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Take a break with... Mark Mclean

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Mark is Principal Consultant, FME at 1Spatial Group Ltd, based in the UK. He is an  FME Certified Professional and has many years experience delivering customer projects. He recently joined the FME Division to focus his energies on our FME related business.

Fun facts about you?

  • I share my birthday with Australia.
  • I have written several fantasy novels.

What’s your favourite transformer and why?

I like the callers – Python and HTTP. These extend the core functionality of FME in unlimited ways. Recent examples include:

  • intercepting and modifying JSON geocoder results mid-stream and passing them back to Geocortex.
  • Reading and writing ArcGIS Online (AGOL) attachments to an enterprise Document Management System (eDMS).

What’s the most interesting data challenge you’ve tackled?

Over the last decade or so, I performed several major data migration exercises (Regional Councils and for the ExxonMobil PNG LNG project) each involving hundreds of datasets with millions of features.

One of the Regional Councils had recently formed from four local authorities, each with disparate GI Systems (MapInfo, ArcGIS, both) with no common schema. After consultation with the GIS Team and Asset Managers, I developed a unified Schema and, using the power of FME, migrated the datasets across to an enterprise GeoDatabase for inclusion in the corporate GIS.

How long have you been working with FME?

I have used FME on an as-required basis since 2008, and solidly for the last four years. I have held FME Certified Professional status for the last 3 years. I am currently looking at additional FME Certifications, along with Cloud Services.

I have trained and mentored people in GIS for many years and I am skilled in many development languages (C/C++/C#, VB6/VB.NET, JavaScript/HTML/CSS, Python, etc).

What do you love about FME?

FME empowers people. On one hand it simplifies workflows for those who are, perhaps not so technical, and on the other hand it is infinitely capable in the hands of skilled devotees.

I am loving the power, simplicity and effectiveness of FME Server – which gets better with every release.

If you were given an airline ticket to go anywhere in the world where would you go and why?

One of;

  • The Northern Lights – magical natural effects and I have yet to visit Scandinavia
  • Machu Picchu for the history and majesty
  • Vancouver (where my wife and I last holidayed 25 years ago) – this also happens to be where SAFE Software have their HQ

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