Hello World! I'm currently a U.S. Air Force Veteran with about 4 years of experience in GIS analysis and programming. I long held programming as a hobby, so when I started working in GIS I quickly turned it into a professional skillset that I now hold a lot of passion for. To complement my professional working experience I also sought out education from Pennsylvania State University through which I earned a graduate certificate in Geospatial Programming & Web Map Development and a master's degree in Spatial Data Science.
I believe that FOSS and its underlying principles are the most ethical way to distribute software. Because of this ethical belief I do my best to utilize FOSS wherever I can. I started by switching to Linux OSes for my personal computers since 2015, I've driven multiple Ubuntu derivatives including Linux Mint, Lubutu, and Kubuntu and I'm also just getting started with Arch. As a GIS professional I've also been happy to use open source GIS for a number of projects, including QGIS, Leaflet, GeoDjango, and PostGIS among others. Some of the other open source projects that have captured my interests include Godot, Blender, Kdenlive and more.
Despite my belief, I recognize that there are challenges to working with open source software in certain environments, especially for legacy products. When it comes to work, I am willing to use propreitary software and OSes. Even though I haven't used them for personal use I have modern experience working on Windows OS, ESRI's suite of GIS products and using Trimble survey equipment.
GIS is a pervasive technology that is vital to our large scale organization of modern society. My early memories of using GIS technology date back to the sudden dominance, and subsequent fall, of MapQuest for finding directions and the awe inspiring release of Google Earth. Since then GIS navigation and visualization has increased by leaps and bounds, enabled by greater compute power on smaller devices with more accurate sensors. New advancements now include the incoporation of VPS (Visual Positioning Systems) developed by Google and Niantic that enable high accuracy location even in urban canyons where getting a good GPS signal is very difficult. This rapid advancement of the technology and the high level of impact is what has made me very excited about the field.
Other than using various GIS systems like OpenLayers and Google Maps for various personal projects, my first professional experience with GIS began with my career in the U.S. Air Force. Assigned to the Civil Engineering career field my primary tasks were very similar to working as a city GIS employee, and I highly leaned on programming geoprocessing tools in python and creating web mapping applications in JavaScript to increase the effeciency and quality of my work. From the professional conferences in GIS that I've attended I've gained an interest and appreciation for emerging GIS trends and technology including Augmented Reality to visualize hidden infrastructure, animated visualizations as an expression of time, 3D environments for simulation and visualization, and automation through AI.
Working on software is one of my oldest hobbies, from the time that I got my first personal computer I was using it to create websites and host servers. I shied away from pursuing software development as a professional career, however, because of a youthful desire to challenge myself and work in a field with direct societal impact. My professional experience in GIS has married the desire for impact with the field of software development that I have a strong aptitude for. I'm now working hard at learning as much as I can about software development so that I can produce high-quality proffesional software with high impact. Above all else I want to work on creating software that is beneficial to the world and propels us into a better future.
There are a lot of sub-fields in software development that I'm excited about. Obviously there is work in the aforementioned GIS field, including AR technology and simulation with game engines like Godot and Unity. I've also built this website on top of AWS cloud and like to explore the ways that cloud can bring high-cost compute platforms to the masses at an affordable cost. Along with my interest in cloud technology I also like to explore the potential of distributed computing applications and the benefits of service oriented architectures. Discovering new design patterns for OOP/Functional Programming is a joy and learning new algorithims is very satisfying.
Data is really cool! It is the often underrated backbone of many recent technological advancements. Generative AI, accurate posiitioning systems, autonomous vehicles, edge computing devices and more all rely on high quality and accurate data. One of the challenges in working with data is to make sure that it can be ingested and understood in the devices/applications that it needs to be in. I enjoy the process of normalizing databases to make sure that the data is interoperable and easily manipulated.
My journey is far from over and I’m always looking to expand and deepen my knowledge. My long term goal is to not only work with, but also develop, new emerging technologies. With my newly honed expertise I’m sure that this goal will become a reality soon enough and I'm looking forward to it.