GIS Day 2001, November 14, 2001 SpatialNews > Events > GIS Day Website Be Sure To Celebrate GIS Day on November 14, 2001! Glenn (second from right) with "GIS" friends!

Play GISQuest sponsored by ESRI and Sun Microsystems

GIS Day 2001
Thanks to everyone who shared their GISDay stories with The GeoCommunity. We've sent out a number of prizes, including t-shirts, mousepads, and pencils courtesy of ESRI and GISday.com. We wish we could send prizes to everyone, however, the response we received was somewhat overwhelming! If your GISDay news didn't get posted we appologize (some submissions were likely missed). If you'd still like to share your GISDay tales with us please drop a line to editor@geocomm.com.

GIS Day News From Around The Globe

GIS Day 2001 @ USGS Education Outreach Center - Joseph Kerski from the USGS provides this summary and image gallery from this GIS Day event.

GIS Day Celebrated in Ghana - this special contribution comes to us from our friends at The University of Ghana.

NEOnet Inc. in Timmins, Ont., Canada put together an impressive GISDay newsletter! (PDF)


USGS Mid-Continent Mapping Center Celebrates GIS Day!

From our friends at the MCMC - "Greetings from the middle of Missouri and home of the USGS Mid-Continent Mapping Center. We at the MCMC were busy for the day and week, both locally and regionally." Complete details and images Click Here


The South Coast Regional Information Centre (Western Australia) www.scric.org
"We had a great day and a great week!"

• GIS Day at the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park - "We decided to hold GIS Day on Saturday, November 17 (10AM - 4 PM), to enable more of the public to participate in the event. In preparing for GIS Day, we solicited the cooperation of the Friends of the National Zoo (FONZ) to help post directions to the exhibit, and an announcement was placed with the Washington Post to promote the event. Our GIS Day was an open house at the Amazonia Science Gallery presenting numerous posters, maps and computer displays (including ArcView interactive data sets, PowerPoint shows, and animated cartographic displays). We provided educational materials regarding GIS in general, and in particular, the use of GIS for mapping the tropics and other Smithsonian GIS activities. Thanks to the National Zoo, ESRI, National Geographic Society, and the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, we had plenty of CDs, pencils, posters, buttons, and career brochures to give away. The most popular giveaway items included the pencils, K-12 GIS-CDs, "Choosing a World Map" monographs, and career brochures. Throughout the day, 247 visitors come to view the exhibit and ask questions about GIS and how it is used at the Smithsonian."
  
  
• The Arizona Deparment of Transportation (ADOT) hosted an open house on GIS Day with presentations, a map gallery and even some hands-on trials of ArcExplorer and Trimble GPS equipment. The half day of presentations included an intro to GIS, overview of ArcExplorer, demos of routing and detour applications, a very cool presentation from our Department of Public Safety (DPS) on disaster management, and a hands-on look at how to collect data with a GPS. The event also showcased maps such as speed limits on the state highways, pygmy owl habitat areas, incidents of mosquito bites, density of accidents on the state highway system and some land use parcel maps, just to name a few.
  Photos: Sharon Nicholson of Arizona DPS and Jami Garrison of ADOT welcome visitors to GIS Day (Photo); Tom Ford and Ed Green of ADOT view Arizona highway information with ArcExplorer software (Photo); Mike Dennis (third from left) of ADOT demonstrates data collection with GPS (Photo)
  
  
• The City of Santa Monica celebrated its 3rd annual GIS Day with an extensive and crowd-pleasing map gallery in City Hall. Along with the exhibit, a variety of IMS and mobile applications were showcased. A group of GIS users from Norway came to visit and learn more about the projects that are being undertaken in Santa Monica.
  
  
• The Louisiana Geographic Information Center (LAGIC) is spending GIS Day with seventh grade social studies students at University High in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They will give three presentations and man a GIS Day booth.
  
  
• The GIS coordinator for the City of New Bern, NC tells us that they are celebrating World Town planning Day and are intertwining GIS day with it since GIS plays such an important role in Planning. They are then going to have a lunch get together with local GIS people to talk GIS issues on the 14th.
• One of the main event in the International Institute of Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences(ITC)-Netherlands in the 14th of November is the graduation of more than 30 students in the field of GIS and Remote sensing.
  
  
• The Clermont County Auditor's Office located in Batavia, Ohio (southwest Ohio) held GIS Day festivities on Wednesday, November 14, 2001. Attendees included township zoning inspectors, EMS, fire, police, school board superintendents and road supervisors. Our goal was to educate township employee's on what GIS is and we showed these individuals how they can utilize the data that the county has already developed. We covered various ESRI products from Arc Explorer to ArcGIS suite, which are available for purchase from ESRI. Overall, Wednesday was a successful day full of hands on learning and four interactive demonstrations using the various GIS software in our office.
  
