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
