In This IssueNavigating Non-Spatial Data FME Amps Up Maintenance ProgramPlanes, Trains, Automobiles… and LasersKeeping the Skyways Clear with FMEThe Long and Winding Road – To Data Sharing Success in IndianaData to Go – Android & iOS MapsDevelopment on the RoadFME User Spotlight: Trond Ottersland, Norway Spotlight: Stewart Harper

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Autumn 2012

Follow Dale on Twitter @DaleAtSafe

Follow Don on Twitter @DonAtSafe

Founders' Perspective

On the Road AgainRoad trips. The stuff of family photo albums and future conversations that will start with “Hey! Remember that time we went to…?” And always accompanied by a soundtrack - the (essential!) mixtape of really good driving music. Well, we’ve just wrapped up the ultimate road trip - the FME® 2012 World Tour. And like any travel adventure, there are many, many stories to be told – some of which we bring to you in this issue of the FME Insider. So let’s pop in that CD and hit play…

"When you come to a Spork in the road....Take it." - Dale "Not-Yogi-Berra" Lutz

Get your motor running…head out on the highway with LandScope Engineering’s Mobile Mapping System – where FME helps prep point cloud data for delivery to their customers. Follow the Long and Winding Road that led to a successful data sharing initiative (with FME Server) at the State of Indiana, and see how ERDF in France uses FME to assist in safely keeping Electric Avenue powered up and clear of incursions.

We also present an award-winning project by KDOT Aviation and Burns & McDonnell (the Kansas Airspace Awareness Tool) which helps ensure that pilots Fly Back Home safely. And in Sweden, Where The Blacktop Ends (and the cellular coverage), FME assists behind the scenes with Metria’s offline map access for iOS and Android.

Take a look at how Cambian’s non-spatial medical record data experienced Life in the Fast Lane in a quick-turnaround harmonization and migration project, and Actian tells us why they decided to send a developer Road Trippin to Safe’s offices to work on an FME plugin for Ingres 10S.

Now that we’re Running on Empty for song titles, we’ll wrap up this issue with a big thank you to all of the Safers, presenters, partners and attendees who made the FME 2012 World Tour a huge success. It just gets better and better! And remember, when you’re heading down the road of data transformation, FME can help ensure you don’t end up Where the Streets Have No Name.

The Great FME Road Trip Mixtape:On the Road Again – Willie NelsonBorn to be Wild – SteppenwolfLong and Winding Road – The BeatlesElectric Avenue – Eddy GrantFly Back Home – John Hiatt & the GonersWhere The Blacktop Ends – Keith UrbanLife in the Fast Lane – The EaglesRoad Trippin – Red Hot Chili PeppersRunning on Empty – Jackson BrowneWhere the Streets Have No Name – U2

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Navigating Non-Spatial Data Migration

FME Amps Up High-Voltage Maintenance ProgramWhat does FME have to do with pruning trees? Well, in France, ERDF - Electricité Réseau Distribution France – is responsible for 95% of the country’s public electricity distribution network. As part of their mandate, they need to ensure that crews safely keep power lines clear from tree growth, movement, or fall. And the regional management in Auvergne, with some 54,000 km of network, is putting FME to work to help make sure that that happens.

When a field survey identifies a required intervention along the high-voltage network, the information is synced into a central PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. Then FME kicks in. First, it produces an operational paper chart, in Adobe® Geospatial PDF format, for each switchyard – a point of high voltage power supply. These 1:10,000 charts aggregate a number of sources, both spatial and non-spatial, including IGN Scan 25 images, orthophotos, GPS readings, survey data, and observations taken by helicopter. The charts provide a precise route map to the prioritized intervention points, substations, and any safety procedures to be followed – such as only intervening when the power is off.

