The Youtube QGIS Crash Course 🦎

My typical Thursday Night

We've all been there, seeing zeros at the end of the esri plans.

why yes, that's per month.

Your hand moves to google, as if by instinct...you type QGIS in the search bar. 15 minutes into QGIS there is absolutely no chill, and so you pay esri for another month and call it a day.

Why QGIS why now?

Diversification of geospatial skills is key. In terms of soft skills, this has never been more true.

3 soft skills every geospatial professional should improve 📇

Last week I was occupied with some pretty repetitive projects at work. When work has a lot to power though, I usually like to plug into a podcast or an audio book. I had the chance to do both this week, and the idea of soft skills came up quite

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But when it comes to technology, the world is moving so fast, the more tools you know, the more nimble you can be in the market place.  I don't expect you to have all the free time to be come a "QGIS wizard", but to know the interface, to be familiar with the terms and processes can make for quick transitions in workflow.

youtube is the new google

after Google.com, Youtube is the second ranking search engine online consistently. So why don't we leverage this to our advantage to take a crash course in QGIS?

First things first

I cannot stress this enough. Use. The. Documentation. This is how most QGIS questions get answered. But if you are like me, you don't want to sit and read the whole thing. That's fine, ctrl-F that documentation for any terms, issues, errors, or tabs you don't understand. Building up your QGIS vocabulary is key to learning and to advancing in the software. Knowing the lingo will help you ask better questions and get better answers.

So bookmark this: https://docs.qgis.org/3.22/en/docs/

the Youtube QGIS Crash Course:

1. Start with Klas Karlsson  and his amazing library of QGIS content on youtube. His videos range from getting started to advance subjects. Go become a subscriber to his youtube channel and watch his videos first.

2. Hans Van der Kwast, has an amazing QGIS series associated with books. Currently working through QGIS for Hydrological Applications, these videos are detailed and very useful if you are engaged in long term QGIS work. These videos are perfect for when you've learned the basics and need real world applications for QGIS, but are getting stuck.

3. Hatari labs is another phenomenal QGIS resource on Youtube. While not focused solely on QGIS, this channel brings some of the most interesting and helpful videos on remote sensing I've seen in a long time. More advanced topics, more working with data and less of the defined roadmap help these videos round out your QGIS crash course with some real world problem solving and data management. Definitely helpful if you are interested in remote sensing.

and that's our QGIS crash course. No you don't have to watch every video, but getting immersed in the content will help to make the software real. You'll learn by doing, following, and getting your hands dirty.

Good luck!