Should I Pay or Should I Go? Discussion on GIS Software
Today I will be attending the ESRI GIS and Education Conference in Toronto, Canada. ESRI is a GIS software company that has many useful online and desktop applications and has had a strong hold on the general GIS community as one of the go to "do it all" platforms. The software combinations cover a spectrum of use cases from creation of simple maps for beginners, statistical spatial analysis using Python code called ArcPy, all the way to 3D generation of city landscapes to be used in VR; however, the ease and convenience of ESRI software does come at a cost, a significant cost. It would be unreasonable to assume that any individual would be able to have their own private account of they are a budding GIS analyst. Instead non working-fresh out of school analysts have to latch on to any free trials that may be offered.
Free alternatives to ESRI products
Personally, I am a supporter of open source software and have been so since the day I realized my 'free' ESRI software would be gone the minute I finished my degree. This is how ESRI is able to suck in the mass of consumers, by giving student licences to schools at a significant discount to the point where it is almost impossible to find a collage or university program that does not require its use. Alternatives to ESRI software can be less convenient but do offer similar, if not the same or better, options.
- Want to make a nice map for a poster (among many other uses essentially doing everything that ArcMap can do) ? Try QGIS
- Need to run large sets of data for spatial statistics? Try the plethora of packages in R
- Need to render UAV imagery into a single orthomosaic? Try DroneMapper
- How about 3D UAV imagery? Try OpenDroneMap
Why am I going to this conference?
Although the anti-capitalist rebel in me wishes to run away as fast as possible from this conference, there are a few good reasons I feel to justify attending.
- I'm going for free
- This is is a big hurdle that no longer exists due to the cost being covered by my employer.
- R-Arc Bridge
- I will be attending a tutorial seminar on implementing the R inside of ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro called R-Arc Bridge. I am hoping to come out of this session with some cool tricks I can share with users who may want to dabble into GIS coding while having the comfort of ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro.
- Networking
- As a GIS analyst at any level, it is crucial to continuously build on your professional network in order to increase the odds of finding that ever elusive job. I am currently a graduate student and would like to have a position lined up by the end of my degree in 2019. To do this I need to start laying the foundations now for future prospects. Conferences are a great way to do this.
Final thoughts
I will spend the day trying to learn as much as possible and report back to the Steemit GIS community (all ~4 of us). Please leave a comments or questions you have about anything to do with GIS software in general or with ESRI products. I hope that there can be some good development of the GIS community on Steem in the days to come!
While ESRI makes some great software, the price tag is not practical for individual use. I didn't bother learning anything else until I no longer had access to Arc, but fortunately QGIS makes the transition extremely easy. Most QGIS installations also come with a program called GrassGIS which operates in a different way but has some additional features.
I definitely think it is wise to attend the free conference, learn everything you can, and network. Even if you stop using Arc once you are finished with school, the concepts that you learn will be broadly applicable. I am with you that open-source is best way forward, but understanding how to work with the industry standard remains a critical tool. Nice post!
Thank you @gra !
About three years ago I decided to make the switch to open sourced software as much as possible. It has been a long time since I have used any ESRI products and I was curious to see if there would be any new developments from such a big company that may change the way I think about GIS analysis overall. While the R-Arc tool was very interesting (I highly recommenced checking out the Github) I struggled to see why so many large businesses (like my university) are so fast to jump on the bandwagon when there are so many free options available. I will be writing a summary post later this evening where I will go into more detail about the pros and cons.
To be honest, I have also made an attempt to move away from GUI interfaces as much as possible (which has not been easy) as a means for separating my skill set from the rest of the job hunters. I have found that there needs to be a time-benefit analysis done when determining if a GUI like QGIS is best or if there should be a script written in something like R or Python (Julia is an interesting possibility for GIS applications as well as it grows its repos and libraries).
Thanks again for the comment I appreciate the meaningful conversation you bring to my posts!
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