At the same time, FME produces a .GPX file to be used by the pruning teams’ GPS system, and an Excel® spreadsheet detailing point-by-point requirements for each intervention. With

Cambian Business Services of Surrey, Canada isn’t what you’d think of as a typical FME user. Not at all, in fact. They create complex integrated healthcare information systems, and there’s generally not a map in sight. It was while they were working on a large migration project, moving patient records from a variety of legacy systems to one common model, when a serendipitous lunch brought FME into the picture. Bruce Forde, President and CEO at Cambian, was describing the challenge to Safe’s VP Development Dale Lutz. “We had to migrate patient data from 60 different clinics, and at least 10 different legacy applications. Not only does each application use a different data model, the deployment of the same model can vary from instance to instance,” Bruce tells us. “Some were running on various versions of Windows®, some were on Linux®. We needed a way to move it all, quickly, into the destination PostgreSQL database model, and then redeploy it back at the client sites”. Adding to the challenge,

these three sources of information, the teams head out into the field with a focused and efficient plan – helping fulfill their mission of maintaining the network – safely.

In total, nearly 500 information bundles are automatically generated by FME for each pruning operation. The time savings are significant – from two weeks production time for 500 bundles to 50 minutes. Serge Laurans, Information Technology Project Manager, Auvergne Regional Management, enthuses, “During this project, FME has

once a snapshot of a clinic database was taken for migration, the clinic continued to operate, adding data that would need to be dealt with post-migration.

ERDF's automation maps out the optimal maintenance plan and helps ensure worker safety.

Technology, to take it into production. Working with CSV exports from the legacy applications, she used FME to define both schema mapping and data cleansing rules, making extensive use of string and attribute transformers to manipulate the data into the destination schema.

As Chun tells us, “FME provided a flexible way of capturing schema mapping rules, and the workspaces’ reusability saved us a great deal of time. The logging features were very helpful during development – a really useful tool for debugging. We were able to migrate a clinic’s data and get it back onsite, in the new system, in a matter of days. If we’d had to reformat and scrub the data by hand, it would have easily taken ten times the effort.”

What did we learn? Whether your data is traveling round-trip between spatial systems or making a one-way non-spatial voyage, FME can map the route!

Learn more about FME database support at www.safe.com/Databases.

This sounded like a familiar challenge to Dale – albeit without a spatial component. By the end of lunch, they’d decided to give it a go with FME. Safe’s Pro Services department built a proof of concept workspace to start from, and then it was over to Chun Zhang, Cambian’s Director of

demonstrated its effectiveness. It would be difficult to go without it from now on!”

What’s next for ERDF-Auvergne and FME? They’re in the process of adapting the same cartographic production line for the low-voltage network, and intend to use the same process for other intervention missions that they’re responsible for. We’re pleased that the power of FME can contribute.

To read more about this project, go to www.safe.com/ERDF.

FME drives a non-spatial medical record data migration for Cambian.

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles. For those of us of a certain age, it’s a classic Steve Martin and John Candy road trip comedy. But add some lasers and precision positioning equipment… now we’re talking about some serious 3D mapping technology. And when we stopped in London for the FME 2012 World Tour, LandScope Engineering of the UK gave us a firsthand look at how they’ve incorporated FME into their Mobile Mapping System (MMS) workflow.

hi-rail, and you’re documenting railway track conditions, through tunnels and over bridges. It’s an amazingly efficient method of 3D data capture - LandScope drove and captured the entirety of Dublin’s central business area in just a couple of days.

The data collected is impressive, not only for its high degree of accuracy, but also for its sheer volume. Half the challenge is producing a usable, functional data product for the end user – and that’s where FME entered the

Planes, Trains, Automobiles… and Lasers

LandScope provides land and engineering survey and geomatics services in the UK and internationally. Knowing that 3D data – and point clouds, in particular –were gaining recognition as valuable and efficient methods for mapping, they invested in a TopCon IP-S2 and launched their autoMAP service.

