Welcome to our February FME Community User Spotlight! Every month, we’ll be spotlighting a user in the community whose active participation and helpful contributions have been invaluable to the community. We’re excited to highlight their experiences and insights!
User Spotlight: Hans van der Maarel @redgeographics
What’s your name?
Hans van der Maarel
What company do you currently work for?
Red Geographics
What’s your current job role and title?
Owner
Tell us more about what you do and how you use FME?
I'm the owner and founder of Red Geographics, a Dutch FME partner. My work with FME is primarily aimed at helping our customers (and the larger community) by thinking up exercises for our training courses, use-cases, proof-of-concepts, tech support and basically lots of clever ways of using FME.
Why did you join the FME Community?
I joined the first, I guess, incarnation of the FME Community, on Yahoo Groups because I thought it was a good way to get better with FME and help out others at the same time.
What tips do you have for users on how to get the most out of the FME Community?
Give some context to your questions, and explain what you're trying to do but also why, because the solution may require a totally different approach to get to the solution.
Tell us about some of the exciting use cases you’ve built using FME.
Combining a route, start time and speed, so I know where I will be at what time, with a weather API I can send myself a notification if I'm biking to and from the office ("leave now and get wet or wait 15 minutes and stay dry").
What’s one of your favourite tips or tricks for using FME?
Changing the order of transformer ports, not often used but very useful when you need it.
If you were stranded on an island and could only bring three things with you, what would they be?
An atlas, some way to play music (the island has wifi, right?) and a towel.
If you could work from anywhere in the world, where would it be?
A cabin in the woods somewhere, like the one I stayed in in rural West-Virginia last year.
