Why Rasters Revealed?

Rasters Revealed is being hosted by Geoger Ltd in Oxford on 21st Feb 2017. Geoger Ltd is a small consultancy comprised of me, Alastair Graham  (the director and currently the sole employee). I’ve been asked by a few people why I am organising this meeting.

The primary drive for organising Rasters Revealed is to put on a meeting that I would want to go to.

I’ve  noticed that a lot of the meetings that I attend are usually themed around specific market sectors, and whilst there’s no problem with this the presentations do tend to coalesce around the same topics. But as a scientist and consultant, I need to understand (and am interested in) a variety of skills and techniques and use-cases around the data that I use. As someone with an environmental data and remote sensing back ground I have mainly focussed on raster data.

As many of you will know, this is a hugely diverse topic. I agree!

However, I think that a greater sharing of data generation, data management, data dissemination and data processing methods is needed across all of the market sectors and commercial and academic disciplines. The plan is to attract speakers from a range of backgrounds and to get people talking about how they currently handle raster data and what could be done differently.

This meeting is for you if you: develop software for processing raster data; or store and manage TB of raster data; or have issues moving these data across networks; or use raster data on a daily basis; or are looking to start using raster data; are a proprietary data or software provider; or are a proponent and supplier of open raster data and associated software; or use rasters in terrestrial environments; or are interested in elevation; or use marine-based or atmospheric raster data; or do a myriad other things linked to rasters.

The point is, this meeting will be a way of highlighting and sharing your experiences, as well as learning from other that might help you use raster data more effectively.  Come and learn about new methods and techniques, and make new contacts. I hope to see you in Oxford very soon!

 

 

Accommodation options

Although Rasters Revealed is a one-day meeting, you might want to make more of your trip to this historic city and stay for a couple of days. To help you do this, here are a few options for places you might want to try for overnight accommodation. 

There are two hostels close to the railway and centre of town:

Failing that, you here’s a list of some more options:

Hope you find something!

Call for Presentations

From the responses to the Survey of Wants (which will remain open until December, so if you have a view on specific topics you’d like included then make sure you have your say) it is clear that a mix of talks and workshops is favoured.

As such, the Call for Presentations is asking for speakers and providers of both types of content delivery.

Please use this online form…

…to register your willingness to provide either a talk or a workshop. If you’d like to offer more than one talk or workshop, or a mix of the two, then you’ll need to fill in the form separately for each.

The deadline for entries is December 21st 2016.

The topics can be proposed at any level from novice to advanced audiences, and can be on any topic to do with creating, managing, analysing and disseminating spatial raster data. This doesn’t need to be confined to terrestrial systems, and can include planetary data, bathymetry, atmospheric model data to name a few.

As a guide, workshops will need to be designed for up to 15-20 people who will be required to bring their own laptops. The need for any data or software that should be downloaded prior to the workshop can be communicated through the Rasters Revealed website in advance by the organiser.

Venue & Date

The inaugural Rasters Revealed will be held on:

Tuesday 21st February 2017

at

Worcester College, Oxford

 

Worcester College is a wonderful venue with a mix of modern buildings and teaching spaces as well as Georgian and medieval architecture. Worcester College (1714) lies on the site of Gloucester College (1283) which was founded by the Benedictine Abbey of St Peter at Gloucester as a place of study for monks. The dissolution of the monasteries also led to the closure of Gloucester College, but buildings from this period remain inside the current College grounds. The buildings went through various owners and uses over the next few centuries before being re-founded as Worcester College. Worcester is close to the centre of Oxford today, but has extensive gardens and grounds that are worth taking in if the weather is favourable and which are as much of an attraction for visitors as the architecture.

Survey of Wants!

It’s been very interesting seeing the responses to the initial ‘Survey of Wants’ come flowing in. The graphics in this post provide a summary of just a couple of the questions that were asked.

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The organisation is well underway and more will be announced soon in terms of the venue and date of the meeting, as well as information on a call for presentations and details on registration.

In the meantime, please spread the word amongst your contacts that use raster data or want to find out more about the data format and how it is being implemented.

What is Rasters Revealed?

The plan is to put on a one-day meeting called Rasters Revealed in February 2017. This meeting will focus on the use of geospatial raster data of all kinds as well as how it is managed, distributed, processed and analysed. Linked to this will be issues around what raster-centric software is used to complete these tasks, as well as consideration of open data and free and open source software.

There has already been a large amount of interest from a range of users of geographic raster information. The meeting is being hosted by Alastair Graham of Geoger Ltd. Updates will be made on the meeting through this website, and registration is planned to open in November 2016.

In the meantime you can use the hashtag #rastersrev to discuss on Twitter. See you at the meeting!

Have your say!

Have your say on how the day pans out, by completing this short survey:  https://goo.gl/forms/2vr65BNxsp0rqcny2

It’s only 7 questions, but it will help clarify exactly what potential attendees will want from the day, given that the topic of raster data handling, management and analysis is potentially so broad.

The idea is to try and make the meeting as inclusive as possible, so that new friendships can be forged and new opportunities explored whilst we all learn something new about the use of rasters in geography.