The IP-S2 is a collection of sensors, each one providing different, sometimes redundant information that improves the accuracy of the overall dataset being produced. There are three high-res LiDAR scanners, sweeping lasers and capturing time-stamped data every 15 nanoseconds. The position of the vehicle is tracked by a dual frequency GNSS receiver while wheel encoders capture odometry information. The attitude (or pose) of the vehicle is monitored by an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and the final touch is the digital camera capturing 360-degree spherical images at 15 frames per second. The entire system is portable, and easily adapted to different vehicles.

The beauty of mobile mapping is just that – the fact that it moves. Install it on a van, and you’re capturing precision data at highway speeds. Put it on a boat, and you’re measuring and visually recording the condition of the underside of a bridge or jetty. Mount it on a

FME handily performs post-processing tasks on the LiDAR data.

picture for LandScope. With the assistance of FME experts STAR-APIC, they developed a post-processing workflow that gets the right data into the customers hands, and does it efficiently and accurately.

“One of the more significant challenges was the management of such large datasets within various coordinate reference systems,” says Tom Card, 3D Survey Services Manager. “We purchased FME initially for the purpose of reprojecting massive quantities of point cloud data from its native WGS84 datum to various local coordinate systems, and with a range of formats, including Ordnance Survey OSGB36.” The key was the GridInQuestReprojector Transformer, which handles 3D coordinate conversions strictly in accordance with established Ordnance Survey datum transformation standards.

Now that the basic requirements are well in hand, what’s next? As LandScope and their

customers delve deeper into what can be done with point clouds, they’re starting to explore the latest and greatest point cloud functionality in FME. Customers are already saving huge amounts of time doing asset inventory based on the data, and Tom plans to push it further with tiling, clipping, and manipulation like intensity filtering – separating pavement markings from surrounding asphalt and organic material, for example.

In the meantime, FME is doing just what LandScope needs it to do. “FME has proven to be a robust step within our established mobile mapping workflow providing us with an efficient and quality assured method of delivering our data to a wide customer base. And at the end of the day, that’s what we’re looking for,” says Tom. We do like a story with a happy ending!

Learn more about FME's point cloud and LiDAR support at www.safe.com/PointClouds.

Combined panoramic

photography and LiDAR

MMS isn't just for road vehicles.

The LandScope autoMAP MMS captured the Dublin business district in days.

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Keeping the Skyways Clear with FMEImagine you’re on the last leg of your road trip, almost home, driving through a dark, foggy night, your headlights barely picking out the details on the road ahead. Now imagine doing that in an airplane, and you’ll have a bit of an idea of what it’s like when pilots land their aircraft under “instrument” conditions – with no visual cues, they rely completely on what their instruments are telling them in order to land safely. So the path that they fly along has to be kept clear of obstructions like cellular towers, tall buildings, and – increasingly – wind farm turbines that can reach nearly 600 feet in the air.

Aviation is more than just a quick way to get from A to B. In Kansas, approximately 138 public-use airports not only contribute more than $10 billion and over 47,000 jobs to the economy – they also ensure that air ambulance services are there when you need them. As Jesse R. Romo, Deputy Director, Airspace & Special Projects at the Kansas Department of Transportation’s (KDOT) Division of Aviation tells us, “Our goal is to have air ambulance service readily available to 95% of the state’s population, especially in bad weather, and to do that, we need to preserve our airports’ usability, funding – and airspace.” What, as you may be thinking by now, does this have to do with FME?

KDOT Aviation needed a better way to analyze the effects of proposed vertical constructions – and a better way to communicate that information to the public. And so they issued an RFQ, made possible by a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airports Division, to build an online tool to assist. That’s when Burns & McDonnell and FME entered the picture – and the Kansas Airspace Awareness Tool (KAAT) came to be.

The KAAT displays a 3D representation of the complex airspace network along with available existing structure data in Google EarthTM. More importantly, it lets the user place objects – like buildings, towers, windmills and transmission lines – in their proposed locations, specify their height and size, and instantly see if there will likely be airspace considerations affecting their plan. One click will check the structure against the FAA’s notice criteria tool, and report back the results – whether its proximity or intrusion into critical airspace is a consideration under the FAA’s regulations.

