It almost always surprises me every year, when I get an email from ESRI saying that today is GIS day, apparently ESRI chose it. Not specifically the 19th of November, but the third Wednesday in November. I assume this is because like myself Wednesday can be a bit of a slog. Here is the internets description of GIS day:

GIS Day is an annual event celebrating geographic information systems based technologies on the third Wednesday of November. The event first took place in 1999. It was initiated by spatial analytics software provider Esri. Esri president and co-founder Jack Dangermond credits Ralph Nader with being the person who inspired the creation of GIS Day. He considered the event a good initiative for people to learn about geography and the many uses of GIS. He wanted GIS Day to be a grassroots effort and open to everyone to participate. Today, the event provides an international forum for users of GIS technology from across the GIS industry to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in society.

Of course as an avid Open Source Software user I promote QGIS over ArcGIS everyday of the week especially since ESRI changed their subscription model. So “Happy GIS Day” go forth and create great maps!

I attended a course on "QGIS Conversion Training" on Friday, run by EDINA at The University of Edinburgh. For those that don't know QGIS (Quantum Geographical Information System) is an open source alternative to ESRI's ArcGIS.

Over the last few years QGIS has become more popular, partly as it is now as powerful as ArcGIS and partly due to it being open source (therefore free). Many companies are now switching to it as it doesn't require long term costly contracts with ESRI, and it runs on all the major Operating Systems (Windows, Mac OS X and Linus).

The course was excellent and although I have had previous experience of QGIS this course really filled in a lot of gaps, it covered:

Setting up QGIS
Working with Data
Creating Data
Geoprocessing
Advanced Visualisation.

I was pleasantly surprised at how good the course was, how well run and how well presented it was. It was quite possibly the best course I have been on. EDINA will be running this course again in the future, if you are interested get in touch with Tom Armitage, who will be able to give you more information about the next date that the QGIS course will take place and costs associated with it.

I would like to say thanks to Bruce Gittings and Tom Armitage for their hard work on the day!