Central PA GIS Day - 11/18/15

Greetings from Harrisburg Area Community College and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!

Central PA GIS Day is just around the corner!  As such, I have attached this year’s schedule.  This year’s event will be held on Wednesday 11/18 at HACC Midtown located at 1500 N. 3rd Street from 10:00am-6:30pm. These year’s event will feature two keynotes, approximately 20 concurrent sessions, an exhibit hall, the PA State Police Mobile Command Unit, a networking mixer and much more! Hope you can join us! Feel free to forward and share with anyone you think would be interested!

This is a FREE event and there is no need to pre-register – just come and go as it suits your schedule!

Thanks and see you all on GIS Day!

Your 2015 Central PA GIS Day Committee
Nicole Ernst - Harrisburg Area Community College, 717.221.1345
Rachel Ralls – The Nature Conservancy, 717.232.6001, x214
Noel Strattan - Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission, 717.214.6572
Bruce Field – Esri
Sarah Gettys - PA Department of Agriculture
Douglass Thompson-Leader - PA Liquor Control Board
Maurie Kelly - Penn State University - PASDA
Stewart Beattie – PA Department of Environmental Protection
Robin Wallace – Harrisburg Area Community College
Zalak Patel – PA Department of Environmental Protection
Dan Egan – PA Office of Administration

2015 GIS Day Short Schedule.pdf
2015 GIS Day Detailed Schedule.pdf

Keynote Speakers at Esri Mid-Atlantic UC

It's Like Esri UC (but Closer) 

You don't have to wait until summer to see what's new from Esri. The Esri Mid-Atlantic User Conference (UC) brings the latest geospatial solutions and training to you.
This year, three of our brightest minds will deliver the keynote address. Christian Carlson, Scott Oppmann, and Nikki Golding will inspire you with user success stories, live demos, and best practices for the ArcGIS platform. Each speaker will discuss how to solve real-world problems using ArcGIS and how deploying configurable apps helps empower your entire organization with the power of location.

Register Today

PAMAGIC Training Survey

PAMAGIC Members and Friends,

One of our goals for this organization is to provide member benefits including training and information exchange opportunities.  To this end, we have prepared a short survey to gather input related to trainings we will be offering in the future.  Participation in this survey will help us target these and other membership benefits that meets the needs and desires of PAMAGIC members.

Thanks for helping us better serve you.  The link to the training survey is 
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6NSK5G9

The survey should take no longer than 5 minutes.

Sincerely,

PAMAGIC Board

Present Your Story and Save

Share Your Story
Consider this. You've been working hard all year to improve your organization using ArcGIS. You probably even have a good story about your success, right?

We'd like to hear your story at the Esri Mid-Atlantic User Conference, and in exchange, you'll receive the exclusive registration rate of $199 (that's $180 less than the Early Bird rate!). If your paper is selected, you'll save big AND learn about the latest solutions on the ArcGIS platform. It's win-win!

I Want to Share

Save the Date: Fall 2015 MAC URISA Meeting

Save the Date for the Fall Meeting
Grid to Ground for Mapping Professionals

Let's talk about points, the grid, and the ground.  Why not? All surveyors are- everyone wants to project their grid points onto the ground, or vise versa.  This meeting will focus on ground to grid, and assist the GIS community in gaining a better understanding of the process.

When:  Tuesday October 6, 2015
Where:  New Jersey Institute of Technology- Newark, NJ
Time:  8:00 am- 3:30 pm

Parking will be provided in a campus garage.

A light breakfast and lunch will be served.
Registration will open soon!

Save the Date - GIS Day 2015- 11/18/15

Greetings from Harrisburg Area Community College and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!

GIS Day 2015, “GIS on the MOVE,” will be celebrated at HACC Midtown 2 on Wednesday, November 18 from 9:30pm-6:00pm.  This is a FREE event that will feature keynote speakers, interactive workshops, demonstrations, exhibits, and much more! The morning keynote begins at 10am, from 11:30am-4pm there will be concurrent workshops, and there will be an exhibit hall featuring state agencies, GIS companies, nonprofits, higher education, and county government.  From 4pm-6pm, there will be an inspirational closing keynote and a  networking mixer and that will allow you to chat with GIS students, GIS professionals, and others.

Please mark your calendars to join us on Wednesday, November 18!

Additionally, if you are interested in presenting, leading a workshop, or conducting a demo, please register:  http://goo.gl/forms/YM6FKoJ1JQ

If you are interested in a FREE exhibit space, please register at:  http://goo.gl/forms/YM6FKoJ1JQ

Please pass this on to anyone you think would be interested!  Please contact us with any questions!

Thank you!