There were some challenging components. The KAAT is available to the general public, not just GIS pros, and so the interface needed to be intuitive. 3D was a given, and the airspace data, which changes regularly, needed to be kept up to date without bringing in outside

The KAAT shows a user-placed windmill structure interfering with designated approach airspace.

expertise on a regular basis. Google Earth was a natural choice for the interface, and FME was Burns & McDonnell’s workhorse of choice for the complex processing going on behind the scenes.

James Katz, Senior IM Specialist at Burns & McDonnell tells us a bit about the architecture involved. “Airspace design is complex, and generally done in a 3D CAD environment,” he says. “The designations are published by the FAA in a verbose form, and we use an FME workspace to mathematically interpret those descriptions and dynamically create the 3D geometries for Google Earth.” FME also enables KDOT Aviation to maintain FAA data updates on their own.

The KAAT isn’t just a valuable tool for developers – KDOT Aviation themselves have benefited greatly from having more accurate data as a basis for analysis, navigating disconnects between agencies, and clearly communicating their concerns to stakeholders. When a wind farm expansion was proposed just three miles north of the Ellsworth airport, existing FAA regulations determined it as “No Hazard”, even though a runway extension supporting more precise instrument approaches (and therefore more accessibility in bad weather conditions) had been previously approved. With the help of visualization in the KAAT, the decision was ultimately reversed.

“The KAAT has been overwhelmingly successful in helping us balance development - particularly renewable resource development - with our goal of aviation safety, sustainability and public service,” says Jesse. “And it has evolved from an engineering tool into a statewide airspace protection program we like to call Aeris Vigilis.” Many have taken notice – the team of Burns & McDonnell and KDOT Aviation were honored with a 2012 American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Engineering Excellence Award for the project, and KDOT Aviation themselves are honored in 2012 with both the National Association of State Aviation Officials’ Most Innovative Program Award and the President’s Award in Aviation from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials. High praise indeed – and we’re proud that FME has helped make it happen.

Check out the Kansas Airspace Awareness Tool at www.safe.com/KAAT.

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The Long and Winding Road – To Data Sharing Success in IndianaWhen Jim Sparks started out on his journey as the State of Indiana’s new Geographic Information Officer (GIO) in 2007, the first thing he wanted to do was to get the lay of the land – visiting as many groups doing GIS in the state as he could. In many of his meetings throughout the first 90 days in his new position, he kept seeing overlapping goals and initiatives. One of these – the idea of aggregating and homogenizing several critical datasets from local data stewards in Indiana - was in the early planning stages at the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.

This was a more ambitious goal than it may seem. Many of the obstacles had less to do with technology (which FME Server deals with handily, as we will see), than with inter-governmental collaboration and funding. The first challenge? There are 92 counties in Indiana, each one with their own data management practices and datasets, and limited resources. When Jim arrived on the scene, only a handful of counties had decided to participate. A long road lay ahead – but the good news was that other interest groups, including the Indiana Geographic Information Council (IGIC), working from an NSDI CAP grant, and other Indiana state agencies, were looking for a similar solution, and by tackling it collaboratively, everyone could win.

The ArchitectureThe data was to ultimately be compiled into and made available through the already existing IndianaMap online GIS data portal (www.indianamap.org). The datasets requested were a subset of those already maintained by the counties – point addresses, parcel shape and ID numbers, local government geoadministrative boundaries, and street centerlines with address ranges. No personal information about individuals was to be included.

Some very intelligent early decisions were made regarding the architecture – most importantly, the data sharing process needed to be non-invasive, and not require that counties change their current methodologies, formats, data models, and platforms. And so, a central model was designed based on FGDC standards, and the counties were asked to simply add an OGC WFS stream to their current processes. Transformation and homogenization to the destination model, residing in a central Esri ArcSDETM database, would be handled by FME Server, and be the responsibility of the GIO.

