I just returned from attending this month's GIS cluster meet-up in Fort Collins. This is a local meet-up for professionals involved with GIS and geo technologies in our area. Organized by the RMI2 (squared) org, the aim of the meets is to foster growth and professional development of high-tech, including GIS in our region. Do you take in local tech meet-ups in your region?? If not I encourage you to do so and get out and network... you never know who you might meet!
Today's meeting was somewhat of a kick-off to 2009 where we all met and were encouraged to promote the group and encourage others involved in geo technologies in our area to get involved (is that you?) You can find out more about RMI2 (a non-profit) at http://www.rmi2.org/about/
A benefit of today's meet-up for me was a chance to meet about 15 professionals in our region, including reps from the following: National Park Service, City of Fort Collins, City of Loveland CO, City of Greeley CO, New Century Software, ArcSciences Corp, ESRI, CartoPac, Clear Path Labs, and a few others. Topics of discussion included word of a new CO tax credit being proposed which would bring about a 30% credit (hopefully) in order to stimulate investment in IT, Aerospace, bio-sciences, Geo tech, and clean energy. Interesting concept but it could be a tough sell with the current budget shortfall here in Colorado.. stay tuned! Also of interest today was a reminder that here in "GIS alley" we don't even have a degree granting GIS program any longer now that CSU has abandoned their program. Hopefully this will be addressed soon with the launch of new programs, particularly as this is a very "Geo" rich region of the country with oodles of companies offering GIS applications and services and many professionals residing in NOCO... stay tuned! There is indeed GIS programs being offered at the Front Range Community College (http://www.frontrange.edu/FRCCTemplates/FRCC1.aspx?id=686) apparently this program put together with the help of the local NOCO Workforce Development Initiative (ncedc.com) who work closely with the RMI2 organization.
I was also surprised with the key speaker from today's event. We were treated to a presentation from Roger Johnson of the National Park Service. The real treat was finding out that not only does the NPS have a local office here in Fort Collins, but there are 100 employees here! Additionally, Johnson operates out of Fort Collins and get this, he's the NPS' Chief Cartographer... living right here in my backyard... nice! Johnson informed us that there are more than 700 NPS employees in Colorado (most in Denver and Fort Collins) and he and his group (Land Resource Division) are charged with managing the data conversion of legislative documents, deeds, surveys, imagery, GIS data, and other data sources - much of these data wind up in an Autodesk Land Desktop environment and are also served up via Autodesk Mapguide webserver apps. From here the data are eventually fed also into the GOS and the NPS Data Store. Interesting to note that these data are also made available to users of Google Earth (via KML layer), however, data updates by Google are very slow and thus are not as up-to-date as other servers.. no surprise there!
Johnson and the NPS LRD crew are responsible for more than 84 million acres of park land and some 391 NPS units within their database... very cool to know that this is all being managed right here in Fort Collins, CO. Of interest, I was reminded today that Autodesk will be retiring the Land Desktop product with the 2009 release, many users (of land and raster design) likely having to migrate to Civil 3D in the future. Of note, in addition to Autodesk products, the NPS office also maintain licenses of LizardTech GeoExpress, ESRI ArcGIS, ERDAS Imagine, NGS Topo!, Acrobat Pro, and they also use the very cool Capturx digital pen and paper solution from Adapx.
Perhaps I'll see you at the next RMI2 GIS Cluster meet-up... ping me if you need contact information!
