Conference Almost Here

The EWUG conference is almost here. It's on Wednesday and Thursday this week. We have almost two days of presentations on the latest about ESRI software and how people are using it. There are a six ESRI presentations, sixteen user presentations, and a presentation by Wisconsin's GIO. If you haven't already pre-registered (we have over 185 persons at last count who have), you can register on site.

It looks to be a great conference this year. Hope to see you there!

ESRI Technology Trends

It looks as though ESRI has a new area of their website dealing specifically with Technology Trends in GIS. Right now just Cartography and Server trends are discussed, but it says GeoWeb and Geodata management will be added soon.

GIO to Speak at Conference

Wisconsin's Geographic Information Officer David Mockert, will be speaking at this years EWUG conference. You may recall last year we heard about David's background and his role as Wisconsin's first GIO. This year you will likely hear about what he has accomplished and what's next.

BTW - You must get your conference registrations postmarked no later than 10/20/06 to qualify for early registration! Also, I just check again, and the Radisson is still accepting the EWUG conferencer rate promo code - just $62 a night.

Midwest River Killer

This story has been repeated many times in the past few years. A college-age male, whom after a night of heavy drinking is missing. After several days or months, the body is found is the Mississippi. The toxicology shows the person died with a high blood-alcohol content. The cause of death is ruled as accidental. Basically, the official story goes, the persons was drunk, stumbled and fell into the river and drowned. This was ruled the case most recently with Lucus Homan.

Many people believe the deaths are no accident. They think a serial killer is pushing/dumping drunk college-age men into the river.

Milwaukee Channel 12 WISN did a segment (10/12/06) on a Minnesota professor who claims he has found a spatial pattern to intoxicated males who drowned after a night of drinking. The pattern roughly follows along I-94 in several Midwest states. Several "pattern" maps where shown on TV along with an interview. (I barely caught glimpse of the report) I currently don't see a reference on WISN to their news story, but it may appear later. Nor did I catch the name of the professor.

I curious to know more about the spatial analysis involved. If a link appears, or if the professor has information available online, please post a comment indicating the link. I think we all would like to know a little bit more about this.

T-Shirt Update

Just got back the proof from the T-Shirt people. Here's the next hottest thing in GIS wear.

The Cost of Data

This popped up on my Google News alert and then on several blogs. Santa Clara County California is being taken to court over their high fees for the purchase of GIS data. Here's what their data costs according to their Basemap Request Form:

(One-time purchase, entire county)

• Parcels: $126,000
• Streets: $4,312
• Address: $140,000 (assuming these are address points)
• ROW: $32,200
• APN: $126,000 (assuming this is Assessor Parcel Number, but don't know if these are separate points, or just added as an attribute to the parcels).

Total: $428,512 +$250 processing fee

To bring everything in perspective, the population of Santa Clara County is 1,699,052. So they are asking about $0.252 per person for all of their GIS data. Using this metric, here's what the top four Wisconsin Counties would be charging for their GIS data based on population:

• Milwaukee: $236,921
• Dane: $107,485
• Waukesha: $90,913
• Brown: $57,118

Going a big step further, with the US population fast approaching 300 Million, the total value of the US parcel dataset is worth about $75.7 Billion.

BTW - I tried finding the actual case documents, but the website kept timing out. Hopefully someone will post a link to the soon. The devil is always in the details.

ArcGIS 9.2 Seminar

An overflow crowd of over 200 people spent the day atWisconsin ArcGIS 9.2 Seminar.
Much of the content was not earth-shattering new. If you've been reading ArcNews and ArcUser, or went to the User Conference, you've at least heard or read about the new features and offerings. All of which is described in the What's New in 9.2 document.

The main benefit was to actually see it in action (except for one cartographic toolbar glitch). The main theme the ESRI folks was "cool is out, value is in". Or, as I would say it, playing with maps is one thing, working with maps is another.

What's your thoughts on the seminar?

Conference Info

Don't forget to register now - early registration ends October 20th.
Also, the hotel said the special rate $62/night was only for reservations made before October 2nd. I just checked the hotel reservation website, and it looks like the code is still valid. If you're still not sure about attending, take a look at the preliminary program, this is a great value for $75 for a two day conference.

Conference is less than a month away

Don't forget to register for it!

T-Shirts Pictures

For the past two years, we've have EWUG T-Shirts available. Now that they've been out for a while, do you have any T-Shirt photos you would like to share? It would be a Wisconsin version of ESRI T-shirt page in ArcUser. If you have one send it to david.haines@rasmith.com We would like a chance to use it on our webpage or at our EWUG booth.

BTW - We'll have more EWUG T-Shirts available this year.