The Real ChallengeThe architecture was in place, but the real challenge lay ahead. As Jim tells us, “Early on, there was a lot of doubt that we could gain the support of 92 counties. In fact, I was told that if we got 20 on board, we’d be doing good.” The counties’ resources and personnel were stretched to the limit already, and even though adding a WFS was minimally disruptive, it wasn’t always an easy task to convince people of the value of contributing.

Jim and his partners embarked on what was to become a multi-year campaign to gain buy-in from the counties. There were objections after objections – data security, privacy concerns, lost revenue, and more. But gradually, county by county, meeting by meeting, they gained acceptance. And it worked.

Making It WorkAccording to Phil Worrall, Executive Director of IGIC, there were three fundamental keys to the success of the Indiana Data Sharing Initiative. The first was external funding from project sponsors. Indiana DHS provided $14,497 to each county who agreed to participate, to defray the cost of adding the WFS service. The second key factor – enabled by FME Server – was that they weren’t asking the counties to change their

data. The changes would be handled by a series of FME workspaces consuming the feature streams, harmonizing, and loading to the central database. Third, Phil noted that it was important to make this data easily accessible to a wide audience. “The more the data gets used, the greater the return on the investment. So adding these high value statewide data layers to the IndianaMap was an obvious requirement.”

Somewhere along the way, over half of the counties in the state had signed on. The project caught the attention of VerySpatial.com, who profiled it on “A Very Spatial Podcast” as a noteworthy model for the creation of a national map. And they kept gaining momentum – 55 counties signed on, then 64, and as of this writing all but five counties are sharing their data, and one of those five has verbally committed to participate.

Rave ReviewsSo, five years down the road, was it worth it? There’s no doubt in Jim’s mind. “Having this regional data readily available is far and away more valuable than the sum of its parts,” he says. “Things like natural disasters, air quality, water quality, economic development – they don’t respect administrative boundaries. Earlier this year, when Indiana was hit with tornados, every minute counted. And the data was ready to support response efforts.”

When a major auto manufacturer was recently evaluating business locations, they weren’t looking at any one county – they wanted information about the region, and it was ready for them. “You never know who’s considering a site in the state,” says Jim. “If they have ready access to data, they may stop and take a look. If it’s not easily available, you may well get passed over and never even know it.” The data is also being used in Indiana’s new statewide first responders dispatch system, and citizens’ services applications like the Indiana Secretary of State’s “Who Are Your Elected Officials?” website.

We asked Jim if they could have done it without FME Server. His answer – “Theoretically? Maybe. Practically? No. It was the best solution we knew of, and had we tried to do it another way, we probably would have failed before we even got started.” Thanks for the kind words, Jim – and congratulations on an amazingly successful initiative. May the road forward be a smooth one!

Learn more about FME Server at www.safe.com/FMEServer.

IndianaMap.org provides centralized access to the shared data.

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Code Warriors – Actian Takes Their Development on the Road

Data to Go – Custom Offline Android & iOS Maps

FME SDK, it’s easy to get started, with templates and reference projects provided so that you’re not venturing forth from mile zero. The Ingres format, though, being a highly complex and functional database, was a bit more complicated than typical file formats.

A road trip probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you’re wrapping up a major product release. But for Actian, developers of enterprise grade open source database Ingres, a little Canadian hospitality and office space turned out to be perfectly timed.

Ingres has a long track record in the world of open source, and Actian had an ambitious list of enhancements for release 10S, including geospatial data support. As their business moves towards helping large companies tackle “Big Data”, the need for an efficient way to bring multiple data sources into Ingres was apparent.

FME looked like the perfect choice. It had the formats they wanted, both spatial and non-spatial, mature developer tools for building plugins, and a generous Developer Partner Program that includes complimentary FME licenses. Plus, as Tyler Mitchell, Engineering Director at Actian tells us, “Many of our current and future clients are already FME users. It made sense on multiple levels – not just technically, but in terms of credibility and market potential too. The question wasn’t should we do it, it was could we do it with the product launch deadline fast approaching.”

