Of course if I was doing any cartography, I would be using ArcGIS or QGIS much more, but that’s not what I do anymore (I probably haven’t made a map since 2008). Regardless, it is nice to work with FME again on a regular basis.
As I ease back into geospatial, I’m taken aback a bit at how pervasive ArcGIS Online is. I find much of what we do either has ArcGIS Online as an input or an output. Of course it doesn’t always work due to requirements of data or features, but that seems to be how many organization think about sharing geospatial data. I could pretend to be outraged at data in a proprietary cloud service, but I’m honestly not. The biggest need these days is collaborating around data. I
wrote about this extensively earlier this year so read up on my thoughts there.
It isn’t my job to determine winners and losers in this space, nor am I religions about open software or data. I’ve become much more pragmatic in my old(er) age about workflows and strategic choices companies make. If ArcGIS Online makes it easier to share data, who am I to judge? Anyway, it allows me to do my job quicker and faster so that’s a win for the customer anyway. I’m fighting to get data from a SFTP site as I’m writing this and let me tell you, it just isn’t worth it.
Have a wonderful week everyone and feel free to respond to this email and let me know your thoughts.
Go Giants!
