What's Up Wednesday (13th Mar, 2024): The Transformer Gallery, FME 2024.0 Updates, Partner Tours and Events, AI Updates, and Unusual FME Use-Cases.

FME Friends,

This is definitely one of the busiest times of the year in the FME calendar. Not only do we release a new FME version, but there are lots of content updates for us to do, and partner events going on throughout the world.

I certainly can't think of a time that I've been busier.

But, through all that, we're still looking to the future, and my first item today asks for your feedback on a proposed change to Workbench that is coming up in 2024.1...

The Transformer Gallery

As you know, the transformer gallery is the window that (by default) sits in the bottom left of your Workbench interface. In 2024.0, it looks like this:

I don't use the gallery much - although I still do use it occasionally - so I was interested to hear that our developers are thinking of removing that window completely in FME 2024.1.

The reason is that most of the functionality in that window is now provided in different places. For example, I can't remember the last time I used the Transformer Gallery to add a transformer. I always use Quick Add now.

I think you probably do too, but what I think doesn't really matter. The more important point, of course, is, do YOU still use the Transformer Gallery?

I'd really love to get your feedback on whether you would like to keep the gallery or whether you would accept it being removed.

You can find out more details and vote for your choice on this page of the community.

Voting earns you reputation points and a nice community badge, and helps us to make a key decision about the way forward for Workbench. So, please do think about this for a moment and let us know your point of view. Thanks!

FME 2024.0 Features Updates

On the new FME Community platform, we have the ability to post articles specifically about product updates. The first of these new articles landed yesterday, about the new functionality in FME 2024.0.

One aspect that I know you're going to like is the ability to upgrade multiple transformers at once to a new version.

I've been so busy on the new community platform that I've not had much time to check out 2024 myself yet. But I hope to do that in the coming weeks and start providing some useful content based on what's new in this FME.

Oh, if you're using certain Google or Azure packages from the Hub, be sure to update them before working in 2024.

"World Tour" Events

Although Safe no longer runs world tour events, many of our partners do. In fact, just recently, 1Spatial announced their series of upcoming events through Australia and Singapore.

There are 9 events in all, spread from 14th to 29th May. 1Spatial also "invites passionate individuals to showcase their knowledge and latest projects" - so click the above link and look for the button to Submit Your Abstract, if you would like to present at one of their events.

I wonder if they will all dress up in yellow vests like they did last year?!

As you might know, we do have an events page on the FME Community.

I'm trying my best to keep that up to date with all partner events of this type, so please let me know if I've missed any out (I'll add the 1Spatial events shortly).

The first one on the list is an FME Inspiration Day with GIM in Leuven, coming up very soon on April 23rd. Then there is an FME Roadshow in Auckland, and FME Brasil in S?o Paulo.

So, be sure to visit that page and check out all of the upcoming webinars and user events in the FME world for the next few months.

FME Saves User Over 1,000 Hours Annually

Well, of course it does! It even saves me that much time, I think. In this case, the user being helped is Planview USL, a utility services company

So check out this new user story - and all of the other ones on our website - for more details. They are a great source of inspiration for the sort of projects that FME can be used for.

AI Roundup

Last week, I mentioned Dmitri's new use for AI: creating OverpassQL queries to retrieve data from OpenStreetMap.

As promised, that functionality is now wrapped up as a custom transformer on the FME Hub for you to try out.

Similarly, Safe partner, Tensing has made available a new FME Hub transformer (AnthropicVisionConnector) for connecting to the Anthropic Claude models.

Claude is a next-generation AI assistant built on a series of different large language models.

You can find out more details about this in a recent post by Oliver Morris:

Interesting FME Uses

I'm always on the lookout for interesting and unique uses of FME, and I found a number of them this week.

• Want a new use for FME? Why not do like Mark and design and price models using the Lego API?!

• For more serious pursuits, here's a great example of using FME for Data Integration as part of an academic investigation into historic land-use evolutions.

• Spatialworld Oy (Finland) used FME for analyzing statistics on the occasion of International Women's Day.

Miscellaneous News

• New training from con terra: FME und Datenbanken
• The Miso Local Authority Knowledge Sharing Hub is next in Leeds
• An interesting interview between Safe partner Nordend and the Flemish motorways agency about a new data standard called OTL.
• An upcoming webinar from IMGS about FME Powering Enterprise Dashboards
• Training by 1Spatial Australia in March/April