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Toronto23
Toronto23
12:47 AM
I have been reading some of the responses here because I have been trying to get an estimate how much to charge a client. I just finished school in GIS so I don't have much experience but an environmental organization is asking me to do some freelance work for them. They want me to do two web maps. One is with ArcGIS Online (which doesn't seem too hard at the moment). I briefly talked to a professor and he recommended for someone in my position, maybe charge around $70-80
 
 
7 hours later…
PolyGeo
PolyGeo
8:06 AM
@alpha-beta-soup for interoperability and when only simple features are needed.
 
alpha-beta-soup
alpha-beta-soup
8:20 AM
@PolyGeo Do you think the OGC GeoPackage is going to gain leverage? GeoPackages seem far superior to me.
 
PolyGeo
PolyGeo
8:57 AM
@alpha-beta-soup I'm basing my answer on my use of map, layer and Geoprocessing packages and the use I have seen by others of them; and no use of GeoPackages by me. I think packages have value but most users only have requirements for transferring data that shapefiles (or a file geodatabase) coupled with a layer file or two would meet. Such packages are an easy sell to those who understand the requirements that they address and too "complicated" for those who don't.
 
alpha-beta-soup
alpha-beta-soup
@PolyGeo That may be so, but the shapefile has some serious limitations and as long as those who know better keep using it as an exchange format, those are going to keep biting people in the butt: github.com/opengeospatial/geopackage/issues/86
 
 
3 hours later…
PolyGeo
PolyGeo
11:41 AM
@alpha-beta-soup It's those limitations that lead me to always use file geodatabases in preference, and to treat shapefiles as a beginner format i.e. great for the first day (maybe two) of an Intro to ArcGIS for Desktop course, but hopefully outgrown soon after.
 
 
8 hours later…
alpha-beta-soup
alpha-beta-soup
7:14 PM
@PolyGeo File geodatabases are also subject to a range of problems, one of them being that it still isn't trivial to get set up with the appropriate drivers to open one if you don't have Esri software. The OpenFileGDB driver had to be reversed engineered and is still not sanctioned by Esri. Similarly for the shapefile, someone reversed-engineered the .sbn component.
@PolyGeo There are still a plethora of local government web portals where your choice of spatial data download is shapefile or FileGDB. Why not GeoPackage?
 
Chris W
Chris W
7:42 PM
@Toronto23 Flat fee or per hour? I don't really do web mapping yet, and have no idea about the complexity of the maps you're looking at or how long they would take you to do. There's a pretty broad range of fees depending on what kind of work you're doing and how much you want to make. I bill $30 an hour for some simple metes and bounds description mapping right now. I did imagery digitizing for $13 and hour working for someone else. I have charged $60 an hour for 'professional services'.
In your position (and even mine) there's both a learning curve and some trial and error in setting prices. Starting out you may lowball your pricing just to get work. When you have more work than you know what to do with, you raise your rates. Setting your price is as much about being able to turn work away vs needing it as what you 'should' charge.
@alpha-beta-soup For the same reason that dxf and dgn are some of the most common CAD file formats. The 800lb gorillas (or possibly just whoever was 'first') created a standard and had the most exposure, becoming the defacto standard. Anybody who comes after then has to not only provide something new and better, but also allow for access of those older standards. It's basically market share.
Companies think they have a best solution, and maybe they do for them and their clients. They create a standard. Now anyone that wants to compete needs to allow access to that standard. And how many different standards are there? If they all make their formats proprietary, then you have to either license or reverse engineer them, then build that into your own software - added expense. Look at FME and the primary function of just translating between different formats.
The problem is, while I'm sure there are superior solutions, they don't have the market share to really be viable. To do so they have to have the backing of big players, or at the very least enough support that if they provide things for free that big players will at least incorporate it into their work. Some clearly compelling reason to choose that format over any other, and the ability to use it 'anywhere'.
 

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