Fed Geo day 2013

On a last minute whim, I decided to spend the day with 200 other geospatial enthusiasts in DC @fedgeoday.... and came away totally pumped.  Hosted in the Woolly Mammoth Theatre, I was initially enticed by the description, which read:"Open source applications are changing GIS, cartography, web mapping, and map publishing, throwing open the door of what's possible in geo. This one day conference will introduce you to these tools, show you what you can do with them, and walk through how and why government agencies are using them to dramatically improve their mapping, cartography, and GIS projects." How could I resist? Map Box, Tile Mill, CartoDB, OpenStreetMap, PostGIS, Open Geo... all of these progressive thinkers and creators in one place? Count me in.  

As I continue to dive deeper into the world that is geospatial, it is becoming more and more apparent that open source is the future... and today just reinforced this belief. Its faster, cheaper, and most importantly there is growing opportunity. In the near future, gone will be the day that a GIS Specialist sits in her office wishing for datasets to magically appear in her inbox, nicely organized as shapefiles... with metadata! Through the hard work of the OS community, data is becoming more accessible and visualizations easier to develop. With pared down processing and back-end development, people can map and visualize simply and sustainably. I can't think of any industry or organization whom this cannot benefit.  Bottom line, I'm glad I spent MARC fare and joined the fun. I met many wonderful people today, and I'm extremely excited to play a larger role in the Open Source world. Oh - and I think I saw about 15 or 20 other women there! Rock on ladies.