There was one roadblock – no in-house specialists and an unknown learning curve to get up to speed on the FME developer tools. When you’re building your own format plugin with the

time with direct access to Safe’s own experts and the FME development team. By week’s end, the plugin’s development had taken a huge leap forward, and Alex headed homeward with functional code, ready for final touches. The initial development sprint – originally estimated to be around two months – was finished in two weeks. With the oversight and guidance of the FME dev team, they also had the confidence that it would be done right and seamlessly integrate with Ingres 10S.

Fil Vera, Director of Engineering, leads Safe’s product integration team, and tells us a bit about why he welcomes outside developers. “This community is a really important part of extending format support for FME,” he says. “If you’re doing a plugin, don’t be shy – come talk to us. Sometimes we even ship outside plugins as part of the FME product. We provide all the resources we can, including adding tests to our automated test platform. And a few days spent onsite at Safe can really make a difference – both in time and product quality.”

So, as Fil says – come talk to us if your plugin development looks like it could benefit from some hands-on expertise from the Safe development team. Perhaps we’ll see you soon in Surrey. Road Trip!

For more information on the FME Developers Program, go to www.safe.com/developers.

After working through the initial design and functional spec stages, we invited Actian to take advantage of some onsite time at our facility. That’s when Alex Trofast, Senior Software Engineer, packed his bags and hit the road for points west to spend a week working onsite at Safe’s Surrey, Canada offices.

There wasn’t a lot of time for sightseeing, though – the week was planned out to maximize Alex’s

most important step – pyramid tiling it properly for mobile use.” A typical order takes two to three minutes to process, and the user then downloads it to their mobile device.

On the front end, the primary challenges were platform choice and user experience. Magnus Jutterström, Manager Metria Products , tells us, “Users are accustomed to apps like Google MapsTM. The bar is set high. You have to produce a quality, intuitive user experience.” With that in mind, they decided to write both iOS and Android apps in native code. “We could have coded cross-platform and saved development time,” he says, “But we would have been compromising, creating an in-between solution.”

The end result, as you can see here, is an elegant and simple interface that gives the customer both the information and the performance they need, on their platform of choice. Metria’s future plans include enabling customers to add their own spatial datasets, 3D models, and adding field reporting capabilities. Well done!

Sometimes the road doesn’t quite reach where you need to go – and sometimes the cellular coverage doesn’t, either. And while some commercial map applications can be used offline, the content, accuracy, and cartographic quality didn’t meet the needs of Metria AB’s customers –so they decided to build their own.

Based in Sweden, Metria provides services to industry as well as an extensive selection of geographic data. Many of their customers, particularly those in the mining and forestry sectors, need access to information when they’re in the field. Performance issues – due to overloading of the 3G network, or simple unavailability in remote areas – made live streaming of maps unfeasible. The solution? Mobile apps, with offline data access, using FME for data preparation.

Roger Jonsson, Systems Developer and Certified FME Professional, tells us a bit about the back-end architecture. “When a customer orders a map, we assemble it on demand – combining cadastral with imagery and vector data,” he says.

“FME handles the prep when the request comes in, clipping and combining it, and then the

Alex Trofast, Code Warrior.

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FME User Spotlight: Trond Ottersland, Norway Powel AS, Product Manager Smart Generation, FME User for 4+ yearsYou said it was "love at first sight" when you met FME. Tell us more! Well, in 2008 I had a project to finalize, mosaicking and tiling TIFF files based on polygons and adding GeoTIFF tags. FME solved it. And it was so easy! I have been working with format conversions for many years, and I have always spent a lot of time reading format specs. Now, with FME, I can skip this and concentrate on the result.

