Mapping Economic Development

You may have seen the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about the Milwaukee 7 (an economic development organization for promoting the seven county region) new webpage, http://www.choosemilwaukee.com. The site even includes a regional web mapping component to show available commercial and industrial properties. This just goes to show how important location matters in economic development and GIS is the tool to use to sell your location.

I'm just surprised that given the number of Wisconsin-based GIS firms, that they chose to go with an out-of-state company to build the application.

Mapping Bulletin

Thanks to the Wisconsin State Cartographers Office (SCO) for giving praise to the ESRI Wisconsin User Group Blog in their announcement of the latest Wisconsin Mapping Bulletin.

While not large by commercial blog standards, the EWUG Blog does have a respectable following even among GIS-Blog standards. It's remarkable that the blog is getting over unique 3500 hits per month on the RSS feed and the blog page itself is getting well over unique 200 visits per month.

Thank you, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Wireless 911

This story was posted on the LIO-Tech listserv (thanks Don!) It's good story that's worth repeating and shows the usefulness of Phase II 911.

A couple was out in their boat on a big marshy lake when the motor went out and nightime approaching, so they called 911:

"They [the couple] tried to explain where they were, but with no landmarks in sight and darkness setting in, it was difficult. They even fired a couple of shots into the air but rescuers on the lake still couldn’t find them."

Even though Bishop [the 911 dispatcher] was able to plot the approximate location where the couple was calling from on their cell phone, the rescuers and those who needed rescuing were still far apart.

Then Bishop came up with an idea.

"I asked the fire department, who was on the lake looking for them, to call 911 on their cell phone," Bishop said. "I answered and I was able to plot them on the map, too. I was able to see them and give them directions to the couple’s boat."

Source: Waukesha County Freeman 11/20/06

When to Explore

History shows that all great explorers know timing is everything. Too soon, the weather will be bad. Too late, someone else will get their first.

ArcGIS Explorer seems no different. The ESRI pages have long said (and still do) that it will be available when ArcGIS 9.2 starts shipping or when it is released. Well there have been several accounts of people receiving shipments. It hasn't been included in the ArcServer shipments. ArcView 9.2 is even available in the ESRI store. Yet ArcGIS Explorer is still unavailable for download.

The last I heard was that it won't be available until after Thanksgiving. My non-informed wild guess is that it has nothing to do with the software itself. ESRI has probably cleaned it as much as possible of bugs and errors. The real problem most likely getting enough network capacity ready for the massive download of the software and then the massive use of data via ArcGIS Online.

You may recall that right after Google released Google Earth, Google had to stop downloads. Think about that - Google couldn't meet the download demand for Google Earth. My guess is that ESRI is holding off in order to build network capacity. Because they know that most GIS users will download ArcGIS Explorer in the first 48 hours after it is released. And if performance doesn't live up to Google Earth (as it exists now) even if it is due to a massive rush, then they will have a much harder time convincing people that AGX is better than GE.

So, lets hope that ArcGIS Explorer is just waiting for the right weather.

Bigfoot GIS is boring?

On the lighter side of things...

If you live in the Milwaukee area, you may have heard about the guy who was previously reported in the media to see Bigfoot in Washington County. I ran across this article which describes the event. What I found more interesting is that the Bigfoot expert mentioned in the story, Jeffrey Meldrum of Idaho State University uses GIS in his research.

"His [Meldrum] tests range from examining other apes prints, to plotting sightings against environmental habitat using geographic information systems, to studying bio-acoustics of animal vocalizations. Personal beliefs aside, he bases his findings on the data, which he feels supports the idea of a species behind the legend."

Now I think that would make a pretty interesting presentation (regardless of your view) to see how someone uses GIS to study Bigfoot. Too bad the deadline for submitting abstracts to the ESRI-UC has passed.

And who says GIS is boring? Apparently, some reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution discussing GIS Day.

"GIS, or geographic information systems, seems a bit like plumbing - pretty darned important but really not all that interesting."

Looks like we still have a way to go to show the non-GIS people that GIS is interesting.

Survey Results

I'm sure everyone is sick and tired of all the political polls - so what better time to present some of the results of the EWUG Conference Survey!

About 20% of the conference attendees filled out a survey (and I'm not going to compute the margin of error). So here are the results :

What ESRI technology attendees wanted to learn more about:

• 9.2 release - 73%
• ArcMap - 59%
• ArcServer - 34%
• ArcIMS - 29%
  
• ArcGIS Explorer - 20%
  

What applications of GIS attendees wanted to learn more about:

• General GIS - 59%
• Planning & Zoning - 37%
• Addressing - 32%
  
• GPS - 29%
• Cadastral - 27%
• Utilities - 24%
  
• Transportation - 24%

Other results:

• 97% found the conferences facilities as Good or Excellent
• Thursday (90%) is the most convenient day to have the conference, followed by Wednesday (76%), and tied with Tuesday and Friday (41%)
• 73% prefer to have fewer concurrent sessions and a longer conference length (2 tracks for 2 days) rather than having a more concurrent sessions and a shorter conference (4 tracks for 1 day)
• 71% of the attendees stayed at the conference hotel, of those who did not stay at the hotel, the majority went back home after the conference.
  
• 69% found the conference food as Good or Excellent
• 56% preferred complementary meals and food variety over lower conference registration costs
• 51% have attended a WLIA conference this year
• 34% have never attended an EWUG conference before
• 20% attended some other GIS conference this year besides WLIA (GITA, ESRI-UC, etc.)
  

We're still reading all the write-in comments, so these findings will be presented as they become available.

Have any suggestion for next year - let us know!

Conference

Another successful EWUG conference with attendance at 200. The opening session started with videos from this year's ESRI-UC in San Diego mostly covering what's new in 9.2.
We were also told that it will be shipping very soon - the next week or two. After lunch, the rest of the afternoon was filled by user and ESRI presentations. The evening was highlighted by a well attended vendor reception. Many people hung around for almost two hours - I'm sure the free beer, appetizers and raffle had something to do with that. With the conference located in downtown Appleton there were many restaurants and bars within walking distance. A group of nearly 30 EWUGers almost overwhelmed the local hibachi restaurant another large group headed to a fine Mexican restaurant.

Vendor Reception

The late night did not deter many from attending more user and ESRI presentations the next day. At lunchtime, attendance was almost the same as the first day. Lunch ended with a presentation from Wisconsin's GIO describing what has happened over the past year at the State level (creating A State Government GIS Strategic Plan) and what is planned for next year (creating a Coordinating Council). Most attended stayed for the final presentations before wrapping up the conference at 3:30.

Most of the comments I heard about the conference and facilities were very positive, though the internet connection in the presentations rooms were very slow.

Where should the conference be held next year - Any ideas? The site must have one presentation room that can hold at least 250 people, another that can hold at least 100, and an area that is large enough and close enough to the presentation rooms for vendor exhibits and the vendor reception.