Your Central PA GIS Day 2015 Committee 
Nicole Ernst - Harrisburg Area Community College, 717.221.1345
Noel Strattan - Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission, 717.214.6572
Rachel Ralls – The Nature Conservancy, 717.232.6001, x214
Bruce Field – Esri
Sarah Gettys - PA Department of Agriculture
Douglass Thompson-Leader - PA Liquor Control Board
Maurie Kelly - Penn State University - PASDA
Stewart Beattie – PA Department of Environmental Protection
Robin Wallace – Harrisburg Area Community College
Zalak Patel – PA Department of Environmental Protection
Dan Egan – PA Office of Administration

10th Annual Northwest Pennsylvania GIS Conference - Call for Participation

You are invited to participate in the 10^th Annual Northwest Pennsylvania GIS Conference that will be held on October 15-16, 2015 at Clarion University of Pennsylvania.  This event will once again be hosted by Clarion University.

It will be a pleasure to share with you:

• Exciting presentations from varied participants in the field.
• Exhibitors from renowned national and regional companies and agencies.
• Map gallery/poster session
• Other events that will be available and advertised for on the conference’s website soon.

Please visit http://www.nwpagisconference.com for more information or for registration to attend, present and/or exhibit. Presentation, exhibition, and map gallery entry registrations are due by Friday September 25^th, 2015. Mark your calendar. Please pass along this information to anyone who may benefit from attending this event.

Presentations are especially encouraged in the following tracks:

• Achievements over the past 10 years
• GIS in Education: Open for students and educators in general to share their projects experiences and applications.
• Oil and Gas Applications.
• Emergency Management: GIS role in preparedness, mitigation and remediation
• Emerging Technologies/Web & Mobile GIS
• Natural Resources Management.
• Open Topics for your interesting application, how-to, theories and methods in geospatial technologies or related fields. 

Do not hesitate to contact Dr. Yasser Ayad (yayad@clarion.edu) for sponsorship opportunities, or for questions or comments. Looking forward seeing you at the Conference.

State Geospatial Coordinating Board – Communications Strategy Meeting

Hello All!

At the PA GIS Conference last week, there was a session called “Brainstorm:  Social Media to Feed and Feedback the State Geospatial Coordinating Board”  (notes attached). This session discussed expectations of the Board as well as communication strategies for connecting the Pennsylvania GIS Community with the Geospatial Coordinating Board. As a follow-up to this session, a meeting has been scheduled at Harrisburg Area Community College’s (HACC) Midtown site located at 1500 N. 3rd Street, Harrisburg, PA.  The meeting will be held on Tuesday July 7 and will begin at 10:00am and be held in room 206. Free parking is available in the surrounding HACC lots.

The agenda for the meeting is as follows:

1-      Establish point(s) of contact for communications
2-      Collaborative workspace site set-up
3-      Rules for interacting with the social media presence
4-      Name

This meeting is not an official function of the Geospatial Coordinating Board but rather a means to engage the members and its constituents.  Any involvement is voluntary and the results of the social media page are only to be used as an open - sounding board for those who wish to be involved.

All are welcome to attend.

Nicole L. Ernst
Associate Professor, Geospatial Technology
HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College

PaMAGIC Board Election Results

Results from this week's PaMAGIC Board elections are as follows:

Three (3) members terms ended - Peirce Eichelberger of Geographic Database Management Systems, Mary K. Seville of Fulton County Planning, and Glenn Mohler of Lancaster County GIS. Thanks to all three for their work over the last three years.

The newly elected members are: Tom Edinger of Tri-County Planning Commission, Wade Gobrecht of York County Planning Commission, and Glenn Mohler (re-elected). We expect great things!

Thanks too, to Gwen Zarko of Lennon, Smith, Souleret Engineering  and to Peter Muller of Harrisburg Area Community College for making it a robust slate and for their willingness to serve.

PaMAGIC Elections

It’s time for the PAMAGIC 2015 Board elections.  Three positions on the PAMAGIC Executive Board are being filled. Please vote for no more than three nominees.  Voting is for PaMAGIC members only, and if people are interested in becoming a member, applications will be available at the PA GIS Conference and are also available online at: www.pamagic.org.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/pamagic2015

Please Note: Online ballots will be accepted until the end of the day on Sunday, June 14. Paper ballots will be available at the PaMAGIC booth (booth #7) at the PA GIS Conference until noon on Tuesday, June 16. For a list of current PaMAGIC board members refer to www.pamagic.org.

PA Meeting for USGS 3DEP Program

The June 5th meeting described in the attached announcement will explain the USGS 3DEP Program as well as the Seasketch tool that shows Areas of Interest so that potential partners can fill data gaps and avoid duplication in lidar data development. Meeting particulars, registration information, contact information and links to the SeaSketch tool are included in the attachment.

Have some fun, and make something good happen.

Dear PaMAGIC Members and Friends,
There are a lot of interesting developments in PA and in PA GIS, and for the first time in a long time we might even make progress as a whole! After a time of belt‐tightening and job consolidation there’s just a little more optimistic feel to the economy, and an amazing ability to spread a message. We collectively work with tools that hold and deliver promise in the future, and we are optimists by nature. Onward!

After much labor and desire Pennsylvania will have a GIS Council – specifically the State Geospatial Coordinating Board, slated to begin service late this Spring or early this Summer. The MAGIC Board chose Dave Gilbert as our representative, so he is your voice in advice to the Governor. In advance of the formal Coordinating Board meetings Dave is setting up a few ways to collect your ideas and input; his favorite tools are the PaMAGIC Facebook page and our ArcGIS Online account. Make some maps to share your ideas with the Governor and the other groups who are investing their effort there!

