Present : Deanna Pennington, Sharon Clarke, Theresa Valentine, Sean San Romani, Mark Klopsch, Ray Drapek, Jonathan Brooks (nice chocolate-iced cookies), Kelly Christiansen, Rich Nauman, Terralyn Vandetta, Doug Oetter, Matt Gregory (notetaker)
1. Awards for Metadata and Discussion Group Leaders – Theresa handed out chocolate to those who have entered metadata within the past month or have volunteered to lead an Arc 8 training session. The important note here is that Sharon got one for each.
2. SDMG webpage – There was some mention that the links to the Spatial Data Management Group web page link from the main COF web page was a bit buried. Doug will remedy. Doug has also been progressing on developing a web interface to the GIS/RS spatial database using Access and SQL. The details were lost on the notetaker . . .
3. Imagine training - Mark noted that Doug will be doing two days of ERDAS Imagine training in Atlanta from the site license agreement. This is in exchange for the many workshops Doug has led getting other users up to speed on Imagine. There are three days of Imagine training available and others can ask Mark for these days in exchange for giving training back to the broader group.
4. Links to GIS Jobs - There was a suggestion to put current GIS/RS jobs on the SDMG web page, but it was agreed that the turnover in job announcements would be difficult to keep up with and active links to pages with job opportunities (such as GIS Jobs Clearinghouse - http://www.gjc.org/) would be sufficient.
5. FSL 345 improvements - Terralyn and Theresa reported on the upgraded status of FSL 345. The plotter has been moved to a more convenient location behind the door and a number of UNIX machines are available to public users.
6. UNIX training - Terralyn offered the introduction to UNIX class and very few people actually showed. However, there was quite a bit of interest in an advanced UNIX class where users could ask specific questions. Terralyn is hoping to run this class sometime in late April.
7. Windows NT/2000 profiles - Ray brought up the issue of NT profiles causing slow log-on and log-off times and this stimulated a lot of discussion. Mark and Sean explained what elements go into the profile and how to get better performance by limiting browser caches and desktop elements among other things. Terralyn suggested that members of this group should send email to Kathy Howell for a possible workshop on profile management.
There are apparent conflicts between user profiles when moving between Windows NT and Windows 2000 machines. Theresa noticed this on the public machines in the GIS lab (Richardson 203) which have recently been changed to Windows 2000 OS. The Windows 2000 profile will corrupt the Windows NT profile. Mark explained that the best way to avoid this was to log on as a local user when using these machines :
User : NORMAL
Password : <blank>
Profile : SEED
8. Arc8 news – The Arc8 workshops have been very helpful in both familiarizing users with the software and identifying bugs. Thanks to Theresa, Sharon, Ken, Kelly, Dylan, Keith Olsen who have all led workshops. Jonathan, Deanna and Matt are all committed(!) to lead workshops in the coming weeks. The schedule for the upcoming weeks has changed a bit :
March 29 - Jonathan will focus on grid analysis functions (or lack thereof)
April 12 – Possible profile workshop with Kathy Howell?
April 26 – No workshop (meeting with John Sherrard from ESRI – see below)
May 10 – Deanna will lead a Visual Basic and database primer
May 24 - Matt will continue with Visual Basic and scripting utility in Arc
Terralyn noted that it is possible to do a database connection from UNIX to SQL server and that the “database” command is the key element. For additional information, ask her. Sean has been able to get the SDE “hooked up” to SQL server, however every user has root access at present. He is continuing to work on this. Arc8.1 is installed on all machines in the GIS lab.
9. Visit from ESRI - John Sherrard from ESRI in Olympia will be coming to meet with the GIS/RS group on April 26 at 10:00 a.m. to answer our questions about Arc 8. This is a great opportunity to pepper him with questions. Matt has been compiling a list of questions to present to John, so please send your Arc 8 questions to him at matt.gregory@orst.edu. Matt will be giving these questions to Theresa by the end of this week, so that she can send them on to John to let him prepare!
Other notes :
· Client side training is available from ESRI so that if we have a large group with a similar topic of interest, it might make sense to bring someone in to train.
· GIS in action conference is coming up, May 30 - June 1, 2001, Double Tree Lloyd Center Hotel, Portland
· The national Forest Service GIS training/conference is happening April 16-20 in Utah. Theresa is attending.
· Next GIS meeting 4/19 at 10:00 a.m. Ray is bringing cookies, Terralyn is taking notes, contingent on no babies being delivered (?). Doug is bringing cookies and Theresa will be taking notes for the May meeting.
· The most important news that came out of the meeting was that it was Sharon Clarke’s birthday with Doug ably emcee-ing the festivities.