New QGIS training courses for 2021

A short post today about the new training courses I'm launching as part of my new business (Automatic Knowledge). In late February and early March 2021 we're putting on the first of our public QGIS training courses, as well as one in Aerialod. These are paid events, bookable via Eventbrite and are part of our mission to help improve geospatial software skills across the world. We'll make the training material available for all, plus the data - and we will continue to offer financial support to the QGIS project as a 'sustaining member' - as well as make further donations to the Aerialod project. The permanent url for our training pages is automaticknowledge.eventbrite.com and right now you'll see the first five courses advertised - all of which will be repeated on a fairly regular basis. Note: we offer discounts based on where you are in the world, plus a 50% discount for all students (the 50% student discount is in addition to any country-specific discount). Obviously this isn't a perfect solution but we do want to make our pricing structure as fair and accessible as possible. Feel free to get in touch if you have any questions - you can contact us here.

See our global pricing policy

You'll see full details of each course on the Eventbrite page. For now, we are running them online - see below for a brief look at each of the five courses - three are full day courses and two are half days. When the world opens up again we'll still be doing them online but will also start up our in-person training sessions again.

Our first five training courses

I've previously put on lots of public and corporate QGIS training events, as well as delivering thousands of hours of GIS training in Universities. Now that I've launched Automatic Knowledge I want to continue to do this as much as possible, so this is part of the reason for launching these public sessions. Part of my motivation also has to do with the fact that - in the UK at least - there is something of a skills gap in relation to geospatial skills - e.g. see p.8 from the 2019/20 Geospatial Commission Annual Plan.

I agree that there's a need for better skills

However, I'm not trying to turn everyone into a geospatial nerd, honestly. I just think that whilst many of us have access to great open data, and fantastic free and open source software like QGIS, there aren't always enough people with enough knowledge and skills to do the kinds of things they might want to. I've seen this need grow over the past few years as I've put on training courses for a variety of organisations - including the BBC, the FT, Savills, Regeneris, as well as teaching people who work for large global organisations such as Google. In addition, I always try to help people who come to me with queries and questions about tutorials I've posted previously on my blog - this happens on a fairly regular basis from people in different parts of the world (e.g. recently I helped people from Colombia, Bhutan and Nigeria with GIS-related queries).

With all of the above in mind, I can probably summarise my general training principles now, with a few bullet points.

• Not for nerds: what I mean by this is that the Automatic Knowledge QGIS (and other) training sessions are not aimed at the uber-nerd but at competent IT users who want to get more into geospatial tools but are not really sure where to start or how to move beyond the basics. Even so, if you do self-identify as a nerd already you are still very welcome!
• Fun - I really do think it's important to try to have fun, or at least enjoy things as you learn them, so this is an important part of my approach.
• Fairness - it's difficult to offer an approach to timing (e.g. the first courses are on UK time) and price (I realise not everyone can afford full price) that helps everyone, so I have adopted a varied pricing structure so that it can at least be a little bit fairer than a flat global pricing structure. I also plan to put on sessions in other time zones - and in person when this is allowed again.
• Inclusive - I welcome anyone and everyone, no matter who you are or where you come from or what you know or don't know. My view is that the geospatial world - particularly in education - should be about encouragement, positivity, mutual support and openness. 
• I don't know everything - this is obvious, but important. Sometimes during a training session someone will ask 'what does this tool do?' and the answer I have to give is 'I don't know'. Sometimes this happens, but you may also be glad to hear that I do know quite a lot about the software I teach - but I realise this is all relative and I continue to look on in awe at so many people in the geospatial world. I'm always learning, and in cases where I do have to say 'I don't know', I always end up learning more in the end.
• Flexibility - my training sessions are based on a very carefully prepared, tried-and-tested workbook format. This works really well but there is always a risk that it can turn us into robots - so I always make sure we can go off at tangents, explore new ideas and tools and generally get to grips with the software in a way that makes most sense for the user. 
• Giving back - a cliché, I know. When people do my training sessions, they pay for my time and expertise developed over many years, but I will continue to share my knowledge more widely on my blog, on Twitter and elsewhere. I am often found in Twitter DMs sharing my knowledge or tips with users from across the world. Right now, Automatic Knowledge is in the 500+ Euros per year category of QGIS donors, but we always want to give more - our last donation to Aerialod was $200USD and we plan to continue to donate to the project. 

The courses currently listed on Eventbrite

Right now we're working on finalising our new training material (see below for a peek) and we're really looking forward to getting started. You can see who 'we' are on our website. The idea is to start small and then grow slowly over time as things develop. The training side of the business is only part of what we do but it is a very important part of our overall mission.

This is our intro-level QGIS course

We're currently using QGIS 3.10

Part of the intro section

A few introductory words

Finally, I've recently been re-writing my 'QGIS tips and tricks' sheet and thinking about a) what I know, b) what I think is important for users in different contexts, and c) how amazing QGIS is. Here are my notes on that so far - only some of this is going in; the rest will be part of different levels of the courses.

Messy handwriting, sorry

So, if you're looking to get into making maps from data, or want to get better at it, or just want to talk about it, feel free to get in touch with me.

