This year’s ESRI conference was a satisfying mix of fun and overwhelming customer interest for our Lizards manning the LizardTech booth.

For customer interest, the release of LiDAR Compressor 1.0 garnered a steady stream of inquirers about the breakthrough of being able to compress huge quantities of LiDAR data in a MrSID file, and we gave away 500 trial DVDs.

For fun, we held another lizardy contest.

We invited users to submit a photo of their favorite plastic LizardTech lizard doing something interesting or posing in an exotic location, the favorite to be chosen by popular vote. The results were creative and often hilarious. Clark Siler of Pflugerville, Texas (shown above with Justyna Bednarski, LT’s marketing communications manager) won the contest and took home a handheld GPS for his trouble. Clark’s photo entry (below) won the most votes on our online voting page.

We’ve always been amazed at how much people enjoy the LizardTech plastic lizards we give away at trade shows. But they are loads of fun. Ryan Burley, northeast regional account manager, and Kelly Downs, director of sales, demonstrate just some of the possibilities.

Voting is over, obviously, but to see all the photos from the contest, visit our Flickr web page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizardtech/sets/72157619211930889/.

LizardTech was one of the sponsors of an OSGeo code sprint in Toronto last week. Mike Rosen and I were both fortunate enough to attend and spend some quality time with twenty of the brightest minds of the open source geo world, folks working on everything from GDAL to MapServer to PostGIS to OpenLayers.

Perhaps the most visible result from the LizardTech side of things was some performance analysis that Frank Warmerdam, Chris Schmidt, and I did on GDAL’s use of MrSID – which should eventually help everyone downstream of GDAL, notably MapServer.

Paul Ramsey (mine host) and Chris both blogged daily about the event. Perry Nacionales and Paul have also posted some pix on flickr, including some of us all unwinding at Le Hockey (Hey, look! Real live Canadians, in their natural habitat!).

And, though we might have the grace to blush just a little, we’re not too modest to nonetheless link to Chris’ stirring post on using GDAL with our D-SDK.

Update: 13 July 2009. Read an article about the OSGeo code sprint in Toronto by Michael Gerlek here. – mdf

Image courtesy of Perry Nacionales

I’d like to introduce you to Jeff Young, LizardTech’s business development manager for geospatial solutions. He joined the LizardTech team this week. 

Jeff will be responsible for expanding our third-party relationships in targeted market segments, including U.S. defense and civilian agencies, state and local governments and commercial markets. Jeff brings more than 30 years of experience to the LizardTech team. Prior to joining us, he held positions in business development, consulting and sales with several geospatial companies, including Leica Geosystems, Space Imaging and Bentley Systems.

In addition to his professional experience in the GIS industry, Jeff sits on the board of the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Rocky Mountain Region, as a national director. Jeff earned a BS in geography (cum laude) from Lock Haven State College in Pennsylvania and an MA in geography, specializing in land use analysis and environmental hazards, from Arizona State University.

Jeff lives and works out of Centennial, Colorado, where he loves spending time with his wife Pamela, daughter Kelsey and son Colin. Travel, saltwater fishing, and golf are his other big loves. He has slept in all 50 states of the Union and in 50 countries around the world.

Everyone knows the peril of navigating a box of chocolates that have various fillings but no legend to tell you which ones are filled with what.

The following is excerpted from an email string that occurred late yesterday after each engineer received a box of chocolates from our activities team as a Valentines Day treat.

Happy Friday and Happy Valentine’s Day from LizardTech.

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Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:20 PM
Importance: Low
Subject: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:21 PM
Subject: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

Technically it’s a cylinder not a circle.

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:21 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

The other round one is coconut.  :-(

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:22 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

We should be able to put a spreadsheet together pretty quickly and get it to Jaime to distribute…

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Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:32 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

Except by then it may be too late . 

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:35 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

This is not rocket science. Each dev eats ONE of the as-yet-unidentified chocolates, and we’re there in a trice. :)

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:36 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

One of the rectangles was a dark choc inside.

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:38 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

did it have two ridges on it or just one?

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:38 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

Too late, already in tummy.

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:39 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

alright, does the remaining dark rectangle have two ridges or one?

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Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:40 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

Unclear – it’s kinda got a bunch of medium length ridges.

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Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:42 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

I think we should have *one* dev eat all of his chocolates for posterity.

—————————
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 4:43 PM
Subject: RE: the DARK chocolate circle is marshmallow creme <eom>

They mapped the human genome but we can’t figure out what’s in a box of chocolates. I’m going home…

It is an oft-invoked stereotype that engineers prefer to work alone in dark caves, and there’s certainly some truth there. Here at LizardTech, for example, each development team member works in a well-ventillated but cozy and earthy burrow that our ops team constructed to individual specifications out of papier-mache. Some of these workspaces have convincing stalactites, or narrow entrances lined with lichens. A few are strewn with bones.*

But in mass emergences similar to those of the 13- and 17-year cicada, engineers periodically gather together in high-energy events called “code sprints”, which last several days and whose purpose is to resolve bugs, churn out new code, share information and ideas, and dispatch untold wedges of pizza. Ethnologists now suspect that a form of socialization is also carried on.

In March, LizardTech will be cosponsoring such an event in Toronto hosted by OSGeo. A couple of lizards will be attending and will work on GDAL/MrSID performance issues. Please consider joining us there!

*By contrast, our sales team is housed in a single, large spherical room partially filled with rubber balls and water toys.

Seriously, image of New Mexico’s Lechuguilla Cave courtesy of Wikipedia.