And so your favorite FME Transformer would be… Definitely the Clipper. It was the first one I used and I have used it on many occasions. The possibility to add name to output data based on an attribute of the clipper polygons is great.

We hear you take FME into the great outdoors too. I started drawing orienteering maps way back when an Apple II CX was expensive… I have always been interested in maps! Now I have a Garmin GPS tracker on my hunting dog, and an FME workspace that has loaded four years of dog tracks into an ArcGIS® file geodatabase, which I analyze to help plan our trips.

Do you have any tips for other FME Users? I started by going through tutorials - and learned a lot. I am also paying attention to the webinars and FME Talk. You never know

FME Server TrialYou probably wouldn’t buy a new car without taking it for a spin first – and now you can do the same with FME Server!

You have a number of choices if you’re interested in checking out what FME Server can bring to help automate your workflows. You can work through live demos online and explore how data validation and upload, data distribution,

data streaming, and bulk data loading and conversion work.

Or you can install it yourself on your own hardware (which can take less than 10 minutes,

thanks to the Express Install option) and obtain a 60-day trial license automatically through our website.

Whichever road you choose, there are also extensive learning and technical

when something useful comes up and I have improved some of my work with tips from FME Talk.

Editor’s Note: If you like FME Talk, check out the new FME Community Answers at www.fmepedia.com/answers.

resources available to you, including: webinars, demos on our YouTube Channel, articles on FMEpedia, and of course the brand new FME Community Answers site.

To get started, go to www.safe.com/FMEServerTrial, and we’ll hand over the keys to the latest model of FME Server. And we won’t even ask to see your driver’s license first.

FME is a registered trademark of Safe Software Inc. All other product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Printed in Canada.

Web: www.safe.comEmail: info@safe.com

Suite 2017, 7445 - 132nd StreetSurrey, British Columbia Canada

Tel: 604-501-9985Fax: 604-501-9965

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About FMEThe FME technology platform makes it possible to transform spatial data to use and share. It solves more spatial data transformation challenges across more formats than any other solution, making it easier for professionals to solve data interoperability headaches and help their organizations meet their business goals and required standards.

Today, FME is the dominant technology for spatial data transformation. It powers our FME Desktop and Server software and the solutions of more leading spatial data application vendors than any other technology. It's used by tens of thousands of customers worldwide across a wide range of industries. FME is made by the experts at Safe Software. Learn more about achieving total spatial data mastery at www.safe.com

New! FME Community AnswersWe recently launched FME Community Answers, a new question and answers site for FME users. It’s a replacement for FME Talk with new features and a fresh look.

Stewart Harper, FME Server Support Manager - Joined Safe Software in October 2008What is your role at Safe? My top priority is ensuring that FME Server customers receive the highest quality support we can give them. I also work closely with the FME Server development team to help drive the product direction, and I look after the infrastructure side of support –

overseeing FMEpedia and the new FME Community Answers site. And my latest role is managing the development of the FME Cloud service - so watch this space!

You’ve traveled some distance to join the team here in Canada. Yes – I moved to Vancouver from England after a chance meeting with Don at a conference. It makes me the first person in my extended family to live outside the UK.

When you’re not in the office, where would we find you? In the mountains! Backcountry skiing, mountain biking… doing just about anything that gets me out there with

friends and provides a suitable level of adrenalin.

What was your most memorable road trip? Definitely the Powder Highway in British Columbia. Five friends in a big MPV – in true road trip style – we drove 2,000 km in nine days and skied Revelstoke, Kicking Horse, Fernie, Whitewater, and Red Mountain. One night it snowed over 50 cm, and we had to dig into our car in the morning!

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For years, FME Talk has been valuable resource where you could get tips and advice from both the professionals here at Safe and your peers. With FME Community Answers it’s now a real community – connect your social media profiles, earn reputation points, and most importantly – get access to the creativity and knowledge of FME users around the globe to find answers for your own challenges.

Join the community at www.fmepedia.com/answers.