2026-09-01 –, Conference Management Room5
Training is often treated as an afterthought in the geospatial industry, yet it is essential for real adoption of open tools. This talk share practical lessons from delivering and creating training for GIS, remote sensing, and earth observation, what worked and what didn’t, and what I now do differently
Many of us become trainers in the geospatial industry without formal teaching qualifications. We get asked to onboard a team to QGIS/PostGIS, introduce Earth observation workflows, or create material that people can actually follow. I’m not presenting this as “the one right way” to train, rather as lived experience: the ups, the mistakes, and the approaches that consistently help, participants (or students) leave with confidence.
The talk takes the audience through a set of lessons I learned while delivering training and building learning material in GIS, remote sensing, and earth observation, often using open and free tools. I’ll cover:
• Start with foundations, not features: why spatial concepts (scale, CRS, uncertainty, raster vs vector, metadata) make or break learning outcomes, especially for beginners
• You don’t have to be a domain expert: how: spatial thinking” helps you train across sectors (urban planning, agriculture, environment) by listening for goals, decisions, and patterns rather than trying to master every discipline.
• The responsibility of teaching (and writing): holding someone’s hand for three days or a week is significant, so is publishing training material that others will trust and reuse.
• Learners are diverse: how different personalities, confidence levels, and learning styles shape pacing, explanations, and support, whether your participants are a graduate intern or the CEO.
• Capacity building as part of governance: training is not only a workshop; it affects how organisations handle data, documentation, reproducibility, and continuity when staff changes.
• Common challenges with clients: unclear scope, missing context, and late information, and how to reduce risk without overcomplicating delivery.
I will include a short demonstration example drawn from prior training and training material (not a hands-on exercise), and close with a practical checklist and reflection questions that participants can apply to their training and knowledge-sharing work, so we keep learning open, accessible, and without barriers.
Gave recent training for the Energy Modelling Platform held by Climate Compatible Growth( https://www.linkedin.com/company/climate-compatible-growth-ccg/posts/?feedView=all) hosted by Renewable Energy Research, Development, Training, and Consultancy Center(RERDTC)(https://www.linkedin.com/company/renewableenergycenter/posts/?feedView=all)
Lead projects where there was uplfitment and development of course (10 courses) content that is open for users across Africa to use for Digital Earth Africa (https://learn.digitalearthafrica.org/courses).
I am a GIS and Earth Observation professional, data analyst, and Head of Training at Kartoza (Pty) Ltd. I help teams turn spatial data into actionable insight through open-source geospatial workflows, training, and capacity building. My work spans GIS, remote sensing, and Earth observation analytics, using tools such as QGIS, PostGIS and Python, with a focus on practical, real-world case studies. I design learner-centred training programmes, supports organisations to build internal geospatial skills, and contributes to the open-source geospatial community through knowledge sharing and workshops.