This is a great question!
I've done something similar a couple of times, and after having spent (wasted?) way too much time explaining basic "GIS" I've concluded that for pure developers, it works really well if you explain the basic FME concepts without mentioning geometries at all. Actually, just demonstrating something super simple like reading a CSV or Excel file into database table with some checks and simple transformations is often enough to get people hooked!
For developers, I would maybe also spend a couple of minutes just explaining that FME can be extended with Python (startup/shutdown scripts, PythonCaller), that seems to alleviate some doubts pretty early on.
My two cents...
I like to explain its no-code app integration and demo a few examples.
I would combined some of the suggestions by @david_r and @bruceharold with a 2 min video
Hi @paalped! Good question.
To start, I would emphasize the ability to create visual workflows that help others understand how the data is moving, and the ability to re-use those workflows: tweak them for another project or set them up to run automatically according to a schedule or event-driven workflows.
I'd also recommend taking a look at our "What is" pages (found in the top navigation of
safe.com). There may be some information that you can pull from there that may help to explain the basics of FME and GIS. I'd recommend the pages on
data integration,
spatial data, and
why spatial data is important.
Our
presentation gallery may also be a good resource for you or, perhaps, provide some inspiration at the very least! For me, personally, I use it a lot to learn more about exactly what types of projects FME has been able to help with. There's a wide variety of topics from users in all sorts of industries.
Good luck with your talk! :)
+1 on the examples and highlighting the fact it's a visual sort of programming.
I'm currently going through something similar with new staff who are helping me out with promotion and admin stuff, not coming from a geo background at all. I think (but I'll doublecheck with them) that highlighting that FME is about transforming data and making those workflows repeatable was a good way of explaining it.
I've found that the keys words for programmers are VPL (Visual Programming Language) and/or Node-based (visual) programming.
Once they are onboard with that, then I talk about Spatial ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), with a lot of examples as to what 'Transform' can entail.
Time/resource permitting I'll do a live demo, usually something like read in a shapefile, buffer the features by x amount, calculate the area and write the results to a kml file.
Lots of time permitting, I'll offer a head to head challenge. I'll have some straight forward, but non trivial data transformation challenges, the programmers decide which one we'll use. First one to have a working prototype wins.
Thanks a lot!
I really appreciate all the feedbacks!
I do want to show some use of geometries, cause its where the fun lies.
I was thinking I could try to demonstrate a self documenting workspace. Any feedbacks on that one would be great too!
Here is my draft of a demo workspace
I noticed a small flaw using the PowerPoint writer, I can't make the point and polygon geometries align though..
stepbystep.fmw
