The Tale of Two GIS Days in Merced
GIS Day 2011 in Merced was held on GIS Day Eve (11/15), hosted by CentralCal URISA and sponsored by the San Joaquin Valley Regional GIS Council. Rich Green welcomed everyone and asked for everyone to introduce themselves and give a brief overview of projects they were working on. The GIS Day event continued with five great speakers: Dave Peck from Pictometry International spoke about imagery and GIS, Mike Martinez from ESRI demonstrated ArcGIS online and spoke about many of the resources available for free, Erin Mutch from Solstice-GIS presented her work on mapping the Horizon deepwater oil spill in the Gulf, Johnny Moua from UC Merced presented his student project that included a GIS component, and Minerva Perez from Golden Valley Health Center spoke about mapping areas of asthma clusters in Merced County. The afternoon included a “scavenger hunt” of sorts with attendees answering questions after viewing maps and displays in the Map Gallery.
Jeff Orton, Vice President of CentralCal URISA, gave a brief overview of the activities CentralCal URISA is doing as well as inviting all of those in attendance to join the chapter.
The afternoon session started of a presentation by RuthAnne Harbison on cartography that included a group mapping exercise. The attendees were divided into two groups and given two maps to critique. After reviewing and marking up the maps, each group discussed how each map could be improved. The session ended with better versions of the maps being shown to see if any of the elements each group suggested were also included in the new map. Everyone enjoyed the exercise. The GIS Day event ended with a short tips and tricks with Rich Green showing some of the newer functionality in ArcGIS 10.
A second GIS Day event was held on November 16th at Merced College sponsored by the Foundation for California Community Colleges and arranged by Cherie Davis, with the Merced College Office of Grants and Institutional Research. The event was held in the new library and several students and faculty attended. The president of the college, Dr. Benjamin T. Duran, welcomed everyone to the event and stayed for part of the first presentation. Since GIS is new to the college, Rich Green gave a GIS 101 presentation to show the attendees the elements of GIS and then how it is used in many different ways. He also demonstrated several of the GIS projects the Merced County Association of Governments (MCAG) has been involved with over the last few years and how they affect the lives of everyone in the County. RuthAnne Harbison presented several projects from the City of Merced to show how GIS is being used locally.
After the break, RuthAnne gave the same cartography presentation and group mapping exercise. The students and faculty were very engaged in reviewing the maps and came up with lots of suggestions and most of all, lots of questions. When the whole group got back together, the better version of the maps were all shown. Everyone enjoyed the exercise and had lots of comments.
The day ended with a panel discussion about GIS careers and opportunities that included Rich, RuthAnne, John Roach and Steven Tuck, Foundation for California Community Colleges and facilitated by Cherie. After the event several students had lots of questions about GIS and career options.
