OSGeo Jobs List

March 5th, 2008 · 17 Comments · OSGeo, Open Source

Looks like the OSGeo Jobs email list is needing some help.

As of today, still only one job is being offered — surely there are
more out there that people should be made aware of?!

I already posted about my thoughts on the email list so I won’t go over them again, but even I’m amazed that there is this little interest in the email list.

Tilting at Windmills - A jobs email list won’t grow the open source community as much as good case studies would.

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17 responses so far ↓

1 Sean Gillies // Mar 5, 2008 at 12:22 pm

I’m with you, James. Rightly or wrongly, this can make OSGeo look like a ghetto. Better to put job announcements on bigger boards and proudly highlight OPEN SOURCE 4EVER!.

(Yay for the blink tag)
2 Sean Gillies // Mar 5, 2008 at 12:28 pm

bummer, blink only works in preview.
3 David // Mar 5, 2008 at 1:24 pm

Why do you feel that case studies are important James?
4 James Fee // Mar 5, 2008 at 1:32 pm

David, a day doesn’t go by where I’m not asked by someone if there are any case studies for the use of open source GIS in “XXXX”. I usually point them toward the PostGIS case studies, but I usually get a “thanks anyway” response.

There are folks who want to bring open source into their businesses, but they need ammunition to do so. Nice case studies are always good to have when trying to get buy in for open source. Email lists and wikis are nice, but the folks that seem to email me about either don’t understand, are intimidated or can’t be bothered to register for the email list and ask such questions.

I’m not a member of OSGeo so what they do is their own business, but they have to be getting the same feedback that I’m getting on case studies. Of course the last thing anyone wants to write are case studies, they are painful, but at some point you have to commit to doing them.
5 Lefty // Mar 5, 2008 at 1:43 pm

I liked your “low hanging fruit” anology from before. Setting up wiki’s and email lists is easy.

To paraphrase JFK:

…we choose to write case studies and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone…

If you can’t rally around that, I’m not sure what you can rally around
6 DQ // Mar 5, 2008 at 2:08 pm

Don Quijote de la Mancha ROCKS !
7 Bill // Mar 5, 2008 at 4:24 pm

And that one job posting mentions ESRI skills, not OSGEO…
8 artlembo // Mar 5, 2008 at 6:33 pm

James, I agree with your last post. So, we have been trying to fill that void in a somewhat agnostic way.

In addition to the nVidia mult-processor stuff I have my students doing (referenced in another posting), I am also running a special topics class comparing Oracle Express, SQLServer 2008 Express, and PostGRES/PostGIS. The syllabus is here:

http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~ajlembo/415/415.html

there are some minor changes to the syllabus, as we are not looking at IBM DB2 Express, and won’t bother with images.

I’m hoping that we have a result similar to the “How do I do that is ArcGIS/Manifold” document from a few years back.

I’ll keep people up to date on the progress.
9 Andrew de klerk // Mar 5, 2008 at 11:34 pm

James, I get your sentiment, and as already mentioned, case studies are the last on people’s minds. Fact is that there are a lot of commercial applications making use of os software, but not case studies to back them up. Whereis is an example.

Perhaps someone attending Foss4g 2008 would like to tackle presenting a paper on the use of OS software in commercial applications, that focuses on all the major products. We intend to present a paper on the use of OS software to assist in sustainable development planning in rural areas.

I look forward to a comparison of the major SDBMS, which would go far in persuading clients that they fo not neccessarily need to shell out the big bucks for Oracle.
10 James // Mar 6, 2008 at 6:29 am

Open source can produce some very neat results. We’ve used it on our website (www.surreyheath.gov.uk) to run an application called ‘My Surrey Heath’. The app utilises PostGIS, OGR tools and MapServer. We do also use Oracle here but I’m thinking of migrating all the rest of our spatial stuff to PostGIS.
11 joesonic // Mar 6, 2008 at 10:06 am

Open Source can produce jobs. I think this is true for the GIS industry as well. I hope also in Europe there will be a higher awareness about open source GIS projects.
12 James Fee // Mar 6, 2008 at 10:29 am

joesonic: I’m pretty sure there are tons of “open source” GIS jobs out there. So many companies work in a hybrid situation where there is proprietary and open source working together.

That doesn’t mean there needs to be an email list for open source GIS jobs.
13 joesonic // Mar 6, 2008 at 2:36 pm

@ James Fee: Yes, I think that’s right. (There are also great business models for open source.)
I only hope the great work for example of OSgeo will be known more widely. Of course this can be done without an email list for open source GIS jobs.
14 AnonyMousey // Mar 7, 2008 at 8:35 am

How about mirroring the list on a web page with an RSS feed, so I can add that next to my other GIS jobs RSS box?
15 timmy // Mar 7, 2008 at 8:48 am

This thread got me thinking about the open source discussion again… but this time in the context of market demand of staff skills. I ran queries in the usual suspects sites (i.e. monster, hotjobs, dice, simply hired, et) with OS key words (i.e. postgis, qgis, openlayers, featureserver, grass, et) and vendor product keywords (i.e. arc(whatever), manifold, autodeskmap, small world, oracle spatial, et) to get a sense things and found the results very interesting. I’m not so naïve as to think that this is remotely scientific but it is of anecdotal interest. I’m not trying to make a point, which is why I’m not summarizing the results, rather I’m more interested in how others might interpret the results should they try it themselves.
16 Ken // Mar 7, 2008 at 9:33 am

I tried searching the job sites myself and now I wonder if my anecdotal experience matches yours.
17 Gary // Mar 7, 2008 at 10:08 am

@timmy/@Ken
Ah come on - tell us