Guido Stein: “Spatial is now a first-class citizen in most databases”

Guido Stein is a Geospatial Data Alchemist who has been working for Applied Geographics for the last 10 years. He is also the founder of AvidGeo, a Boston area meetup group that hosts events for the geospatially inclined, and he is the Co-Chair of FOSS4G Boston 2017. Having lived in Somerville, MA for over a decade, he has truly absorbed some hipster characteristics including growing a beard “ironically” and riding to work on a bike with his little dog Beau.

Guido was interviewed for GeoHipster by Atanas Entchev.

Q: You are the Conference Co-Chair for the 2017 FOSS4G conference in Boston. Isn’t that like a lot of work? Why do you do it?

A: It is a lot of work. I have been working and organizing community events in the Boston area for over a decade. I do this work because I want to attend these events and the only way these events happen is if someone is willing to do the work. I am not afraid to be that someone. I really enjoy being involved in community work. I like to learn about what cool things everyone else is up to. I also like sharing in the victories and commiserating around failures specific to our community. If these events didn’t exist, who would share a beer with me over the limitations of using shapefiles?

Q: Tell us about the conference. How did you get involved?

A: I think that it was my boss, Michael Terner, who first approached me about it. I have been a big fan of the Open Source Geospatial (OSGeo) community for a long time. Sadly, other than participating as a user, I did not have much interaction with the community. Michael had participated in a few FOSS4G conferences and was ready to get more involved. He approached me to put together a bid knowing that I would jump at the chance to build a stronger tie between OSGeo and Boston.

The reason I want to see FOSS4G in Boston is that I think that there are many groups locally that would benefit from exposure to the OSGeo community and from getting a chance to show off what they are up to. I have been trying to unite people in the Boston area around geospatial for over a decade, and there is such a great and exciting group here doing things in business, government, academia, as well as in the startup tech world.

Q: You and I first met in Boston in 2011 in the offices of Applied Geographics. You are still there, so you must like it. What do you do for AppGeo?

A: I recently celebrated my 10th anniversary at Applied Geographics. When I started I worked on parcel edits, parcel generation using scanned plans and COGO input, utility system development all working with many Esri tools. Since then, I have been really happy to explore many different tools from FME to QGIS to PostGIS for editing, collaborating on, and analyzing data.

My mantra these days is “Spatial, not special”. My work these days focuses on how to use spatial knowledge to solve data problems. I am very happy becoming a more powerful user of all the tools I use, but I feel super powerful when I figure out complex SQL queries to solve problems. I love working on the database solutions.

Q: How did you get into GIS? Why?

A: My father introduced me to GIS in high school. He was a city planner (since retired), and knew that I would really enjoy this use of technology. I have always liked playing and working with computers.

I attended Clark University. Initially I was interested in the psychology department, but found coursework in geography to be very fulfilling and soon started to work with the Clark Labs. I was very fortunate to work closely with the staff and Ron Eastman. They were very supportive of my thirst for knowledge.

Q: Tell us about some of the cool tech you use these days. Describe a cool project that you currently work on.

A: Giggles…

Cool tech, well… the thing I think is coolest right now is my $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W. It is so exciting to have such a cheap computer with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. It is a powerful tool for building IoT projects and also gives me a chance to improve my Linux chops. I really want to buy a bunch of these and create some simple navigation tools around them.

The last year has had me working on projects using Python, FME, PostGIS, CARTO, SQL Server, Oracle, and many other tools. My co-worker Calvin Metcalf has been trying to get me to switch from Python to Node. I really like the work CARTO has done to make mapping and PostGIS available online, it’s really quite powerful.

Q: Do you like open source for pragmatic or ideological reasons? Explain.

A: Both. I like tools that work and I want tools that I can contribute to. I think libre software is the ideal, but I think there is a lot of useful and good grey area in the open source community that is far superior to proprietary solutions.

Q: You knit, which is amazing. I did try it, but didn’t have the patience. Tell us how you got into knitting, and whether you see parallels between knitting and coding.

A: I started knitting when my wife took it up many years ago now. I really love making something with my hands and I also enjoy spending time with people in knitting circles; it’s like the ticket to enter a reality TV show of some very interesting and creative folks. I highly recommend it to everyone.

There is a wonderful tie between raster-based geospatial and knitting; they are both based on basic data principles. Both have rows and columns. Someday I really want to knit some NIR imagery into a hat.

Q: You ride a bike, which — along with knitting and the beard — puts you in the running for the perfect hipster. Is there a hipster attribute that you wish you had but lack?

A: Wait, there are so many more hipster attributes:

• I live in a hipster community
• I prefer artisanal chocolate and farm-to-table dining
• I run my own hipster website http://hipster.country

The only hipster attribute I wish I had that I lack is the hipster gene that makes them all slender and buff. I am now getting ready for a 9K in July and this non-skinny-jean-wearing butt is just not as easy to move around as I would like it to be.

Q: Are you a geohipster? Why / why not?

A: I am a poser. I am a pretender. I am an imposter.

I am not good at defining myself as any particular thing. I love to learn and I love to listen. This makes me less a specific type of person as much as it makes me a person who enjoys being in the presence of others who are specific about who they are.

I have been running a hipster web site for years trying to figure out what being a hipster means and as far as I can tell, no one really knows. Hipster is used as both a positive and negative, so I don’t know if I am or am not.

But let’s do the checklist once more:

• Lives in hipster community, check
• Rides his bike to work, check
• Has a beard, check
• Goes to farmers markets, check
• Can tell you about local beer, chocolate, and cheese makers, check
• Has skinny jeans, nope
• Can describe a bespoke projection, nope

Q: On closing, any parting words of wisdom for our global readership?

A: Get out of your silo. Spatial, not special.

Spatial is now a first-class citizen in most databases, so we should use databases and other data tools and not be totally reliant on vendor to solve our spatial needs.

Also, check out my friend’s local chocolate CSA (http://www.somervillechocolate.com/) it is the most amazing chocolate made by the most wonderful guy around.