The workshop was a three-day event hosted at Penn State by the Triangle Zope and Python Users Group (TriZPUG). It was geared towards beginners and non-programmers (although many of my fellow classmates were IT and systems people) and provided a pretty thorough review of all of the elements of the language – now it’s up to me to tie it all together! The price was extremely reasonable (only $300 for a 3 day class!) and I’d certainly recommend it if there’s a camp in your area; although I would also recommend reading a book or taking a tutorial to familiarize yourself with the basics BEFORE attending the class; I did, and as a result I think I got more out of it than I would have had going in cold.

The next PyCamp is being held in LA in a few days, and the following one will be in Toronto from Aug 30th to Sept 3rd (although this isn’t posted on the website yet); the normal workshop is a five day affair, the one I attended was a mini 3 day version which suited my needs pretty well.

There are tons of Python tutorials on the web and Python’s site is pretty definitive. If you’re looking for a book, I’d recommend Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python. Unlike the “Learn Language X” books, this one introduces you to general theory and practice in programming, and the authors illustrate the applications with practical examples using Python – it’s been immensely helpful to me. Now that I’m around the initial learning curve, I’ve been relying more on Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional, which is better as a reference book and good for illustrating many of the uses for individual objects, methods, etc (which I had a hard time grasping before I covered the basics of programming).

The Bureau is now providing the TIGER line files in shapefile format! Before, it was only possible to get generalized cartographic boundary files directly from the bureau in shapefile format. Now, you can get the boundaries in their original detail from a public domain source. Includes 2000 census geography plus some updates for 2007 for states, counties, metros, places, zips, districts, pumas, and more. Currently, it does not include tracts, block groups, or blocks.

The 2008 release of the American Community Survey (ACS) will include two datasets. There will be the annual numbers for geographies that have over 65,000 people, and for the first time there will be three year averages for geographies that have over 20,000 people. In each succeeding year, this average will be recalculated by adding in the most recent year and dropping the oldest one. Data for geographies with less than 20,000 people will become available in 2011 and will be based on five year averages. The good news is that, from that point forward, data will be available for all areas every single year. The bad news is that the long form (the one in six sample of households taken in the decennial census) is being discontinued and will not be conducted in 2010. Census 2010 will consist solely of the short form questions (the 100% count that covers the basic demographic variables). The ACS will serve as the replacement to the long form, but in most cases the data will not be suitable for making historical comparisons (i.e. comparing 2010 to 2000).

Bureau reps gave an overview of their Population Estimates program. Unlike the ACS which is survey based, estimates are calculated using a cohort component analysis that accounts for births, deaths, and migration each year. Estimates are calculated nationally and at the county level. The county numbers are used to create estimates for each state, which are then adjusted to fit national numbers. Data is available for total population, race, age (broken down by gender for each year at the national level and for five year groups below that) and housing units. Some data is also available for metropolitan areas (which are county based) and county subdivisions (for total population only).

The Bureau gave an overview of Dataferret, which is a tool for data power users. It is available in two versions, as download-able software or as a browser-based JAVA applet, and allows users to gather and process data from several different government sources (unlike the Amerivan Factfinder, which focuses solely on downloading census data).

Finally, things are ramping up for the 2010 Decennial Census. The bureau is updating its master address files and has almost finished recalibrating the TIGER files for each county, so that boundaries are precise within a maximum limit of 70 meters.

Overall I think it went rather well, but it was way too much material for a three hour workshop! We covered the intro slides, and Part I (Intro to GIS and ArcMap). I did an abridged version of Parts II (Intro to Layout View) and III (finding and downloading data, ArcCatalog, preprocessing in Excel) rather than doing all of II and none of III. The third part covers a lot that the standard ArcGIS texts gloss over (or leave out all together), so I really wanted to cover some of that material. But I couldn’t omit any of the basics in the first two parts, because you really need to know them before you can delve further (and understand why you’re delving). Ahhh, the steep learning curve of GIS!

This year’s theme is census geography and mapping, and there were a number of great presentations that covered census geography from the global down to the block level. My personal favorite was a presentation that illustrated the composition and evolution of census tracts – using Legos! Not the real ones mind you, but digital photos of Legos that were enhanced and tied together with Flash in a Powerpoint presentation.

I have provided a link to the 2nd Annual Workshop page before – but there it is again. Powerpoints, and perhaps video footage, of the presentations should be posted there relatively soon.

I also gave a promo to the hands-on GIS workshop that I’ll be doing as part of the second workshop of the series. Two weeks to go, and I still have a lot to do…