Instructor, GIS/ Data Geek, Photographer, consultant
This is a small sample of a species diversity map that's an end product of our models. This was created by overlaying 88,000+ shapefiles and represents the number of species potentially present in each cell. Red is low, dark blue and purple are high (over 8,000 species per cell).
I’ve seen some forum posts recently from folks wanting to know how to learn GIS, and many of the responses have had fairly typical information. So, this got me thinking about my own path to learning GIS and the atypical ideas and skills I learned and developed along the way that helped me excel in the industry. So, here is a rather lengthy discussion of how I got into GIS, what I did to set myself above the pack and what recommendations I give to aspiring GIS students.
When Micosoft announced that SQL Server 2008 would include spatial data types I was excited. I've been a SQL Server user for a long time and have always preferred its management interface over those of the other DBMS I've tried. So the idea of spatial data types was exciting. Though there weren't many tools out there to... Continue Reading →
John Donoghue 