GMT and open-source at #AGU17 and a GMT/Python online demo

The AGU Fall Meeting is happening next week in New Orleans, potentially gathering more than 20,000 geoscientists in a single place. Me and Paul will be there to talk about the next version of the Generic Mapping Tools, my work on GMT/Python, and the role of open-source software in the Geosciences.

There is so much going on at AGU that it can be daunting just to browse the scientific program. I haven’t even started and my calendar is already packed. For now, I’ll just share the sessions and events in which I’m taking part.

Earth ArXiv meetup

Thursday evening - TBD

The Earth ArXiv is a brand new community developed preprint server for the Earth and Planetary Sciences. Me and some other folks who are involved will get together for dinner/drinks on Thursday to nerd-out offline for a change.

If you are interested in getting involved in Earth ArXiv, join the Loomio group and the ESIP Slack channel and say “Hi”. The community is very welcoming and it needs all the help it can get to grow.

We don’t know where we’ll meet yet but keep posted on Slack and Loomio if you’re interested in joining us.

Panel session in the AGU Data Fair

Wednesday 12:30pm - Room 203

I was invited to be a panelist on the Data Capacity Building session of the AGU Data Fair. The fair has other very interesting panels happing throughout the week. They all center around “data”: where to get it, what to do with it, how to preserve it, and how to give and receive credit for it.

We’ll be discussing what to do with the data once you acquire. From the panel description:

The panel will discuss the challenges the researcher faces and how methods for managing data are currently available or are expected in the future that will help the researcher build value and capacity in the research data lifecycle.

The discussion will be in an Ask-Me-Anything style (AMA) with moderated questions from the audience (on and offline). If you have any questions that you want us to tackle, tweet them using the hashtag #AGUDataCapacity. They’ll be added to a list for the moderators.

I’m really looking forward to this panel and getting to meet some new people in the process.

Paul’s talk about GMT6

Thursday 4:15pm - Room 228

Paul is giving the talk The Generic Mapping Tools 6: Classic versus Modern Mode at the Challenges and Benefits of Open-Source Software and Open Data session. He’ll be showcasing the new changes that are coming to GMT6, including “modern mode” and a new gmt subplot command. These are awesome new features of GMT aimed at making it more accessible to new users. For all the GMT gurus out there: Don’t worry, they’re also a huge time saver by eliminating many repeated command online options and boilerplate code.

Panel session about open-source software

Thursday 4-6pm - Room 238

I’ll also be a panelist on the session Open-Source Software in the Geosciences. The lineup of panelists is amazing and I’m honored to be included among them. It’ll be hard to contain the fan-boy in me. I wonder if geophysicists are used to getting asked for autographs.

The discussion will center around the role of open-source software in our science, how it’s affected the careers of those who make it, and what we can do to make it a viable career path for new geoscientists.

My contribution is the abstract “Nurturing reliable and robust open-source scientific software”.

Many thanks to the chairs and conveners for putting it together. I’ll surely have a lot more to say after the panel.

Poster about GMT/Python

Friday morning - Poster Hall D-F

Last but not least, I’ll be presenting the poster “A modern Python interface for the Generic Mapping Tools” about my work on GMT/Python. Come see the poster and chat with me and Paul! I’d love to hear what you want to see in this software. I’ll also have a laptop and tablets for you to play around with a demo.

You can download a PDF of the poster from figshare.

A lot has happened since my last update after Scipy2017. Much of the infrastructure work to interface with the C API is done but there is still a lot do. Luckily, we just got our first code contributor last week so it looks like I’ll have some help!

You can try out the latest features in an online demo Jupyter notebook by visiting agu2017demo.gmtpython.xyz

The notebook is running on the newly re-released mybinder.org service. The Jupyter team did an amazing job!

Come say “Hi”

If you’ll be at AGU next week, stop by the poster on Friday or join the panel sessions if you want to chat or have any questions/suggestions. If you won’t, there is always Twitter and the Software Underground Slack group.

See you in New Orleans!