Hello from your URISA 2009 Annual Conference Chair!  This year is an exciting year for the URISA Annual Conference & Exposition. The theme for this year is “Providing Solutions to Challenges”. We are unveiling several new items at the conference, so do not miss out. URISA is truly “The Association for GIS Professionals”.  We are offing a slate of eight workshops, three of which are new and being presented for the first time. All of the workshops have a new look and feel.

Our keynote speaker this year is being presented by Barry Wellar, MCIP, GISP,  a long time URISA member and past president. He will be presenting “Core information challenges and opportunities, 2010-2020: Building on Strengths”.

During our opening session we will be collecting problems from you that could benefit you in providing solutions to your GIS community. We will work on these during the conference and come back with our recommendations on the last day of the conference. 

We have two sessions dedicated to the “URISA Quick Hits”. These are a series of smaller presentations, all of which will be video taped and made available on-line after the conference.

All-in-all this is going to be a conference to remember and refer back to for many years to come. If you have not made arrangements yet to come, please take the time to review the program on-line, I think you will see that URISA is the educational and networking organization that will help you in your day-to-day professional life. We are here to help and we are with you along the way.

I am looking forward to seeing you this year at the conference!

Michael W. Lovett, GISP – 2009 Annual Conference Chair
CDM

Shoreh Elhami - GISCorps Co-Founder

Dear friends and supporters of GISCorps,

I am delighted to take the opportunity and use this blog to let you know about some of the latest GISCorps activities.

However, before I start, I would like to suggest that you visit the GISCorps website especially if you are unfamiliar with the program. The website is the best place to learn about our model and projects; past and present.

To those of you who are familiar with the GISCorps and have supported us all these years, thank you for your support and in case you’re also a volunteer, thanks for your selfless service!

As for the past year’s activities, we’ve had a very busy year and as in the past six years we’ll be talking about our missions at the Annual Conference in Anaheim (see details at the end of the blog).

One of our volunteers, Joe Forrest from N. Carolina, will share his experience in Thailand with us. Joe spent over two weeks teaching GIS to Burmese humanitarian aid workers in Mae-Sot and we are very excited that he is able to attend the conference. Members of the Core Committee will also talk about several of our other projects both those that were completed in the past 12 months and those that are still in progress.

I wanted to also share with you that out of over 1,600 registered volunteers, we have deployed 137 of them to 52 projects since 2004 and these volunteers have contributed over 7,200 hours to these projects. We would have loved to deploy so many more, however, we never seem to have as many projects as we have volunteers and that was one of the reasons behind expanding our work to K-12 area which has been quite successful so far.

We do need more projects however and we hope you can help. If you know of any projects or organizations in need of GIS-volunteer work of any kind (our volunteers have expertise in almost every GIS field), please direct them to us. We are very interested in working with them and putting more of our volunteers to work.

We also love to hear any other comments and suggestions that you might have to further our mission, so please don’t hesitate to share your ideas with us.

Hope to hear back from you in this blog and also looking forward to seeing you in Anaheim.

Shoreh Elhami
GISCorps Co-Founder
shoreh.elhami@gmail.com

Summary of our AC activities at the AC:

Wednesday September 30, 4 to 5 PM – Joe Forrest, a GISCorps volunteer who recently traveled to Thailand, will talk about his experience. GISCorps Core Committee members will also give an overview on 2008-2009 projects and activities.

GISCorps’ business meeting is held on Wednesday September 30^th from 12:15 to 1:15 pm.

 Thursday October 1^st, 8:30 to 10 AM – GISCorps volunteers are recognized for their service at URISA’s Annual Breakfast Award Ceremony.  Note: If you are a deployed GISCorps volunteer and plan to attend the Annual Conference, please let us know by sending an email to: info@giscorps.org.

 

Danielle Ayan, GISP Conference Program Chair

The URISA International Annual Conference & Exhibition is such a fantastic venue for networking with fellow geospatial experts!

3 days’ of immersion with URISA conference insights and connections = years worth of independent activity.

The URISA  Annual Conference & Exposition is one conference I attend regularly. Over time, I’ve wanted to help with the load and the ever-evolving conference improvements, so I volunteered to be on the Conference Committee. What a great professional contribution .. and good time! URISA pays the committee members a stipend toward travel expenses so they can all get together on-site about ~8 months prior to the conference and scout the facility, compile the agenda, approve the speakers, etc. (So, yes, October will be my 2nd trip to Anaheim this year .. not bad!). The URISA staff provide a solid conference framework (i.e., they’ve already removed any organization and/or logistics barriers); you just offer your ideas and assistance. It’s casual and extremely productive.

Being engaged as a Conference Committee volunteer has resulted in my current role as Conference Program Chair. This year, the Committee is initiating new offerings for all participants, to include:

* Dynamically-facilitated, interactive track that brings continuity and collective thought to the conference
* 7-minute videographed sessions to air online after the conference
* Solutions Luncheon topics will offer real-world problem-solving to folks at differing stages of similar challenges

I hope to see you at the URISA International Annual Conference & Exhibition this year and into the future. I encourage not only your participation, but your active contributions to this organization and our industry.

