Georgia URISA Ignite Event March 6th 2012

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We’ve finally have an ignite social put together for Georgia URISA.

It will be on March 6th 2012 at Manuel’s Tavern at 6:00 P.M. We have 5 people slated to speak 5 minutes ago and I expect it will fill up quick since we haven’t even started to advertise it. email our VP (vp@gaurisa.org) and throw your name in as a presenter.

So for those of you not in the know – you get 20 slides and 15 seconds to get your point across. We advance them automatically. The more screw ups the better. Do whatever you want to do. Shameless product plug – Check. Favorite hobby – Check. Something Stupid (that’s where I shine) – Check. It will be a blast.

So come out and mingle – have a few drinks – and have a lot of fun.

North Georgia Subchapter Meeting February 28 2012

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Georgia URISA is pleased to announce the next North Georgia Sub-Chapter luncheon, scheduled on Tuesday, February 28th 2012 from 11:30AM to 1:30PM. This event is hosted by City of Calhoun GIS, and will be held at their facility located at 700 W. Line Street, Calhoun, GA 30701

Click here for location map.

 

Presentation
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Topic: Lessons Learned For An Organization’s GIS
Speaker: Natalie Culpepper , ESRI
Description:

What are some of the challenges to developing a strong, solid and mature GIS Program?  Is it just lack of funding?  While funding or lack of funding is always a challenge, there are many other challenges that every organization faces and you may not realize it.

At the next North Georgia URISA meeting we will count down some of the biggest challenges that GIS professionals face when planning and developing GIS programs and some strategies for mitigating some of them as well.  Are you facing some of these challenges now?  Or, have you found the answer to some of your challenges?  If so, this is also an opportunity for you to share.

* Too Much Information?
* Do you know your audience?

These are just a couple of the challenges seen every day in organizations

Speaker Bio:

Natalie Culpepper, a graduate of Georgia College and State University has twelve years experience in Geographic Information Systems.  Beginning as a GIS Technician in a start up GIS Department and now as an Account Executive for ESRI, Mrs. Culpepper has worked extensively on GIS projects focused in local governments across Georgia and Alabama. Mrs. Culpepper has worked as a Project Coordinator, Project Manager, Director of Client Support, and currently works primarily on business development for solution and integration services.

Mrs. Culpepper is affiliated with several local and national professional associations and remains active in the local GIS industry. Beginning in 2001 Mrs. Culpepper served on the Conference Committee for Georgia URISA and has served through 2007 as Membership Chair, Vice President, President and Immediate Past President.  Mrs. Culpepper is currently a member of the Kennesaw State University Advisory Board and as President of GITA SE, currently serving as a member of GGAC and as Secretary and Vice Chair of the GISCC.  Mrs. Culpepper has also been a member of IAAO, IURISAl, SAMSOG, GMA and ACCG.

Garmin Etrex 20, Shapefiles, and GPX

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GIS. I often find it’s a hodge podge of crazy ideas, equipment, file formats, and a lot of searching on the internet for answers. Sometimes you have to combine 5 answers into one “process” to come to a conclusion.

I work with foresters. It’s been interesting to say the least. It’s been challenging because they speak a language I don’t understand at times and I speak complete and utter gibberish when I go into GIS mode.

Over the last few years, Tri State Forestry, Inc., has been slowly replacing equipment and we’ve slowly been getting smarter about GIS. The old Garmin Etrex Vista units are dying and are being replaced by Garmin 60csx GPSMap units. The other day we branched out and bought (pictured above) a Garmin Etrex 20 GPS unit. This was interesting for two reasons:

  1. It receives Glonass satellites
  2. It doesn’t seem to want to work with DNR Garmin

DNR Garmin (soon to be DNR GPS) has been a lifesaver. Over the last bit of working with ArcGIS, the foresters, and DNR Garmin we’ve developed some workflows that are a bit clunky at times but they work. I un-boxed this wonderful new GPS unit and it became clear and for one reason or another this process of loading some of their forestry plots wasn’t going to work. That lead me to actually start looking at the format of GPX files and the format as produced by DNR Garmin. What I came up with is “I’m not a developer and I just want this to work”.

The process that now doesn’t work has me creating data in ArcGIS, importing that shapefile into DNR Garmin, and uploading waypoints into the Garmin Units. When you search for converting shapefiles to gpx you get a hodgepodge of answers from “I sorta use GPS Babel” to DNR Garmin to “I wrote some custom code” to one crazy process of going to KML as a middle ground and working from there.The one big problem I kept banging my head against was copying the gpx file to the GPS Unit. The Etrex 20 actually acts as a big USB drive. All the owners manuals are actually stored on the unit. I kept copying gpx files created in DNR Garmin and they just didn’t work. The GPS Unit couldn’t see the file or didn’t understand it.

My new favorite piece of software is QGIS. I’m really becoming a huge fan. I ended up opening my shapefile in QGIS and starting playing around. In that playing around I did several things but the last thing I tried was to create a new GPX layer (using the GPS Tools Plugin) and copying and pasting those points into that new layer (in the waypoints section).

Once I saved I copied that gpx file into the gpx directory on the Etrex 20.

There were my points. About an hour of digging and OpenSource GIS to the rescue.

