My final QGIS training trip of 2019 was a long one - to American Samoa. I flew to Honolulu & took a right for another 6 hours to the island of Tatuila. I basically commuted to Pago Pago for the week - leaving Monday morning and returning Friday night. While there I taught a 3 day QGIS course to staff at the Department of Health. With this training I completed the QGIS Training Hemisphere Grand Slam - that’s one QGIS training in each hemisphere - Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern - in a calendar year! The timing of the trip was interesting. If you haven’t heard Western Samoa is experiencing a serious measles outbreak. While I was there no cases had occurred on American Samoa largely due to the diligence of the AS Dept of Health.
I had planned on starting with how to install QGIS - but soon discovered the WiFi was going to be an issue - the QGIS installer was going to take 12 hours to download! So I switched gears. Flexibility was a big theme for the week. One person went down the street with a thumb drive, to download the installer at a building with a better internet connection. Meanwhile the remainder learned how to collect data with Fulcrum.
Learning about Fulcrum.
It ended up working out great. By the time we had gotten through data collection, we had the QGIS installer on thumb drives, and got everyone set up. I spent that first afternoon using the data collected to introduce QGIS.
This training was set up at the last minute. So last minute in fact, that I didn’t have time to order Discover QGIS 3.x books in time. I ended up just bringing a few I had on hand. I also didn’t have any training material with Samoan data. It is such a unique geography, I realized I would need some local data for them to work with. Fortunately I had a couple days in the office before I left, and found some good Samoan data. The last two training days turned in to a combination of walking through how to do different things in QGIS (on-the-fly with that Samoan data), with follow up exercises out of my Discover QGIS 3.x book. The latter really helped to reinforce the concepts and workflows. It ended up working out great.
Due in part to the measles outbreak on the neighboring islands, everyone was super busy. Many were in and out of the training to deal with work issues. When they returned I would then try and catch them up. One thing I loved about this group was that almost before I would have a chance, they would start helping each other catch up! I’m not sure if I’ve ever had a more enthusiastic bunch.
Working through an exercise in Discover QGIS 3.x
We got through everything I had planned and more. I was also sure to let them know about FOSS4G Oceania. I shared the links with them - including To’oa Browns talk about addressing in Western Samoa. Her part of the talk is especially pertinent for these American Samoan health workers - because AS shares the issue of having no street addresses! I hope some can attend next years FOSS4G Oceania meeting in Fiji.
The final group of QGIS Survivors!
There is now a lot of excitement and a decent QGIS foundation. While I was there they formed a QGIS study group. I also gave them assignments to work on post-training. So there is a good foundation now. We talked about continuing to build their skills and not have this be a one of training. I look forward to returning - hopefully next year. Each evening they would take me around to show me a new place. It was more beautiful than I was prepared for. Below is a picture of the National Park of American Samoa.