Speaker Information

Dr. Philip Bogden (Keynote Speaker)

CEO, Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System (GoMOOS), Inc. http://gomoos.org/
Acting Director of the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction (SCOOP) Program http://www.sura.org/

Dr. Bogden is the CEO of GoMOOS, the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System. GoMOOS is a national program designed to bring hourly oceanographic data from the Gulf of Maine to all those who need it

He is leading several projects that will augment GoMOOS activities by establishing new levels of interoperability between ocean observing systems and federal agencies. Data exchange and integration will leverage the OpenGIS Consortium web service protocols and other middleware activities in the ocean observing community.

Dr. Bogden is also Acting Director of the SURA Coastal Ocean Observing Program (SCOOP). He is directing the coastal research initiative to create a robust integrated data grid linking coastal ocean observations along the entire east coast from Maine to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Previously, Dr. Bogden held faculty positions at Yale University and The University of Connecticut. His research specialities are coastal oceanography and data assimilation.

Stephen Lime

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/

Stephen Lime was the original author of the MapServer application and continues to maintain much of the core functionality. Steve's real job is with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources where he manages the Data and Application section of the MIS Bureau. He is married with 2 daughters. In his spare time he is into golfing, gardening, and playing the drums (although he is not particularly adept at any of them).

Flavio Hendry

TYDAC, Inc. http://www.tydac.ch and http://www.mapserver.ch

Flavio Hendry is civil engineer by profession (M.Sc. Engineering, Zurich, dipl. Ing. ETH) and a GIS aficionado by heart. He has over fifteen years experience in the field of GIS, beginning with IBM in 1988 where he came across a Canadian GIS product called SPANS (Spatial Analysis System). So taken was he with the elegance and power of this little MS-DOS (!) GIS which could outperform its UNIX competitors at the time, he started up his own company in 1991 called TYDAC, using the same name as the Canadian company which developed SPANS.

TYDAC, based in Bern, Switzerland, has gone on to become a top GIS company with clients across Europe who are using TYDAC’s solutions in many application areas including forestry, planning, geomarketing, environment, telecommunications and so on. Today TYDAC builds its own solutions as well as integrating leading technology such as from MapInfo, ESRI and Safe Software. As CEO of TYDAC he is the driving force behind TYDAC’s proven ability to deliver practical solutions that stand up to the rigors of everyday work environments. He is also the head behind TYDAC’s Web Mapping Application Design, a robust product which gives hundreds of users across the web simultaneous access to powerful GIS applications.

Tom Kralidis

Systems Scientist, Environment Canada http://www.ec.gc.ca/ and http://cise-scie.ca/

Tom is a Systems Scientist for Environment Canada. At EC, Tom provides technical and architectural leadership in support of EC's geospatial information holdings and management through the Canadian Information System for the Environment (CISE). Tom's professional background includes key involvement in the development and integration of geospatial web standards, systems and services for the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI) with Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). Tom is also active in the OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) community, and is lead contributor to the OGC Web Map Context Documents specification team.

Tom holds a degree in Geography from York University, certification in GIS, and is currently working on a Masters thesis in Geospatial Data Infrastructures at Carleton University.

Dave McIlhagga

President, DM Solutions Group Inc. http://www.dmsolutions.ca/

David McIlhagga holds the position of president with DM Solutions Group Inc., a company which in addition to leading, he also founded. David has positioned DM Solutions Group as the leader in open source web mapping technologies. David graduated from Carleton University with an Honours Bachelor's degree in Geography, concentrating in Geographic Information Processing.

Complementing David's current roles in strategic planning and project management, his Web Mapping expertise includes all elements of project design and implementation. Prior to founding DM Solutions Group, David worked as a Senior Applications Specialist at TYDAC Research, where he focused on Web-Based GIS technologies. Today his focus is on providing leadership and innovative custom mapping solutions for DM Solutions Group's growing client base using open source technologies.

Workshop Presenters

Yewondwossen Assefa is a software developer at DM Solutions Group. He has been involved over the last four years in the development of core features in Mapserver as well as developing applications on top of Mapserver. He is currently responsible of the development and maintenance of the OGC specifications in MapServer. Before joining DM Solutions Group, Yewondwossen worked as a GIS and mapping software developer.

Martin Davis is a Senior Technical Architect with Vivid Solutions Inc. in Victoria, BC. His main area of interest is in developing applications, algorithms and techniques for geomatics and spatial data processing. He has over ten years of experience with designing and building spatial solutions for government and private industry. He is the architect and lead developer for the JTS, JUMP and JCS open source GIS projects.

Jason Fournier joined DM Solutions in 2000. His development background, along with his GIS degree from Carleton University provide a solid foundation for his leadership role in cross-platform application development.

Sean Gillies is an independent GIS consultant and developer based in Fort Collins Colorado USA, and newly the primary developer of the SWIG mapscript module.

Richard Greenwood is a Professional Land Surveyor who has worked in the surveying and mapping field for 25 years. He is the owner of Greenwood Mapping, Inc., a 10 year old GIS service and consulting firm.