The most focused initiative is our push to unify and improve our water base map – we are about two years in on a 5 – 10 year project. We are promoting a pretty basic concept – connect all that we know about the water resource to an accurate spatial framework – what we have right now is not good enough in a Big Data world!  The politics and regulatory structure are probably more complex than the actual water network, and modernizing the maps and databases will clarify just who is managing any data about water. We have some cool demonstration projects to build on and some of you do too (or could). Contact me if you want to get involved. You’ll find some background documents at:
http://www.pamagic.org/initiatives/Pages/WaterData.aspx

The tricky part of this is engaging and connecting people to keep sharing ideas and energy. We struggle to find ways to involve more people than just our Board and we recognize the power of the (too?) many technologies – find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, the website, Webex, Blog, and steadily more outlets.  Although your dues and donations are pretty handy, a better measure of membership has always been that you contribute some of your time and ideas. PaMAGIC has always been more about the collective vision and mission than about the organization itself, and the little things you do propel us forward. Arrange a meetup, share a mashup, respond to a query, point out a flaw and propose a solution, contribute an app – do it in view of the vision and mission and you are a member!

If you want to know the history, go read some of the old President’s Letters on the website. If you want today see the future, go look in the mirror!  

"Have some fun, and make something good happen."

Eric Jespersen,
President 2013‐2015

PaMAGIC VISION
"The Citizens of Pennsylvania will have a coordinated, flexible and integrated geographical information infrastructure to support better decision making and more efficient use of limited resources."

PaMAGIC MISSION
"To provide leadership, coordination and guidance to enhance the development, use and access to spatial information and related services."
“Have some fun, and make something good happen.”

National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI)

The Coalition of Geospatial Organizations’ (COGO) Report Card on the U.S. National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) was released on February 6, 2015.  The Report Card describes the condition of the nation’s information about  roads, water, land, air, bridges, dams, topography, and more. The NSDI Report Card highlights the poor condition  of the nation’s information about our infrastructure.

Report card at: http://cogo.pro/ 

Entire report at: http://cogo.pro/uploads/COGO-Report_Card_on_NSDI.pdf

Will The Resolution And Image Clarity From WorldView-3 Change The Game For Satellite-Based Earth Observation?

There have been many years of anticipation for high-resolution satellite imagery that can rival the image clarity and sensing capacity of airborne platforms. This wait has now culminated with both capacity, thanks to the advancements aboard DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-3 satellite, as well as eased regulations. The U.S. Department of Commerce decision to allow the sale of resolution up to 25 centimeters, effectively halved the prior 50 centimeter restriction, and now DigitalGlobe is delivering. - See more at:

https://www.sensorsandsystems.com/dialog/perspectives/35801-will-the-resolution-and-image-clarity-from-worldview-3-change-the-game-for-satellite-based-earth-observation.html

URISA CAC - Winter 2015 Joint Geospatial Meet Up

Attend URISA CAC - Winter 2015 Joint Geospatial Meet Up

When:
Thursday, March 26, 2015
From 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Where:
OTB Bicycle Cafe
2518 East Carson St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15203

 For more details click here Click here

EnerGIS Conference Call for Papers deadline has been extended to March 8th

Please consider being part of our third annual conference. EnerGIS 2015 will be held at Range Resources’ conference facility in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania May 18 & 19, 2015. Join your geospatial colleagues for one and one half days of talks, presentations, networking and fun.

Please consider submitting an abstract on any energy related GIS related topic. 
Additionally the GITA Mid-Atlantic Chapter is again offering scholarships to GIS & Geography students.

Please see the details on the scholarships and the call for papers at our website:

		EnerGIS Conference | Canonsburg, PA EnerGIS is an Energy Focused GIS Conference
		View on energis.us	Preview by Yahoo

GISCI Announces Updates To GISP Certification Process

GISCI announces updates to GISP certification process.

New procedures will have an impact on both current and future professionals with GISP certification.  Changes were implemented to increase the value, recognition and long term viability of the GISP certification and the GISCI organization.  Modifications include an exam, price increases and shortened recertification periods.

Find a news release at link below for details.

http://www.gisci.org/Portals/0/PDF's/Press%20Release%20GISP%20Changes%202_16_15.pdf

PaMAGIC Census Webinar

PAMAGIC Members,

I wanted to inform you of the next members only training PAMAGIC is offering.  It will be a webinar on Census data, hosted by board member Noemi Mendez Eliasen, Data Dissemination Specialist with the Census Bureau.

The webinar will be held onThursday, March 26, from 1-3pm.  If you are interested in registering for this training, please e-mail me back with your name and e-mail address.

Webinar Details:

Learn about the most popular Census data sets, such as decennial data versus American Community SurveyLearn how to use American Fact Finder to locate census data for GIS usersReview of the MAF/TIGER databasePrimer on Census GeographyTake a tour of the Geography section of Census.gov to highlight some of the newly added mapping tools, data and geodatabases.