Hello FME'ers,
Welcome to What's Up Wednesday
The Community Café Goes Live
It's less than a week now until the FME User Conference 2022 gets underway, and I'm certainly getting excited about this event. One part that I'm running is called the Community Café, which has a lot of different activities and giveaways for all community members.
You can find them listed on the FME-powered Community Café website:
When you're actually at the conference and stop by the booth, you'll have access to all of the activities, including City Guesser, the Community Virtual Badge, the Scavenger Hunt code and much more.
For now, you'll have to be content with exploring Tea and Coffee rituals from around the world, and browsing some ideas for Hackathon projects:
These are all ideas that I've made open for anyone to use. So if you plan on coming to the Hackathon, and you aren't sure of what to do, then here you might find some inspiration.
On the topic of the User Conference, I set up a forum post as a message board for communicating with each other during the conference. So do check that out and hit the follow button to keep up to date. Some community members have already posted some great ideas for Vancouver activities outside the conference.
Marie Kondo and FME
If you haven't heard of her, Marie Kondo is a Japanese "organizing consultant" who has written multiple books and appeared on various TV shows.
Why is this important? Because FME user Enric Shen has written an article called "Marie Kondo Your Hosted Layers in ArcGIS Online or Portal"!
FME is used to query the layers available on your ArcGIS Online/Portal and create a one-page HTML report:
As Enric notes, "Now you have an overview of all your corporate layers in one place. Does it spark joy?"
A Moment of Realization
Another FME-related blog post comes from Brian Brady.
Brian talks about migrating and integrating different systems at a municipal government level, including a 911 and Computer Aided Dispatch tool. To quote Brian's last line:
"This was my first experience with FME, yet that single application of the product led me to realize just how flexible it was."
Total Integration
And another blog that I literally just found is Bruce Harold's latest on Building a Data-Driven Organization.
It's got ArcGIS, FME, Python all living together, to create a Total Integration system.
As Bruce says, "The lightbulb moments for me were realising I could combine ETL with core geoprocessing to include service refresh in my web tool and also use a hosted ArcGIS Online hosted Notebook as a lightweight scheduler for complete automation."
If that's of interest to you, go and check out his article now!
Server Troubleshooting
This week I heard about a user experiencing problems with FME Server. The issue was dealt with by our experts and the information added to our FME Server Troubleshooting Guide.
I have to say that this is an extremely valuable set of articles. If you have problems with FME Server, this is certainly the first place you should look for information on how to solve your issue.
In the example I mentioned, a process called SMS Agent was taking control of the same port that FME uses. That process normally lies dormant on your system, but if Windows does decide to start it (can be triggered by a Windows update) then it will interfere with FME Server.
Certification News
In certification news this week, congratulations to Iria Costas Vazquez of con terra for obtaining the least common certification; FME Certified Trainer.
Also, congratulations to Eva Overgaag, Harry Catharall-Hargreaves, Yogesh Sajekar, and Robert Poynter for gaining FME Certified Professional status.