Automatic Knowledge

This is a short blog post about what I'm doing next, now that I have moved on from my job as a professor at the University of Sheffield. It's not going to be a self-indulgent retrospective, it's more for information and a bit of reflection. From 1 September 2020 I'll be working on my own business, Automatic Knowledge Ltd. 

Take a look at the website to find out more, but I'm going to be doing similar kinds of things (maps, stats, analysis) though instead of working mainly within academia I'm mostly going to be doing this with other organisations and businesses. I was doing some of this already and in fact it was taking up more and more of my time so I decided it was time to make the move. 

Oh, but since I really like teaching (and learning) I'm going to continue to offer my QGIS courses - see the Training part of the website for more on that too. I've already done these for Savills, the BBC, the FT, Regeneris and more.

The Automatic Knowledge website

What's that you say? Brand identity? Corporate logo? Well, I'm not very big on all that but if you see something that looks like this (below) on a map or graphic or chart from now on you'll know it comes from me and my team (talking of which, I'll be working with a couple of former associates from now on, as projects require it).

Why 'automatic knowledge'? Read more here

People keep asking (really) so I'm opening a small print shop as well

Anyway, that's what's next and I'm very much looking forward to it - expanding my consultancy work, building on existing relationships and making new connections. 

Get in touch via the Contact page on the website, via LinkedIn or via Twitter if you want to start a conversation about consulting work.

Free stuff

In my previous job I liked to share as many free, useful resources as I could with the wider data and spatial analysis community, and I'll continue to do that with Automatic Knowledge. It's a small gesture but I know many people have found my resources useful - because they've told me about it. So, on my new website, I have also added a Resources section where you can find the following datasets. It's all already available as open data but in all cases I have added to the original with useful extras. I will also continue to try to give back to the open source GIS world in the form of financial support to the QGIS project. I've done this before and in fact that's the only time Automatic Knowledge has been seen online previously, though in this example it was before I set it up as a formal business. I'd only used that name for anonymous donations in the past.

• A set of geofiles (shp, gpkg, geojson) of all places in Great Britain - more than 40,000 of them. There are also some more useful goodies here, like a fully-formed QGIS project and instructions on how to style and filter the data.
• My popular 'All buildings in Great Britain' layer. You can get this online already in small chunks but I have put it all together and also added for each feature information on which local authority it is in and the floor area of the building footprint. This is a geopackage (gpkg) only because of the size.
• A 'UK local authorities (2020) with data' file. I've added a number of fields to the dataset, including ones to indicate what country or region an area is in, plus the latest ONS population estimates (mid-2019) for each area, broken down by single year of age. There is also a field indicating what kind of area each local authority is (e.g. London Borough, Unitary Authority, Non-metropolitan District). I've made this layer available in shp, gpkg and geojson formats.

This is a preview of the GB buildings file

Looking back, just a bit

I'm not really one for looking backwards, or for sentimentality, but it appears that I worked at the University of Sheffield for a total of 4,320 days (about 12 years). I'm also not one for deleting emails and I can tell you that I received a total of 190,020 during that time (using 71.67 GB of inbox storage space, despite deleting tons of attachments). 

Using a sophisticated mathematical formula to crunch the numbers, I can tell you that this equates to an average of 44 emails a day. Now, in the early days I wasn't getting as many as I did at the end, but I tried to answer them all, honestly. But really, why am I talking about email? I have no idea.

Anyway, if you email me now at my University address you'll just get an out of office (forever) autoreply and a picture of the Western Highlands of Scotland. 

A typical blue sky day in the Highlands

If you were a student during my time at the University of Sheffield, I just want to say thanks. Teaching and interacting with students was one of the best things about it and I feel like I learned a lot about myself, life, others, and so much more. I'm still in touch with many former students, so I hope that continues - even if it's just to ask me for a reference. I 100% enjoyed marking every piece of work you all submitted (plus or minus 75%). 

I'm so proud that so many former students have gone on to do great things, or just to figure out that they really weren't that into urban studies, planning or GIS in the first place - there are many roads, and finding the one you want to be on can take time! I can't take any credit for this, but it's good to have been able to join you for part of the journey.

Talking of students, see below for a 2009 Lille field trip photo - quite low resolution, unfortunately, but then again it was taken on one of those custom-built 'cameras' we all used to take photos with. 

I can't name absolutely everyone because the resolution is too low, but I will at least give a shout out to Rebecca (far left), Grant (front, crouching), Isaac (double wave, far right), Liz (middle-ish) and Justine (also middle). As for the small boy in the plant bit of the sculpture, I have no idea who he is but he wasn't a Sheffield planner. Talking of the sculpture, it's the Shangri-la tulips sculpture by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama in the French city of Lille, right by the Eurostar station (the glass building in the lower background).

Click to enlarge - or click here instead

Right, that's more than enough of that.

I'm going to take a very short break and maybe do a little bit of Highlands and Islands touring before I get back to work on the projects I have lined up, but feel free to get in touch if you think I can help with any analysis, maps, stats or research.