Spatial Data Management Group Meeting Notes For October 19, 2006

Treats: Dave HW

Notes: Heatyher

Attendees: Terralyn, Matt G., Keith O., Dave H-W, Heather M, George L.,Kuuipo and Theresa

Speaker:

George Leinkaemper gave his perspective on his career in GIS, in a poetic form. George started working in GIS in 1989 after 10 years spent working for the Forest Service on a field crew. He started focusing on metadata in 1998 and became a GISP (GIS certified professional) in 2006. He gave a good overview on the evolution of GIS technology. Below are the poems George used to describe the various stages of his career.

GRASS/MOSS/STRINGS?

Building a system? The software’s the thing

Sagis, MAP, PMAP, MOSS, GRASS or STRINGS?

Information Needs Assessment Cadre – We’re here to help!

Hooray, Hooray it’s the INA; we’re here to show the way

Of GIS to biologists and timber beasts today.

We find datasets using Roger’s steps but the work has just begun,

We teach these tools and may look like fools,

because we’ve never used one.

FiYo! Wait for FiYo

At ArcInfo boot camp we soon discovered

That our analytical lack might just be covered

With a few more functions to help us thrive

Just wait – it’s all in version five!

The High Priesthood of GIS

Geologists, Foresters, Ecologists, Biologists (anybody) become GIS Pros

Reselect, Aselect, and Nodes that dangle

GIS is special from every angle

Do a little coding with AML

Right or wrong – who can tell?

GIS Data – it’s WHO you know

The DEM was our first data set

But roads or streams we couldn’t get

The digitizer became the way

Or call someone from that INA!

ArcView – just enough to be dangerous

Drawing a map in Arcplot; it made us feel sublime

Command line syntax, done just right, took quite a little time

Projection files and rules of thumb could seep in for some weeks

But ArcView made it simple to bypass all us geeks

We’ll always support ArcInfo on Prime DG UNIX ????

The cost of hardware, we all know, is a price for GIS

That can be spread out over years. It’s just plain smart, unless

Your software makes a change to dash your frugal mood

Please be assured you’ll have support – at least until you’re screwed

The Demise of the Generalist

There was a time when once we knew what all our tools could do

Now each release has lots to learn; and more than just a few

Fresh data models or processing tools are in there to devour

The time for work that once was done by the ArcInfo dinosaur

Turn out the lights! I’m doing screen shots!

The Unix world was fine with me; I had the tools I knew

But once in a while, a windows thing would pop into my view

Transferring data and editing text were certainly delights

But I was sold by making slides without turning off the lights

AML-Avenue-VB-Python

AML was pretty swell and Avenue brought the Object mode

VB was a whole new thing with a step up to some fancy code

Now Python’s here to free us from the crazy ArcObject load

But one more language might just make my fragile brain explode

Metadata to the rescue!

I made the jump to the GS for money, fame and fun

At FRESC there was a special job that needed to be done

I might have guessed beyond GIS lay something even greater

My spatial skills may have died away, but I sure know metadata!

Agenda:

Upcoming Meetings:

Northwest ESRI User Conference, Sunriver: September 13-15 (Kelly still needs to give a report)

LTER All Scientist Meeting, Sept. 20-23, Estes Park, CO. Theresa reports: Demo on temporal tools in 9.2 used data from the Andrews. There was roller skating, beer, samba dancing and mountains.

Training needs:

What's new in 9.2 seminars: report from Theresa:

9.2 scheduled to ship in mid-late Nov.

New ArcExplorer

New graphing engine (with temporal tools support)

Desktop productivity improvements (e.g. import/export data directly from Excel)

Mouse roller wheel tools & keyboard shortcuts

Global bookmarks

Goto (x,y) feature

Measuring tools that snap to polygons

Select features and calculate area

New help system (that actually works when you search for things is the rumor)

SDE terminology going away

ArcIMS will not be upgraded after 9.2 but will continue to be supported

Map caching

File geodatabase

Remote Sensing workshop in February 2007 (LaSelle Stewart Center)

Seminar on 2/14, 1/2 day training on 2/13

X-Tool seminar (George?) - postponed to a later date when we have X-Tools installed

Other training (list from ESR)

Theresa had a handout of training events in Eugene and Portland

Data:

Pilot project - Terralyn and Theresa are working on a project for serving data university-wide. They are planning on waiting for ArcServer though rather than use ArcIMS which may be obsolete technology soon.
Need to think about moving data to geodatabases - Kuuipo warned that shapefiles sometimes have problems when they are imported to geodatabases. Even though the import may appear successful, some arcs may have been dropped so be sure to check the data after importing.

GIS Day Planning:

November 15 and 16 - contact Theresa if you want to help.

Need posters

Need volunteers for GPS Walk

Need GPS units

Opportunity to be a 'vendor' for the 16th..do live demo

Need assistance with moving kids around on the 16th

Round table:

Matt - Working on plot database and filling data requests. Also learning about XSL and XML to provide database documentation online and to potentially create FDGC metadata from XML.

Terralyn - Putting together a proposal for a college-wide computing cluster, that would be funded in April and get the money in June. She needs to get a list of the projects for the multiple groups that would be participating. SAN install was supposed to be this week but one server was DOA.

Heather - Writing, testing and debugging SQL code.

Kuuipo - Working on Oregon Explorer project which is a portal to natural resource digital data. The Willamette and Umpqua basins are complete. They are partnering with ODF on wildfire risk data. OR explorer project is scheduled to launch on 2/14/07. They are waiting on hardware, data and ER mapper for 2005 DOQ's.

Dave - Working with TELSA and looking for good handhelds because theirs seem to lose data. He can't convert his data to geodatabases yet because TELSA can't use geodatabases.

Theresa - Working with Yang and Indigo for creating EML (ecological markup language) stylesheets from XML for LTER. Also working on creating a video using ArcGlobe for a paper for Don.