A New Venture

For the past few years I’ve been working on some software in my spare time, and it’s just about ready for testing by people other than myself.

The software is a mapping package, codenamed “Bergschrund”. It’s designed for backcountry enthusiasts, professionals, and semi-professionals to use in planning, execution, analysis, documentation, and other mapping tasks they may need to perform.

To announce the software I was planning a long “manifesto” style post that would outline how it is I came to be obsessed with designing and building this project. In fact I wrote such a post. I decided nobody would read it; people will either understand what I’m, trying to do, or they won’t.

In any case, I’d like to formally annouce my new venture, TrueNorth Mapping.

The goal is to build software that will bridge the gap between the variety of free tools of varying quality and functionality, the group of consumer grade mapping programs that offer limited function, and the high end GIS systems that require a huge investment in time and money to learn how to use.

In other words, I’ve built software that can deliver high end functionality, with the ease of use of a modern word processor.

Most people can start up a word processor like Microsoft Word, and bang out a letter without even thinking about using a manual. When you need to write an essay or a paper, you might need some quick help with the styles, but you can still get it done. Then, when you need something that looks nice like a resume, you’ll use a template that sets up all the styles for you. Still achievable with a minimum of effort. Finally, only one in a thousand people will need advanced features like scripting, and mail merge, but they are still there, in the same program; you just need to find them. Then you read the documentation.

I’ve taken this concept and applied it to GIS software.

My goal is that you, the users, should have access to the most of the features you might need in a GIS, without paying the price in cost or time to learn the software.

If you’re interested in this, please take the time to check out the progress at www.TrueNorthGeospatial.com where I’m posting updates in the blog. Sign up for my mailing list, or follow the progress on various social media outlets. And of course you can always comment below.