PostGIS Day 2021 Highlights

Saturday, December 18. 2021

I think the best talk of all was Rhys Stewart Hurricane Prediction Accuracy Analysis Using the PRAM Stack. I had no idea what PRAM stood for before this talk; now I feel well-informed. Rhys talk was jammed with lots of PostgreSQL and PostGIS gymnastic code interspersed with humor in a 30 minute presentation.

I hate talking about myself, but I'll make an exception: I demonstrated PostGIS extensions with words. It was one of those talks I had prepared for over a week, only to throw it in the garbage at the last minute cause it was putting me to sleep. So I took inspiration from Bruce Rindahl and voila PostGIS extensions in words. Martin did an even more pretty picture talk showing use of SVG with PostGIS. Martin's had colors and lots of code.

One of the only down moments of the conference was when Bruce Rindahl had an internet storm and was unable to present, but luckily Elizabeth Christensen saved the day by recording him after and asking questions that no attender would be clever enough to ask. I walked away amazed how any one can use so much PostGIS functionality in real work. It was an informative talk with some code and show-casing the many ways PostGIS in conjunction with mapping tools is used to solve real-world problems.

A unique use of PostGIS was Tom Kazimiers talk on using PostGIS and CATMAID for modeling neurons in the brain. Lots of use of 3D geometries and more code. My only disappointment was not seeing pgRouting in there, as I've always thought pgRouting would be a perfect fit for this kind of thing. Perhaps this is a sign of improvements needed to pgRouting or more instruction on how to use it. More exploration is needed, which I hope to touch on in upcoming sequel of pgRouting: A Practical Guide.

I thought we would be in for more excitement when it seemed Paul Ramsey would be forced to present live, only to be disappointed when he found a way to present his pre-recorded presentation.