Mapping / GIS - a job?

[john_p]

Couldn't resist the pun

Can someone tell me what sort of GIS roles exist (specifically within software/web development). From first glance it seems quite interesting, and something I'd like to investigate further, but am curious to see how it can be applied by businesses.

[Ordinary_Chap]

john_p said:

Couldn't resist the pun

Can someone tell me what sort of GIS roles exist (specifically within software/web development). From first glance it seems quite interesting, and something I'd like to investigate further, but am curious to see how it can be applied by businesses.

There's quite a few jobs out there in the sector.

Lots of council's and other government bodies has GIS departments, also lots of companies doing the GIS work.

[GHW]

The big oil companies spend *tons* on GIS for oil exploration.

[oldbanger]

Councils, emergency services, forestry, environmental impact/planning, population ecology, transport planning, anywhere where there is a geospatial component to resource planning

[oldbanger]

If you're after a UK job in GIS software development, it might be worth checking out the following companies:
http://www.northgate-is.com/
http://www.mapinfo.co.uk/

[ewenm]

TfL and the Home Office are spending quite a lot on this sort of thing at the moment (road charging )

[Dupont666]

anyone ogt any links to companies that are taking graduates on?

My OH is just about finished her masters in geographical something or other that involves a lot of GIS... So I would like to assist her.

Nothing oil exploration based please, would prefer something environmental or a company that helps save the planet... Before you say anything, yes I know!!

[DrTre]

Many many sectors use GIS/LBS and most increasingly so. Oil and gas use it but more so rely on specialised geotechnical products by the likes of Landmark and Schlumberger.

OP, get your laughing gear around ArcObjects for ESRI (the Microsoft of the GIS world), or open source things like MapGuide, MapServer, OpenLayers, WorldMap, (OGC is the place for the open source stuff) etc etc.

An idea of skills (and I daresay a cakewalk for most developers):
http://www.careerjet.co.uk/search/jobs?s=gis+devel...

Well known vendors are 1Spatial, ESRI, Mapinfo (pitney bowes now), Intergraph, CadCorp, Innogistic, Bentley, Autodesk but there are many many more players that use those tools to create bespoke solutions.

DP666, your OH should register with the likes of Allen & Yorke, Open Spaces and have a shufty around the ENDS website and IMEA or gis-jobs @ jiscmail for recruitment, edie.net for company names, plus the usual places . Earthworks is another good one.

Edited by DrTre on Monday 6th July 22:06

[zac510]

This stuff is university graduate these days (or at least it was when I studied it at uni 10 years ago!)

There were a few old boys in the field that had adapted from paper back then but I can't imagine these days that many people enter at a high level without a degree?

[john_p]

DrTre said:

Many many sectors use GIS/LBS and most increasingly so. Oil and gas use it but more so rely on specialised geotechnical products by the likes of Landmark and Schlumberger.

OP, get your laughing gear around ArcObjects for ESRI (the Microsoft of the GIS world), or open source things like MapGuide, MapServer, OpenLayers, WorldMap, (OGC is the place for the open source stuff) etc etc.

Well known vendors are 1Spatial, ESRI, Mapinfo (pitney bowes now), Intergraph, CadCorp, Innogistic, Bentley, Autodesk but there are many many more players that use those tools to create bespoke solutions.

Thanks for this, really useful, ArcObjects Javascript looks amazing in what it can do. I will definitely investigate further. I'd love to set up my own thing in this field; *goes off to think about ideas*

[DrTre]

This is a useful industry site http://www.directionsmag.com/

and in the UK http://www.agi.org.uk/

james fees blog is top notch for ESRI stuff.

Drop me a line if you need anything else, certainly there's a lot of opportunity and while I'm not a developer I'm toying with doing something similar to you so...

Edited by DrTre on Monday 6th July 23:29

[The Contrarian]

Dupont666 said:

anyone ogt any links to companies that are taking graduates on?

My OH is just about finished her masters in geographical something or other that involves a lot of GIS... So I would like to assist her.

Nothing oil exploration based please, would prefer something environmental or a company that helps save the planet... Before you say anything, yes I know!!

Save the planet? From what? Should I be worried?

[john_p]

Picking this up again, definitely a career I want to get into but without any formal qualification I don't think my web development background quite fits, certainly in today's market.

I think I could get onto a postgrad MSc course at Kingston in Geographical Information Systems:

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/pggeographicalinformatio...

Anyone know how useful a degree like this would be in the industry?

[DrTre]

It's always useful to know the background and Kingston is a good course. Distance learning too IIRC?

Depending on your level of web dev I'd have thought you'd be fine for moving into it from flat, the geoprocessing tools (like ArcObjects) are just extra functional add-ons

I used to work for a GIS software vendor and most people on the dev side hadn't done geo stuff before, just extrapolated what they already knew into the geoprocessing context.

Don't particularly like to promote them but there's some ESRI specific courses online:
http://training.esri.com/gateway/index.cfm

Unless you're looking at coming at it from knowing the entire background of data models, structures, uses, geomatics, functionality etc in which case, yeah a Masters gives you a good grounding in all of that.

Edited by DrTre on Monday 20th July 15:41

[john_p]

Yes, it is distance learning. I'm tempted to do it even outside of a my current career path - I'd find it interesting and Kingston is quite close, so if I did want to do a full-time component it wouldn't be an issue. I still have to get a good handle on the jobs out there, would rather set my own thing up, but still searching for that elusive idea nobody's thought of yet

[DrTre]

john_p said:

I still have to get a good handle on the jobs out there, would rather set my own thing up, but still searching for that elusive idea nobody's thought of yet

Good luck with that, it's an insanely rapidly changing environment at the moment. There are a number of ways I can think of improving the online area, particularly with it now going "cloud" but they're all held back by data ownership/metadata.

In fact, the biggest factor holding things back in pretty much all of it (IMO) is data, both access to it and cost of it once you've found it.

You might want to start with some of the basic course textbooks by the likes of Goodchild & Rhind and other people. They're certainly enough to get you into the ideas behind structures, topology etc etc.

[john_p]

Yes, I noticed that. I had a great idea for a website, but it needed the OS map data as a base; easy enough to implement, but reading their terms and conditions, it has something along the lines of "any data you create from the use of our data belongs to us"

So, commercially, a bit of a non-starter then! At least nonprofit sites can make use of it. Hopefully the open-source mapping stuff will come up to speed one day.

Cheers for your help on this.

[DrTre]

john_p said:

Yes, I noticed that. I had a great idea for a website, but it needed the OS map data as a base; easy enough to implement, but reading their terms and conditions, it has something along the lines of "any data you create from the use of our data belongs to us"

So, commercially, a bit of a non-starter then! At least nonprofit sites can make use of it. Hopefully the open-source mapping stuff will come up to speed one day.

Cheers for your help on this.

A friend used to work for them in "sales" and constantly bleated about how it was so difficult for them...oh yeah, really difficult: No targets, funded by the tax payer, pretty much monopoly on UK data (at the time, thankfully things are changing), selling products that have recouped their ROI aeons ago...smallest violin in the world playing for her at the time...

You actually read and understood their T&Cs?! Credit to you just for that. As for their take on "derived data", I wish they'd do us all a favour and fk off.

Don't get me started on the OS

Hopefully OpenStreetMap will get impetus.

Oh, and support this initiative too:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/free-our-data

The more you read and know about the Ordnance Stasi the less you like them.

No probs, go for it!