Two offerings during the recent 2010 ESRI International User Conference included work accomplished by NKAPC’s GIS staff. One was a training session and the other was an inclusion in the conference’s 25th Anniversary Map Book.
Christy Powell, GISP, one of NKAPC’s senior GIS specialists, represented NKAPC and the LINK-GIS partnership by presenting a conference session entitled ‘Succeeding in a Slow Economy: Financing, Implementing, and Supporting GIS on a budget.’ Powell’s presentation included staff’s experience with revamping the LINK-GIS website.
“We thought it would be a good topic because of the recession’s impact on local GIS budgets,” Powell said. “We discussed our website project, the benefits we achieved by working with two contractors, and how we accomplished our goal within a limited budget.”
Billed as ‘The Biggest GIS Event on Earth,’ the conference brought together over 16,000 GIS users and company executives from over 140 countries, who gather to attend technical sessions and connect with other GIS users.
ESRI used this year’s conference as a platform to roll out its new ArcGIS 10 software. NKAPC will download this upgrade and begin learning its new features in the near future.
NKAPC’s feature in the conference’s 25th Anniversary Map Book gave conference attendees a look at how LINK-GIS mapping has progressed since its inception over two decades ago. This annual product includes a sampling of high-quality maps from local, state, and federal government agencies.
“Our maps were included in the “Now and Then” section that featured four agencies that were pursuing digital mapping back in the ’80s,” Brush said.
NKAPC’s “then” map was featured in the 1987 conference map book and reprinted in the 25th edition alongside the “now” version of the same map. Each conference participant received one of these map books.
“We were in very good company,” Brush concluded.
LINK-GIS is a collaborative electronic mapping partnership managed by the Northern Kentucky Area Planning Commission on behalf of Kenton and Campbell County Fiscal Courts, the Kenton and Campbell County PVAs, the Northern Kentucky Water District, and Sanitation District 1 of Northern Kentucky.