be to start by going through any bugs that have not been revised recently, adding additional status information. If you think the bug is fixed, add a comment:

Works for me now, recommend closure, <Your Name>

If you can replicate the bug, add a comment like:

Can replicate, OS: Ubuntu 8.10, QGIS Preview 2, <Your Name>

Use your initiative to deal with tickets that don't fit into the categories above, following a similar approach.

After that I will turn you loose on the queue and a shiny copy of QGIS preview 2 and let you have at it. Party is over when the last man falls asleep at the keyboard! Ok probably we will finish at between 4:30pm and 5pm if my wife has anything to do with it!

We look forward to seeing you at the QGIS Bug Party!!!

AfricaEvents29November2008

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