Aaron Griffin is a GIS Technician for the Centre for Sustainable Watersheds in Portland, Ontario, a non-profit environmental organization. Aaron has training in Urban and Regional Planning with GIS and AutoCAD from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario and has worked in the GIS, planning and environmental fields in the past few years. Currently Aaron is working on the Watersheds InfoXchange project doing cartagraphic and user interface design.

Chris Hodgson joined the Refractions team in 2002. His programming experience includes projects completed using Java, C, PHP, Perl, and ColdFusion. Mr. Hodgson also maintains the spatial indexing for the PostGIS spatial database. Mr. Hodgson received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Victoria.

Zak James is an experienced software developer with an educational background in Geography and GIS. Prior to joining DM Solutions he worked on software modelling and nonlinear mathematical optimization for both geospatial and computer-aided manufacturing applications. He is the product manager for Maplab and has extensive experience with OGC standards and their mapserver implementations.

Cariad McIlhagga brings her experience in all aspects of web application development to her work with DM Solutions Group Inc. to facilitate the implementation of open source mapping technology in community-based web applications. Cariad has a wide range of web application development experience, currently as a consultant and previously as lead developer at a Vancouver software company (Envision Sustainability Tools Inc). Professionally she focuses on making scientific research, data, and technology more accessible to the general public through web applications, particularly in the fields of sustainability and environment. Cariad uses open source technologies, including MapServer and Chameleon, as tools to enhance the spatial experience within the web applications she develops. Cariad holds an Honours Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science, with a concentration in computer modeling.

Jeff McKenna has been with DM Solutions since around the time they adopted MapServer for their web mapping needs. His educational background in GIS has provided him with a thorough understanding of the issues surrounding data management. He is a frequent contributor to the MapServer Documentation Project, including documents on OGR and WMS. Jeff is also a member of the Geographic and Cartographic Research Centre at Carleton University.

Ed McNierney is President and Chief Mapmaker of TopoZone.com, the creators of the Web's first interactive USGS topographic mapping site. TopoZone.com's web site and related services are powered by MapServer, providing hundreds of thousands of maps daily built from a 20-terabyte online library of topographic maps, 1-meter aerial photos, and vector data. Ed created TopoZone in 1999, and has been a software developer for over 20 years; he graduated from Dartmouth College in 1980 with a degree in Organic Chemistry.

Scott Mitchell is a new professor at Carleton University, teaching research methods and geomatics courses, and conducting research on environmental models and GIS. He concentrates on assessing and developing strategies to manage prediction uncertainty when environmental process models are applied across regional landscapes. He is currently focusing on biogeochemical models, looking at changes in carbon cycling under climate change scenarios. Since the spatial and temporal domains of environmental models and typical GIS data models are not usually well matched, GRASS and open source tools in general have provided great advantages, in that one can study the assumptions used in current approaches in depth, and conduct experiments that change how we represent the world.

Tyler Mitchell manages database and GIS information for a forest products company in British Columbia. The corporate focus on natural resource information management includes accessing various GIS data formats and large data warehouses. It was MapServer’s ability to read in all of the required corporate formats that won him over to using it. He spends most of his time integrating spatially enabled tools with other corporate web and non-web based applications.

Daniel Morissette is the vice president of R&D at DM Solutions Group. He heads the Chicoutimi office at DM Solutions Group, and is responsible for leading and supporting the development team. His extensive knowledge of geotechnology, Internet technology and low-level tool development has made him essential in project design and development. As well as consistently delivering innovative client solutions, Daniel is directly responsible for significantly extending the capabilities of MapServer through frequent enhancements in its flexibility, interoperability and reliability.

Pericles Nacionales is a graduate student in Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. He currently works in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior and in the Department of Forest Resources at the University, developing GIS and MapServer applications. Perry has presented several introductory MapServer workshops for the Earth Science Information Partnership (ESIP) Federation, A NASA-funded organization, and at the Minnesota GIS/LIS conference (with Steve Lime). He presented this intro to MapServer workshop at the first MapServer Users Meeting in St. Paul, MN.

Paul Ramsey founded Refractions Research in 1997. As a director of the company, Mr. Ramsey is responsible for business development, in addition to his role as systems architect. He has a broad range of programming and network experience. Mr. Ramsey obtained an M.Sc. in Applied Statistics from the University of Victoria in 1996. He research areas included stochastic processes and generalized linear models.

Paul Spencer joined DM Solutions Group in 1998 bringing with him advanced software development skills and a strong understanding of the software development process. These skills have been invaluable in helping Paul lead many of the company’s technical projects.

Frank Warmerdam is an independent software developer active in the geospatial field since 1992 when he completed a BMath at the University of Waterloo and joined PCI Geomatics. After six years at PCI he became an independent consultant, focusing on geospatial data interchange. He is the maintainer of the popular open source Shapelib, PROJ.4, GDAL/OGR, libtiff, libgeotiff and OGDI libraries as well as being a major contributor to the OpenEV application and MapServer.