Of course this was the first success. I have no doubt there is some sort of ArcGIS code/toolbar/toolbox that might work. DNR GPS will be released shortly and I’m pretty sure that will work.

For me the best part of this exercise was leveraging QGIS and finally eliminating the last 10 year old Etrex Vista. I hope this post helps someone who is stuck on the same thing. I’ve skipped around a bit in the explanation but the idea works. So go forth and load GPS data

2012 February Georgia URISA Meeting Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

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GA URISAGeorgia URISA is pleased to announce the monthly luncheon, scheduled on Tuesday February 14th, from 11:30AM to 1:30PM. This event is hosted by the City of Fayetteville, and will be held at the Train Depot, located at 250 East Lanier St, Fayetteville GA, 30214.

Presentation

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Topic: Moving Beyond the Technical – Skills For Professionals and Management

Speaker: Tripp Corbin

Description:

Most of us start our GIS careers editing date, doing analysis, managing databases, and making maps. We become really good at these things. So good that we get promoted to management where we find ourselves dealing less with GIS and more with people, projects, budgets, human resources, and many other challenges our technical training has not prepared us for. This presentation will focus on some of the skills you will need as a GIS professional or manager.

Speaker Bio:

Tripp Corbin is the CEO and a Co-founder of eGIS Associates, Inc. He has over 20 years of surveying, mapping and GIS related experience. He is recognized as an industry expert with a variety of geospatial software packages including Esri, Autodesk and Trimble products. He holds multiple certifications including Microsoft Certified Professional, Certified Floodplain Manager, Certified GIS Professional, Comptia Certified Technical Trainer and Esri Certified Trainer. Tripp is a past President of Georgia URISA and currently serves on the URISA International Board of Directors. He is also a member of the GISP Application Review committee and an At-Large GITA Southeast Board Member. Other contributions Tripp has made to the GIS Profession include helping to draft the new Geospatial Technology Competency Model that was adopted by the US Department of Labor, presenting at various conferences and workshops around the US, and providing help to other GIS Professionals around the world on various blogs, lists and forums.

REGISTER HERE!

Night of the Living Maps

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I love Zombie movies. There I said it. Publicly. I’m also partial to vampires and werewolves as long as neither sparkle.

Where was I going with this – oh yeah…..

 

 

The plan is to stay up all night on February 7 2012. So will I? Who knows. I’ve done worse for less.

My favorite part of this whole thing are the suggestions for staying awake:

  1. Go early to bed the day before or get a nap at the day
  2. Get others to your party, interaction keeps you awake
  3. Chill out corner to get at least some rest for your brainware
  4. Coffein in all kinds (coffee, cola, clubmate, pills, …)
  5. fresh air, progressive music, …

So prepare to stay up, use your brainzzzzzz….and get to mapping. Depending on client obligations I might give it a shot.

2012 URISA/NENA Addressing Conference August 6-9 2012

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I am going to shamelessly steal from the URISA Website . he only conference where GIS professionals, addressing coordinators, 9-1-1 and emergency response specialists come together for education and networking.

 

The educational program is developed through a review of submissions received through the Call for Presentations. An exposition and networking events are important features of this annual conference.

 Online abstract submission form
Note that abstract submissions are due on or before February 13.

The committee welcomes the submission of individual papers, complete sessions, and lightning talks and has proposed a list of suggested topics for consideration (note that all abstracts received will be reviewed and considered for the conference program regardless of the list below):

  • Government Data, Administrative Records or Alternative Information Sources
  • Location Based Services, Location Tracking or Mobile Computing
  • Database and Data Management Challenges, both spatial and non-spatial
  • Standards & Standards Implementation Issues and Experiences
    • Next Generation 911 Standards
    • FDGC Address Standards
  • Data Sharing, Open Data or Data Warehousing
  • Solving Funding Issues
  • Collaboration, Coordination and Cooperation tips and tricks
  • Dispatch Routing & The Effective and Efficient Routing of Services
  • Environmental Monitoring, Modeling or Analysis
  • Situational Awareness, Dashboards, Mashups, or other near or real-time information processing

Abstract submissions will be accepted until Monday, February 13, 2012. Abstract submissions should include a presentation title and descriptive abstract text not to exceed 250 words.

You will be asked to indicate the presentation format that is best suited for your proposal:

  • Single presentation—individual presentation that will be scheduled with one or two other presentations to form a cohesive session of 60-90 minutes in length. Each presenter is allotted 20-30 minutes, plus 10 minutes for questions from the attendees.
  • Complete session—Comprised of one subject covered by one or more presenters. The expectation is that the depth and complexity of the issue merits the longer time. A complete session is 60-90 minutes in length.
  • Lightning Talks—Short (5 minute) talks on a single subject. Concise and focused with few slides.
  • Panel & Roundtable—A panel or roundtable is a 90 minute presentation which encourages interaction and discussion between the panelists and the audience. Panel presentations should include at least three panelists all speaking on aspects of a particular topic.

 

 

Ignite Talk at GISPro 2011

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I love me some ignite talks. I’ll be posting a few of these up here over the next few days.  If you want to skip to the good stuff just go to GISPro’s Youtube Channel.

For those of you who have never met me…seen me…spoke to me….Yeah. This is me when I’m given too much freedom. There were a ton of great ignite talks at this one. A good time was had by all.