February 2020 - CalTopo

We’ve made a few changes to map layers including a major new addition!

We’ve added a parcel overlay for the US. This data set contains property boundaries and addresses (left image) for a majority of the US, and ownership information (right image) for many of those properties as well. This new overlay is live now for online use and called “Parcel Data”. We’ve also renamed the “Land Management” overlay to “Public Lands” to clarify the coverage of this overlay. Due to the cost of licensing data this overlay is restricted to Pro, Desktop or Team accounts only.

Offline downloads are not currently supported but will be added soon. We see a lot of uses of this layer for hunters, trail planning organizations, professional responders and many others.

We’ve licensed the parcel data from landgrid.com. While Landgrid is still growing and does not have ownership information for all counties, we chose them because of their liberal licensing model and flexibility in accommodating our needs. Going forward, this will allow us to build innovative parcel tools that would be cost-prohibitive with other services – for example, Pro users can now choose Measure -> Parcel Count, and quickly count the number of parcels contained within a polygon, a critical piece of information for first responders conducting door-to-door searches or fire evacuations.

If you’d like to verify which areas have parcel ownership information before upgrading to pro, a coverage map is available at https://caltopo.com/l/K6G8. You will need to zoom in to your area of interest, for performance reasons we have to filter out parcels as you zoom out. Red indicates that we have the parcel boundary and site address only, blue indicates ownership information is available as well.

In conjunction with this we’ve also restricted the Sentinel-based Weekly High Resolution satellite layer to Pro, Desktop and Team accounts. This layer also has 3rd party costs associated with it, and when we initially released it, we indicated it would eventually be restricted to Pro accounts and above.

We know not every coworker or friend has a pro account. If you share a map you’ve created with non-pro users, those users will still be able to see see a limited preview of the restricted layers.

Update 2/28: We’re thrilled by all the interest in the position. We are moving forward with an awesome group of candidates and aren’t going to be accepting more applications at this point! Thanks for all the interest and support!

It’s come time for CalTopo to grow once again! We are hiring a Training and Customer Support employee. CalTopo offers an opportunity to work with a product you use and care about.

As CalTopo grows, training and education are a critical part of our path forward. We are looking for someone who can start from scratch and develop a mix of documentation, self-guided courses, and in-person classes, for both professional and recreational users. We want these trainings to go beyond the mechanics of drawing lines and printing maps, and dig into real-world application – whether that’s planning a backcountry trip or managing a backcountry incident. We are looking for someone with the depth of experience to both develop these materials, and credibly present them to experienced professional audiences.

CalTopo offers a flexible remote work environment where we provide all necessary technology, and an additional stipend to ensure you have the right work environment. Whether that is a desk and monitor at home, or membership to a coworking space. This position is full time and salaried offering health insurance, a generous bank of paid vacation time, flexible hours, and a competitive salary (based upon experience).

Our new training and customer support employee will spend approximately 60% of their time focused on developing training materials. The remaining 40% of the job will be focused on customer support tasks.

Responsibilities include:

Building training curriculum and creating training materials for both recreational and professional users
Creation of a professional training program and course progression
Producing video based training content for web and learning management software
Conduct in person/hands on trainings with various outdoor professional groups
Occasional travel to Truckee, CA, and to various training sites. Approximately 10% paid travel (or about 1 week every other month).
Occasional nights/weekends for trainings and support
Customer support via web forums, e-mail, and phone
Opportunity to participate in testing and use of pre-release app and give feedback for features and improvements!

The following qualifications are required for this position:

Current CalTopo user and outdoor enthusiast. You need familiarity with both the web based and mobile CalTopo applications. We can teach some of the most complex features but you should have a very solid grasp on using the software.
Incident leadership experience, preferably in a backcountry setting, such as wildland fire or search and rescue. While you don’t have to be a 20 year veteran leader, we are looking for a professional that has experience in leading or managing outdoor incidents in either a paid or volunteer capacity. Bonus for having familiarity with SARTopo in these settings.
Outdoor professional experience particularly the ability to travel through outdoor terrain and navigate using a variety of methods not limited to software based solutions. Understanding of trip planning and fundamentals is essential.
Access to an airport for travel, easy enough access that you can travel with regularity.
Ability to utilize software for training content creation, such as power point, basic image editing, and video creation.
Excellent written and verbal communication abilities for customer support component.

The following aren’t required but are preferred: