A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege to attend the OpenGeoHub Summer School in Poznan. It was framed by the theme “Processing and visualizing large geospatial data using R, Python and Julia”. During one week packed with interesting talks and workshops held by well known scientists and open source developers, participants got many insights into geospatial processing tools and techniques. Furthermore, we learned about methods and concepts to foster open science and reproducible research from both, a generic as well as a geospatial perspective.

group photo

With about 100 participants, this summer school sometimes felt like a conference – in a good way. There were plenty of opportunities to exchange ideas with and get inspired by people from diverse backgrounds. This was one of the aspects I really appreciated. Regarding the sessions and workshops, I enjoyed the introduction to (Geo-) Julia by Marteen Pronk. I think it is always good to look beyond the personally known tools and programming languages. One highlight of the mobility topics was the session by Anita Graser on “Data engineering for Mobility Data Science”. I learned several shortcuts and tricks for everyday tasks, but the most important takeaway was about the use of Data Version Control (DVC). At the Mobility Lab we commonly use a git-based workflow for code versioning. However, applying such concepts to data versioning bears great potential that we did not explore so far. This is definitely something to integrate into our workflows in the future. Also highly relevant from the mobility perspective was the session by Robin Lovelace “Processing large OpenStreetMap datasets for geocomputational research”. For me it was the first time to meet Robin in person and it was great to follow up on several aspects of the workshop and to discuss our approach to bikeabiltiy and walkability assessment with NetAScore.

These were just some of the highlights – there was so much more to explore and learn. Of course, the social programme beyond the sessions also played an important role in making this summer school a success. With very delicious local food and several events like the urban game or the visit to a nearby meteorite site, a perfect frame for meeting new people and having amazing discussions was created. All in all, it was a great experience!