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After the great suggestion in this post about having someone from GIS.SE on the Stack Exchange podcast, I wanted to check in with the GIS community to see who you thought might be a good guest to come on the podcast?

Please submit names (either your own or someone else's) as individual answers and then vote them up so we can see who is the most popular

Thanks! -"Producer Alex"

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  • 3
    Could you clarify if you want GIS.SE people only? Or any old GIS figure?
    – Sean
    Jul 28, 2011 at 1:11
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    @sean - I'm open to non GIS.SE folks but definitely have a strong preference for someone who is already part of the community and knows about us Jul 28, 2011 at 15:43

10 Answers 10

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whuber

It would be interesting to hear from whuber. His answers have a depth of knowledge that's rare and he seems to put a lot of thought into how he answers, comments and moderates.

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    Double that one. He focuses on imparting knowledge and will impart a rant when a software vendor provides impediments to that end.
    – user681
    Jul 27, 2011 at 20:38
  • Agreed- main reasons already mentioned!
    – mapoholic
    Jul 29, 2011 at 7:52
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    I'm frankly shocked to appear in a list with people like Warmerdam, Neteler, et al. I'm not in the trenches developing GIS software (anymore) and my limited knowledge of Web mapping is probably surpassed by the majority of our community here. I love GIS because it provides tools for discovery. Many of them work invisibly behind the map, as it were, supplementing and quantifying what we can learn by looking at the map. To that end, we deserve tools that work efficiently and correctly. (But if you get me talking about that, it might get me in trouble with certain tool vendors...)
    – whuber
    Aug 3, 2011 at 14:48
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    @whuber, certain vendors need a good talking to :) You deserve to be on here for your contributions to GIS.SE and the fact that you know more than just where the right toolbox is.
    – Sean
    Aug 3, 2011 at 15:00
  • +1 for Whuber :) Oct 5, 2011 at 17:28
  • I remember you helping me out 10 years ago on the ESRI forums, (I think it was Avenue scripting) - youre a star! Helped me loads.
    – Vidar
    Oct 19, 2011 at 19:01
  • I'm fairly new to the site, but within a short time period I have come to understand whuber as one of the most committed members to the site. His GIS knowledge is quite expansive and is easily noticable by him posting on a large variety of topics. He helps us find answers, but more importantly, he imparts wisdom.
    – dchaboya
    Jan 18, 2012 at 20:20
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It's hard to pick just one, how about a panel? :grin:

That said, I'd like to hear more from Underdark. In my city the male/female split of GIS colleagues is close to 50/50, perhaps even 60/40 in favour of women. Yet the representation online in the communities I've participated in is more like 1/99. So I'd like to hear from more from this segment. This isn't a request for Underdark to talk about being a woman in a male dominated community, unless that what she would like to talk about. Rather an opportunity to give voice to a perspective we perhaps don't hear so much from. (and who better to bring it out from under the cover of darkness?)

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    FWIW, the actual representation of women among the recently most active people at GIS.SE is a slightly less extreme 4/72. Where are the other 68 women who would bring that up to 50:50? Good question...
    – whuber
    Jul 26, 2011 at 16:37
  • 50/50 at work - more 70/30 women/men in the CAD dept...
    – Mapperz Mod
    Jul 26, 2011 at 17:45
  • I see from your recent edit that your experience has improved an order of magnitude, from 1/999 to 1/99, in just a month. At that rate, in two more months you will be at 50/50 and by the end of the year all the guys will be gone :-).
    – whuber
    Aug 31, 2011 at 20:48
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    @whuber my experience is about the same, but my willingness to set aside hyperbole has increased, prompted in no small part by being presented with actual data by yours truly. :) It annoys me when my kids say "that never or always happens!" when they really mean something quite different. And here I was doing the same. I guess I know where they get it from... Aug 31, 2011 at 21:20
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It would be great to hear an interview with Frank Warmerdam - creator of GDAL which is used in everything from MapServer, QGIS and GeoServer to ArcMap, Google Earth and FME.

He's also built up the opensource GIS communities over the last 10-15 years culminating in OSGeo, and has recently moved into a role at Google.

All of which would make for interesting discussion.

However I'm not sure if he's on this site - I thought I saw some answers from him, but can no longer seem to find them.

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    He's one of the most important OSS GIS developers out there but I think someone active on GIS.SE would be a better choice. It is for a Stack Exchange podcast after all. (Though, I would like to hear him interviewed in some forum.)
    – Sean
    Jul 28, 2011 at 0:48
  • @Sean - yes I wasn't completely sure if they had to be on GIS.SE or not. If not then big Jack must surely be added to the list. Jul 28, 2011 at 8:28
  • Just found Frank's profile here - gis.stackexchange.com/users/2463/frank-warmerdam not sure if that would class as "active" or not Jul 28, 2011 at 8:32
  • I always think of Frank with great respect and would appreciate an opportunity to hear more about him, such as his motivation, aims, successes, dreams for the future, and so on.
    – whuber
    Aug 3, 2011 at 14:40
  • He joined us for our yearly OSGeo CA chapter meeting a couple of weekends ago.I can ping him and ask him if he wants to do it - let me know :) Nov 1, 2011 at 3:06
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Paul Ramsey, co-founder of PostGIS and founding Member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. His blog is here. A podcast on spatial databases may also have a wide appeal for StackOverflow listeners.

He's on GIS.SE too!

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I would like to suggest James Fee from the Spatially Adjusted Blog. In addition to being a member of GIS.SE, he is the Chief Evangelist for WeoGeo, creator of Planet Geospatial.

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  • Apparently my suggestion deserved a down vote :(
    – dkroy
    Jul 28, 2011 at 5:24
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    That was me. Don't be offended. I also downvoted geographika's suggestion of Frank Warmerdam for the same reason. I prefer someone more active on GIS.SE. Though James Fee is somewhat active. He's not as big a force here as Mapperz, Underdark, matt wilkie, etc. And he has his own blog where I already get to read his opinions (usually very insightful, too).
    – Sean
    Jul 28, 2011 at 12:29
  • Ah alrighty that makes sense
    – dkroy
    Jul 28, 2011 at 22:45
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    I wanted to make an additional comment, I wanted to hear him on the podcast is because I listened to a few of his presentations from ESRI's website where they host videos of presentations taken at some of the cons. He was one of the most interesting presenters to listen to and mixed in plenty of comedy with knowledge of the subject. That is why I thought he would be one of the people that I would like to hear on the podcast, that and he would just be fun to listen to.
    – dkroy
    Jul 29, 2011 at 2:46
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Markus Neteler

One of the forces behind GRASS and Sol Katz Award winner is active on GIS.SE.

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Sean Gillies is a user on GIS.SE. Creator of Shapely and involved in pretty much every Python based OS Geo project there is. Would be interested in his thoughts on ArcPy, web standards, and all things Python.

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Brian Flood, developer of Arc2Earth.

It might be interesting to get Brian and some other folks into a panel discussing Cloud GIS Interoperability.

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Mark Ireland... (yes, I am a Safe/FME user)

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Christopher Schmidt, another GIS.SE user, and one of the key OpenLayers developers.

An interview on all things web-mapping would be great. Judging by some blog posts there'd be some controversy and strong views too making for a great podcast.

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