Kern County 2007 GIS Day Huge Success
GIS Day in Kern County was a huge success!
2007 GIS Day Audience
Attendees from all over Kern County, and farther, converged at the California State University, Bakersfield Student Union for a great turnout!
The day’s events included students, speakers from education, government and business, booths with live demonstrations, door prizes, a great lunch, and sharing with the public how GIS is being used in their community every day. This year’s local theme was “GIS -enhancing geography literacy, one elecronic map at a time.”
Presentations
In addition to discussion panels on education and government, Chuck Rosengard and Paul Swartz from the Kern High School District gave a GIS presentation on school boundaries and the redistricting process, and its use in determining where future schools will be located.
Presentation by Chuck Rosegard
The Kern High School District is the largest 9-12 school district in California, and as such, the redistricting process and school locations is a hot topic when it comes to the community of Bakersfield and Kern County residents.
The informative presentation provided insight into what is involved in various processes and how GIS plays a crucial role in decisionmaking.
And although not nearly as large, representatives from the Visalia Unified School District and Quad Knopf gave a presentation on how they created and implemented a district-wide GIS.
Not only does the district use GIS for boundary and future school locations, but they have created a frontend web-based application so that residents can enter an address to find out which school boundary they are located in. The district is using ArcIMS and SQL to provide these location-based results.
Keynote Speaker
Keynote Speaker John Nilon
Kern County GIS Day would not be complete without a keynote speaker, and this year John Nilon, the Director of Kern County Child Support Services and Chair of the Kern County Network for Children GIS Task Force, provided a great presentation on history of GIS, good maps vs. bad maps, and examples of Kern County-related maps
Foothill CDE Academy Attends GIS Day
CDE Foothill High School Booth
An exciting group to attend Kern County’s GIS Day were students from the Foothill High School Computer Design & Engineering (CDE) Academy. These 10th-12th grade students have a genuine interest in the fields of computers, design and engineering.
As you can see, the students setup their own booth and showed off some of their work, such as an amazing SketchUp recreation of the Bakersfield Beale Clock Tower.
Even more exciting, Elizabeth from the Foothill CDE Academy won the raffle for the free Garmin GPS unit. Congratulations Elizabeth! We hope you enjoy the unit, and don’t forget to share with your peers!
Thanks to Everyone
The Central California URISA Chapter would like to thank everyone who attended, the various speakers, organizations and companies, and finally, the CSUB Business Rsearch and Education Center for help making GIS Day 2007 in Kern County a huge success.
