Hello FME’ers
By now you must know that the FME World Tour has just started, and if you’ve been to previous events you’ll know that we always try to provide the most inventive swag of any conference. Well, we hope you agree that this year is the best ever!
The FME Coin
If you attend an FME World Tour event this is what you’ll receive: the FME Coin!
And on the back? Oh you know who it is – it’s the FME Lizard!
We had 5,000 of these made up ready for distribution to users. Not only are they a great memento of a great event, there are some other uses…
Show Us The Money!
The first use of the FME coin is this: a photo contest.
To enter: Just take a photo showing off your FME coin and send it to us.
We’d love to see photos of it in remote or exotic places, maybe next to some amazing scenery, or alongside a local building or monument that’s of interest.
The FME Lizard loves to travel, even if it’s only on the back of a coin!
To submit a photo: Simply tweet us with your photo attached and the hashtag #fmecoin.
We have a workspace running on FME Server that will search for tweets, copy the photos to our DropBox, notify us via Slack, and add your photo to a Google Map.
If your tweet is geotagged it will be located properly on the map – otherwise there’s no telling where it might end up!
We’ll write a follow-up post that explains how we set up this solution.
The Map: You can find the map – along with full contest rules – on our web site here. There are five prizes to be won and the closing date is 1st August 2016.
My one suggestion is that you might want to avoid showing the ID number of the coin in your photo because…
What’s Your Number?
If you don’t want to use your FME coin to enter our contest, there is something else you can do with it. That’s because each coin is a fully functioning “geocoin”. That’s what the ID number is for.
What’s a geocoin you ask? Well, a favourite pastime of mine is geocaching. A geocache is a small, waterproof container, hidden somewhere outdoors. Geocaching is the act of searching out these caches. It’s like a hi-tech treasure hunt using a GPS receiver or mobile phone.
Apart from finding caches, you can also deposit small tokens (‘geocoins’ or ‘travel bugs’) inside a cache, that geocachers will pick up and move on to a different cache. In this way a token can travel the world and be tracked by a special ID number.
Here’s a trackable of mine:
I dropped off “Porky Pie” in Manitoba, Canada; it got moved on to Vancouver, then made it to Okinawa, Japan where it has been picked up and will be moved again shortly.
In short, drop your coin into a geocache and you can follow its progress as it travels the world. The geocaching web site is where you can find out more information, such as a list of geocaches and how to register your geocoin.
You might even find you are inspired to seek out other caches and move on other peoples’ trackables for them. I recommend it as good fun and a great way to get outdoors.
If you do register your geocoin, keep the word “FME” or even “FME World Tour” in the name and then everyone can search for it and see where it’s been. You could perhaps have a private contest between friends to see whose coin travels the furthest.
Anyway…
We love the “FME World Tour Coin”, but really the “Coin” is the least part of it. What’s more important is the “FME World Tour” part.
Each event on the world tour includes an overview of what’s new in FME, and how users around the world are using FME; it includes talks from local users and demonstrations of the latest FME technology; and you get to network with all your local FME friends and meet members of the Safe Software team (and ask them difficult technical questions).
In short, attend the FME World Tour. You won’t regret it. You can find out more information on our website and watch a recording of the first hour of the Vancouver event.
Mark Ireland
Mark, aka iMark, is the FME Evangelist (est. 2004) and has a passion for FME Training. He likes being able to help people understand and use technology in new and interesting ways. One of his other passions is football (aka. Soccer). He likes both technology and soccer so much that he wrote an article about the two together! Who would’ve thought? (Answer: iMark)
