2016 Q4 All Hands

Every quarter, the fully remote SilviaTerra team assembles from all corners of the world (we are located on multiple continents now), rents a house, and spends a week building new features and planning future conquests.

We just wrapped up our 2016 Q4 All Hands in Arnold California situated in the Sierra Nevadas.  We had a great time and some of the highlights included:

• Visiting Calaveras Big Trees State Park and seeing some of the biggest trees in the world!
• Revamping and simplifying the way we handle plot allocation for all our cruises
• Discussing exciting future product offerings 

If that sounds like a good time, we'd love to meet you!  Drop us a line at https://silviaterra.com/bark/jobs.html

New website launched!

We're proud to announce the launch of our new website!  The new site has lots of new information, demos, and FAQs about our three main products:

• CruiseBoost - Save up to 50% of your cruising cost.  Imagery-assisted cruising for everyone.
• Plot Hound - The timber cruising app.  Easy, Fast, Free.
• Canopy - The best way to manage the cruising process for individuals or teams

We're gearing up for a lot of great new stuff in 2017 - stay tuned!

2016 in Madison!

 
We're wrapping up a great week at the Society of American Foresters National Convention in Madison, Wisconsin. It's been wonderful to talk with so many Plot Hound users and visit with foresters from around the country.  We're proud to be part of SAF and look forward to seeing more of you next year!

T-Cruise Data Integration

We think Plot Hound is the best cruising platform out there, but we also don’t want to exclude anyone who chooses to use other cruising software packages. That’s why we’re excited to announce the integration of T-Cruise data into Canopy. This means that you can use Canopy to manage the full cycle of your inventory projects without changing the way you collect your data!

Canopy can be used to set up your cruise. You can then download the plot location files (shapefiles, kml, or gpx) and load them up on your favorite data recorder and go out and collect your data. Once back in the office you will need to export the T-Cruise data into an Excel format (.xls, or .xlsx) and then log back into Canopy. From the cruise detail page select the ‘Upload Cruise Data’ option. From the next page, select T-Cruise as your upload file type and then select your file to upload. If you have updated GPS plot locations you can upload those as well.

T-Cruise is just the start. We are working on ForestMetrix and Two Dog integration and hope to have that rolled out soon. Check back for updates!

5 years of Plot Hound... and counting!

Today marks five years since the original version of Plot Hound was released for Android phones.

Plot Hound has come a tremendous way since we initially built it as an internal SilviaTerra tool in 2011.  We've added support for both Android and iOS, made data entry faster than ever, vastly improved navigation, simplified syncing, and introduced a tablet-optimized interface.

Nearly 5,000 cruisers have used Plot Hound and more foresters are switching to Plot Hound every day.  Major forestry organizations have adopted Plot Hound to streamline their data collection without having to invest in expensive hardware.  With its simplicity, speed, and affordability, Plot Hound has become the obvious choice for cruising.

 At SilviaTerra, we're continuing to invest in making Plot Hound the best way to cruise.  Below, we've put together some screenshots from Plot Hound throughout the years.  Has your other forestry software improved this much over the past 5 years?

Happy 5th birthday Plot Hound - and here's to the next 5!

Plot Hound - 2011

Plot Hound - 2013

Plot Hound - 2015

 

Migrate to new version of Plot Hound

We launched a brand new and improved version of Plot Hound back in October.  We will be officially removing support for the old version of Plot Hound (now called "Plot Hound OLD" in the app stores) on March 31, 2016.

If you haven't already, it's easy to upgrade to the new version:

• First, make sure you upload any unsynced data from the old version.
• Then, just download the new app from the App Store or Google Play.

Plot Hound is always getting better - stay tuned for more improvements soon!

New report features!

Hello, Plot Hound users! We recently rolled out some improvements to our free and basic reports. This is a quick update to highlight those improvements for you, so you know what to look for!

All reports (for both our free and ‘basic’ subscriptions) now include an improved stand table. Previously, our free reports included a downloadable table of trees per acre by species and diameter class.  We’ve added to that file to include a second table showing basal area per acre by species and diameter class. Any reports generated now include both tables, in one file.

We’ve also added a new stock table for subscription users, something many of you have asked for.  We heard you! Downloadable tables showing volume per acre by product, species, and diameter are now produced with every basic report, in addition to the other summaries that are created for each cruise.

Here’s an example of the new stock table:

We’ll be rolling out additional improvements to both our free and basic reports throughout 2016. Are there other reports, summaries, or tweaks you’d find useful? Let us know in the comments below - we’d love to hear from you!  

SAF Winter Meetings - Forest Inventory Trends

SilviaTerra has been traveling all over the east coast this winter giving talks at many regional SAF meetings.  This year we spoke at:

• Appalachian SAF in Durham
• KY/TN SAF in Bowling Green
• Allegheny SAF in Baltimore

The turnout for these meetings was great.  The Allegheny SAF meeting in particular had incredible attendance - over 100 members in the audience!

Great turnout for the Allegheny SAF meeting

We were invited to share some of the trends we've seen over the past 6 years working with forest inventory technology.  We discussed five major trends we've seen and how we think they're changing the way forestry is practiced:

• Mobile Technology
• The Cloud
• Automated Expert Analysis
• Big Data
• Iterative Simulation

I've included our slides below.




If you made it all the way through the presentation... we're hiring!  Check out the openings at https://silviaterra.com/hiring/

We're hiring!

SilviaTerra is hiring a full-time Forest Statistician to join our biometrics team. We're looking for someone who is excited about solving forest biometrics problems using R or Python, familiar with statistics and modeling, and passionate about trying to improve the ways forests are managed. See the full job description here.

Interested applicants should submit a cover letter and resume to jobs@silviaterra.com. For technical positions, you are also encouraged to send example R or Python code from work that you were excited to do. We will begin reviewing applications immediately and until the position is filled.

SilviaTerra is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, favorite tree species, or any classification protected by federal, state, or local law.

SilviaTerra All-Hands 2016 Q1

Every quarter, the fully remote SilviaTerra team assembles from all corners of the US, rents a house on AirBnB, and spends a week building new features and planning world domination.

And eating delicious biscuits and donuts

We just wrapped up our 2016 Q1 All-Hands meeting in Durham, NC.  Highlights included:

• polishing our check cruising system
• pushing out a massive cleanup of our web app code
• bumping up the scalability of our Plot Reduce system
• unifying our reporting code
• pondering variance and complex statistical operations
• and a mysterious new project code-named "Quantum Merlin"

If that sounds like a good time, we'd love to meet you!  Drop us a line at https://silviaterra.com/hiring/