Danielle Ayan, GISP

Program Chair, URISA International Annual Conference & Exhibition Immediate Past President, Georgia URISA
Outgoing Chair, Georgia GIS Coordinating Committee Board Member, National States Geographic Information Council

Georgia Institute of Technology | Center for GIS

Sure, you have plans during the daytime while attending URISA’s Annual Conference & Exposition, but what will you do in the evenings?  Southern California, Orange County & Anaheim offer many attractions near and far. For a quick look into what’s close to the conference hotel, visit the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor’s Bureau website dedicated to nightlife!

Cy Smith, GISP Associate Program Chair

URISA’s Annual Conference & Exposition will be a little different this year.  And with the financial situation being what it is for most of us, well…this is no time for business as usual.  URISA’s Annual Conference & Exposition brings together hundreds of GIS professionals, all looking for solutions to the geospatial problems they have at home, or innovative ideas they can implement to improve what they’re doing at home.  The opening interactive session at the conference will be an opportunity for everyone to identify and understand the problems that we all share and the solutions and innovations we all seek.

The opening interactive session will be facilitated, similar to the interactive track at last year’s conference.  Participants will be asked to suggest geospatial problems or issues that are the most important things they face at home, or the most important things they think their countries face now related to geospatial data.  The participants will refine the problems and issues to a manageable number and define them in a way that can be easily understood by everyone in the room.

The refined list of four or five key problems, concerns, or issues will be used throughout the rest of the conference.  We will use the list as we participate in educational sessions to watch for possible solutions or ideas that might be part of solutions.  But instead of keeping those ideas to ourselves or sharing them with one or two people in the hall between sessions, we’ll bring those ideas to the wrap-up session to share with everyone. The wrap-up will also be a facilitated interactive session, much like the opening session.

We’ll use the wrap-up session to work together on possible solutions to our shared list of problems and issues.  For each item on our shared list, we should be able to come up with actions or next steps that we can take together, either collectively or in small groups, after the conference that will move the geospatial community toward solutions.  We will make a concerted effort to define responsibilities for next steps and set expected timeframes for actions.  Some next steps or actions will likely be appropriate for assignment to established organizations, like URISA, NSGIC, GITA, ASPRS or the new Coalition of Geospatial Organizations.  Others will require the formation of an independent, multi-organizational work group.

The concept in play here is to leverage the intellectual capital gathered for the URISA’s Annual Conference & Exposition to accomplish real work.  Each of us has unique talents, knowledge and experience that we bring to the conference.  Let’s use that this year in an innovative way to bring value back to our organizations.

Cy Smith, GISP  is the Oregon Geographic Information Officer and member of the Oregon Geographic Information Council. He is currently serving as the Associate Program Chair for URISA’s Annual Conference and Exposition. Cy will start the process of one of these topics on July 23, 2009 using URISA’s Webinar Series to facilitate the topic of GIS Benefit Accrual Tracking. This webinar is free and will be the first step in working through this challenge as Cy described above. For more information on the webinar, please visit www.urisa.org/webinars

Special thanks to Wansoo Im and Vertices for making this great promotional video for the Anaheim Conference!

Part 1: The content

Aside from the obvious planning and planning (and then more planning) a conference is only as good as the content offered for the attendees.

Each year the fantastic member volunteers who make up the Annual Conference Planning Committee meet in early March to review the submitted abstracts and create the program that is ultimately offered to you, the attendee. This year’s planning meeting was March 8-9, 2009 at the gorgeous Anaheim Marriott.

After reviewing nearly 200 abstracts, the committee reviews the topics to form presentation groupings. The committee will:

Discuss

Debate

Place in the schedule

And most likely debate some more!

In the end we end the meeting with a carefully constructed grid for the conference

URISA Staff then brings back the schedule and begin working with the speakers to confirm their participation. We also work to start putting the program into a format that allows you, the attendee, to see what we’ll be offering so you can begin planning your experience at the Annual Conference & Exposition! To see what the program has to offer, check out the conference website and click on each day for more detailed information. Be sure to check out the great URISA certified pre-conference workshops as well!

I’m Chris and I am URISA’s Conference Manager. This is URISA’s new Blog about our 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition to be held in Anaheim California, September 29 – October 2, 2009. Over the next few months you’ll be able to learn everything about the conference through this blog including some insider information about presentations, programming, exhibitors & sponsors and things to do and not miss about Anaheim and the Southern California region!

Although I am the Conference Manager, I mainly handle the logistics side of the conference. I also have the privilege of working with a fantastic Conference Planning Committee. You will hear from some of them in this blog; mainly our Conference Committee Chair Mike Lovett with CDM, Danielle Ayan with Georgia Institute of Technology; Cy Smith with the state of Oregon and URISA’s President, Hilary Perkins with East-West Gateway Council of Governments.

One new aspect of URISA’s Annual Conference & Exposition will be the number of interactive opportunities there will be to include YOU, the attendee, in the programming. You’ll be invited to take part in Webinars as well as surveys to provide input on what should be covered during the sessions at the conference. We will also be holding a problem solving aspect of the conference where we ask you directly “What challenges are you facing in your job?” and then we try our best to solve it with you and others in your industry

If you have any ideas for information you would like to see addressed here or during our conference, please feel free to comment or send an email directly to me at cgrace@urisa.org. I look forward to hearing from you as well as bringing you information in this new media!