I keep hitting the same wall: entry-level postings want ‘experience’, and my portfolio feels thin even after 12 applications this week. Yesterday I grabbed a city tree CSV and, in QGIS 3.34, geocoded 250 points and made a quick heat map for my site. Posting this in What’s News in GIS. My tiny habit: 30 minutes nightly to turn one task into a case study — README with 3–4 sentences, before/after image, and a GitHub Pages link.
I’ve been attaching the QGIS Processing Model (.model3) and a short “what I’d do next” note to each mini-case; even a geocode + heatmap looks stronger when they can rerun it. Also save a layout template and project CRS once and reuse — cuts the build time way down.
One small upgrade that’s gotten me callbacks: export an interactive map with qgis2web and host it on GitHub Pages so they can pan/zoom your heatmap right from the README. I add a one-line “repro” note with the exact CRS and geocoder plugin used, plus the seed/sample count, so they know they could match your result.
I’ve been adding a tiny QA box to each case: geocode hit rate, dupes removed, and a thumbnail of unmatched points; it signals you can handle messy data, not just make a pretty map. Bonus 5‑min add: Join attributes by location to spit out counts by neighborhood and paste the top 5 in the README — it’s like showing your work in math class.