Hello FME'ers

Welcome to What's Up Wednesday

FME User Conference News

If you're attending the upcoming conference, then you'll be happy to know you can now officially create your FME UC Profile & Personal Schedule online and in the mobile app!

Basically, you can see all of the sessions, mark which ones you'll be attending, browse the speaker list, look at event maps, and check out our sponsors.

One event on the agenda is the FME Hackathon, 6pm-9pm on Thursday evening, and for which I'm now pleased to announce the themes:

There are 4 themes (or categories, if you prefer), and you can choose which to take part in:

• The Peak of Data Integration
• Just for Fun
• FME Server Apps
• Augmented Reality

The Peak of Data Integration is where we want to see your great ideas for Desktop functionality or projects. For example, you might make a new custom transformer or workspace to process data in a specific way. Hopefully, you'll stretch the boundaries of FME as you do.

Just for Fun is exactly what it sounds like: a project that has no serious work use, but is simply interesting and enjoyable. Processing data from your favourite sports team? Creating a map of nearby ice cream shops? Using beer bottles to play the Star Wars imperial march? That's perfect for this category.

FME Server Apps means your final project has a Server App as its front-end or perhaps makes use of FME Data Express. How about an app for trading FME transformer trading cards? That would fit in nicely.

Augmented Reality requires some aspect of AR in your project. Possibly you'll create an AR-related workspace/transformer for the FME Hub, but more likely you'll just use FME to create an awesome AR model.

Maybe you'll build a maze to navigate? Maybe a virtual art gallery? An interactive game? Who knows? But we'll provide you with a base model and some basic assets to get you started, plus clear an area for you to test safely. We don't want anyone to wander around bumping into tables!

If you're interested in AR but haven't used it before, this is just the opportunity to try. We'll have all of our top experts on hand, in a fun and welcoming environment. Just be sure to bring a mobile device with the FME AR app installed.

I'll have more project ideas and suggestions - for every category - available at the conference itself. But it's also a good time now to start thinking about a project and maybe even putting a team together.

For more inspiration, check out the projects from last time.

FME Security Fixes

You may have noticed new uploads recently for 2022, but also 2021. These are updates to FME Server that address a handful of security vulnerabilities.

FME Desktop is not impacted, only Server, and public-facing instances are at a higher risk. I can confirm that we have seen no active exploitation of these vulnerabilities, but obviously, it's best for us all to take a proactive approach to security advisories.

I believe an email is being sent out with more details. But if you do need any help in upgrading, please feel free to reach out to our support team for assistance.

Hub Updates

It's now August which means not only is the user conference close upon us, the July Hub Digest is now available.

The most interesting semi-official Safe upload is a MeshSmoother transformer. From users, there is a SQLStatementSplitter, which cleans up text containing SQL statements:

There's also a transformer that is mysteriously named "DTCC_LM_2_UE4". What does this do? It generates Unreal engine tiles from (Swedish) Lantmateriet datasets. Even if you aren't Swedish it might be useful to check out how Unreal tiles are generated. I'll be doing that.

And a final note: the FME Hub testsuite is now upgraded to FME 2022.1.1.0 (build 22623).

Certification

Congratulations to those with recent certification awards. If that includes your FME Business Certification, then you'll be happy to know that these are now included on the FME Wall of FME online:

Though there may be others, I've recently noticed the following successful applicants: Danilo de Lima, David Runneals (FME Business Certification), Al Muthana Al Khazaleh, Abdillahi Hassan, Eduardo Alarcon Guerra, Antria Christodoulou, Sardar Faisal Abbas (FME Certified Professional), and Duncan McLeish (FME Server Professional).

Other News

• A new blog post covers What to Expect at the FME UC 2022.
• Con terra has announced a Beat the Lizard contest for the user conference too.

• Talking of prizes, here's what you could have won at the World Tour in Norway! Exciting!
• On the Esri Community Blog, Bruce Harold writes about How Does Data Interoperability Relate to FME?
• Con terra's latest FME zum Kaffee video is all about the Clipper transformer. Oh, and here's a brand new video about Filtering Data.
• Here's a great interview with FME user Håkan Samor at Sweco. It's in Swedish so Google Translate is probably your friend here!
• While you have Translate open, also check out this article by Humbert Fiorino on the subject of Python and FME for raster processing.
• And if you are going to work remotely, may I suggest you do it like Loïc Guenin Randelli? Beautiful.