How often have you or someone in your company completed the introductory FME courses and then never used them in practice and never really understood FME? We need our co-op students to learn and apply FME, and we need them to do this in about six weeks. Not only for the work they are expected to do but also so that they have a tool that can help them in their careers. But learning FME is akin to learning math for the first time. So, we needed a way to quickly get the students up to speed. We did this by developing a focused plan that gets the students to learn the basics of FME and then learn and apply what they need to know for their terms at Suncor. This presentation will show what we get the students to do and how it helps them learn FME quickly.

1. Having trouble learning or
teaching FME? How I helped
my co-op students learn and
love FME.

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Alonzo de la Cruz
Geomatics Engineer
Started out teaching
High School Math for a
couple of years.
Training and teaching
have been a part of my
career for over a decade.

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Why do you care about
this?
How many times have
you or people in your
organization wanted to
learn FME, completed a
tutorial or a day long
learning session and
then…NOTHING

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And like all languages, the best
way to learn it is to immerse
yourself in it.

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So these were students
with ZERO background
in Spatial
How do I get them to know
Geospatial in about 2
months?

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They probably won’t
need geospatial for
their futures…

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But they will need to be
able to handle data.
And Spatial data is perfect
for learning data
engineering, management,
visualization, etc

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Spatial data says the same
thing in all kinds of
different formats
And it is meant to be
displayed in an easy to
understand manner

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They took to FME quickly
The students were
learning all kinds of new
things that first couple of
months
And they took to FME
because I gave them an
easy win at the start.

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One thing I learned as a teacher…
Without a strong
foundation in the
fundamentals, you can’t
really build any true
advanced skills and
understanding.

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FME can’t be a black box for my team
I would be doing a
disservice to the students
and myself if I let FME
become just a black box
where data goes in and
then data comes out with
no understanding of the
how and why.

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BSEE: Bureau of Safety and
Environmental Enforcement
This data has everything I need:
Well site surface and bottom hole coordinates
Drill path points
Well information like dates and depths
It has Meta data
But most importantly, it is consistent without
format errors but it has to be broken down
https://www.data.bsee.gov/Main/Well.aspx

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BSEE Gulf of Mexico offshore wells
Some
important
information.
Easy to
miss, which
is good in
this case

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The actual BSEE borehole file
This file
forces
the
student
to find
the meta
data.

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The
breakdown
of the fields
https://www.data.bsee.gov/
Main/HtmlPage.aspx?page
=borehole

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This is an ideal data set for my
students to learn FME
The concepts are relevant to their
work
And they can use other programs to
check their work
It has just enough “surprises” to
make the student have to think
about what is going on.

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First:
Two lessons I
learned the
hard way

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Have immediate project work with FME
after doing the training/academy
The worst thing you
can do is not have
simple projects that
the student can do
almost immediately
after they do the
tutorials.

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Progress slowly at first to build their
foundation
The next worst
thing is to expect
advanced level
work from
someone that
has just finished
some tutorials
ⅆ𝑓
ⅆ𝑡
= lim
ℎ→0
𝑓 𝑡 + ℎ − 𝑓 𝑡
h
Please prove the fundamental
theorem of calculus:
Solve for x:
X + 10 =15

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Build the Basics!
Nothing complicated. But the repetition and easy to understand logic is key.

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Text File
Reader
Student had to create
36 attributes
Which meant they needed
36 substring extractors

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Basic
Transformers:
Tester
Vertex creator
Reprojector
As a check, they wrote
to an excel file
Writers are Shape and
File Geodatabase

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The other students workspace…

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Where is the repetition?

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They also made more…

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The FME command line is actually useful
Copy and paste the FME command line text you get in the translation log into a text file and
save as a windows batch file (*.bat)

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Easy “Automation” in windows
scheduler
Schedule the batch file to run
when you want and done!
Are there better ways?
Yes. But I want them to have
easy wins early.

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And getting the
students to learn FME
to automate/batch
this when necessary
was a worthwhile
investment
Converting
coordinates from a
text, CSV,
spreadsheet etc.
to a spatial format
is a basic skill
The end result was
their first automated
data pipeline, but more
importantly FME
became a tool with
which they became
increasingly more
skilled.

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Relevant and easy
wins early with
repetition to
reinforce the
philosophy of FME

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Questions?
Connect with me on LinkedIn at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/geomatics1/

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37. Thank You!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/geomatics1/