An initiative begun in January by two members of PDS’ GIS team achieved considerable attention during the Esri annual conference held recently in San Diego. NKYmapLAB seeks to highlight the wealth of GIS data that have been collected by the LINK-GIS/Kenton County partnership since its inception in 1985. It accomplishes this by publishing a monthly map that highlights these data as they relate to a topic of current discussion.
PDS staff and one of their entries in the “large format printed map” category earned a third place in the international completion.
“Competition for attention to your maps at this annual conference is intense,” said Dennis Gordon, FAICP, PDS’ executive director. “Thousands of maps from across the globe are displayed. To do something that catches the eye of your peers and prompts them to vote for your work is really tough. I’m so proud that work from our GIS professionals was recognized in such a forum.”
Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute) is an international GIS software company that invites it’s users to share examples of their mapping work at its annual user conference which typically draws 16,000+ GIS professionals from around the world.
The Esri Map Gallery display provides an exciting and vibrant display of the very best in current cartography practices. Approximately the size of two football fields, the exhibit allows users to showcase their talents and work to other conference attendees, and acts as a barometer for the current state of mapping globally.
Map gallery entries must be created with Esri software and submitted by someone who registers for and attends the Esri user conference. The creator(s) of the map must be present for at least one hour during the map gallery opening and evening reception to discuss their maps and answer questions.
This year PDS, under the NKYmapLAB initiative, submitted four map products to be reviewed and voted on by conference attendees and Esri staff. Under the “large format printed map” category, the PDS team of Louis Hill, GISP (Geospatial Data Analyst) Ryan Kent, GISP (Principal GIS Data Analyst) and Trisha Brush, GISP (Director of GIS Administration) received third place.
“This is a huge honor as there were many wonderful and worthy maps submitted,” said Brush. “Over the last year the focus of NKYmapLAB was to battle some of the challenges with big GIS data while addressing three important elements sharing, analysis, and visualization.”
According to Hill, “This recognition is a nice acknowledgement of what we are trying to accomplish: keeping the long-range planning goals of Direction 2030 at the forefront of public discussion and making the general public more aware of the capabilities that GIS can provide to our community.”
Kent added, “To be selected by your peers, who know what you go through to create these maps, is a sort of vindication that you are doing something right. We don’t create maps that just look pretty, they need to tell a story and get a message across. The Esri Map Gallery is the perfect venue to showcase that.”
The NKYmapLAB initiative features eight story maps accompanied with large posters. A story map is a media where mapping professionals can combine authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content. All published NKYmapLAB maps are stored here for your review and use.