  
• The City of Delaware's GIS Division will be holding a class demonstration and a map gallery for the 7th grade social studies classes at North Union Middle School located in Richwood, Ohio. They will be taking a virtual tour of the world, as well as a powerpoint demonstration of the uses for GIS. This is a great opportunity to open these young students minds to the thoughts of spatial connectivity and relationships to the real world around them. "Happy GIS Day 2001 from Delaware, Ohio!"
  "The event was a huge success, many students benefited from the demonstrations and map displays!"
  
  
• In New York, Governor George E. Pataki Proclaims GIS Day November 14, 2001. In celebration of GIS Day, the New York State Office for Technology will be hosting a GIS Day exhibit at the Government Technology Conference in Albany at the Empire State Plaza November 14-16, 2001. The GIS Day exhibit will showcase various uses of GIS from K-12 schools, local governments, State Agencies and academia. On November 14th, area high school students and their teachers will be on-site to discuss how they are using GIS to improve their communities. On the 15th, State Agency representatives will be on-hand to answer technical GIS questions and describe how GIS is being used to support more effective and efficient decision making in their respective agencies. Details Here
  
  
• The United Tribe of Shawnee Indians hope to get our United States treaty reservation listed in GIS format for all to use, tribal members, state and county. The legal description of all Indian reservations are listed per treaty. The United Tribe of Shawnee Indians reservation treaties are listed at:
  http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/sha0262.htm
  http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/sha0331.htm
  http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/treaties/sha0618.htm
  
  
• Today Brian Smith, GZA GeoEnvironmental of New York gave a brief demonstration of ArcExplorer to my colleagues and turned them on to a few web sites including http://www.esri.com/data/online/browse.html for environmental data aquisition and consolidation. He also, gathered position fixes with his gps receiver while "riding my bicycle barefoot, simultaneously drinking a warm beer and belching Happy GIS day to pedestrians"... Ok!
  
  
• Das Land Oberösterreich beteiligt sich auch dieses Jahr wieder beim Globlal GIS-Day. See http://doris.ooe.gv.at/gisday/
  
  
• "We are hosting a fantastic GIS Day event at Stillwater Area High School in Stillwater, MN. More than 20 GIS professionals and representatives of post-secondary GIS programs will be on hand to display and demonstrate GIS projects and programs for students, staff and the general public from 8 AM until 2 PM. In addition, high school students will be displaying their own GIS projects, Property Atlases that they have created for local property owners. To top it off, Geography related prizes donated by local businesses will be raffled."
  
  
• Applied Geographics, Inc. www.appgeo.com is celebrating GIS Day by hosting an open house at their Boston office for students from UMass Boston's GIS program, which will include a tour of the new offices at 355 Congress Street, Boston, and demos of recently developed applications. Other staff will take part in GIS Day events at the State House in Hartford, CT, and at the ESRI offices in Danvers, MA. They are also hosting a grammar school event at the Young Achievers Science and Mathematics Pilot School in Jamaica Plain, MA for grades 6 to 8, and are taking part in the week long GIS Day map exhibit at the State House in Boston, MA.
  
  
• The City of Olathe, Kansas is Gung Ho for GIS Day! The City of Olathe will hold several types of GIS Day events: - An Open House with Map Gallery at City Hall - Display/demos/ presentations with Johnson County (KS) AIMS - Presentations at two local universities - Presentation to (80) local school district social science elementary school teachers at in-service on Nov. 19th. The Firefighters of the Olathe Fire Department will visit each third grade classroom in the city during Geography Awareness Week. This is an effort to reinforce basic map skills and emphasize the importance of geography. We will also introduce them to the GIS concept. An ArcView custom map was designed for each school. Each child will have the opportunity to place a small (self-decorated) wooden house on the map and locate various attributes such as fire hydrants, schools, and fire stations. It will take all 80 of their firefighters to reach out to the 1,500 third graders.
  
  
• Park County, Central Colorado held a GIS Day Open House last year, in conjunction with the Planning Department and we had a good time of it. Turn out wasn't great - 2 citizens showed up, however two high school classes did participate. The Coordinator tells us that he feels that showing students real world occupations for a couple hours is worth more than a couple weeks in a classroom. Mapping really gets the students interested because they see data that they can relate to, whether it's their subdivision or a favorite place to fish. They already have two classes signed up for this year, and he suspects that there will be quite a bit more citizen interest as well.
  
  
• Old Harford Town Maritime Center (OHTMC) in West Denton, Maryland, (www.riverheritage.org) is working with Caroline County Public Schools to celebrate GIS Day by introducing teachers and Geography Club students to GIS and GPS. They began Geography Week activities on 12 November by installing free ESRI ArcExplorer software on computers in the technology lab of Lockerman Middle School (LMS). On 15 November, LMS geography teachers will meet with OHTMC staff to review GIS lesson plans and become familiar with the software.
  
  
• From Charlie Middleton... "You bet I'm celebrating GIS day. I'll start my day off by getting out of bed at about 6:30, feeding the horses after coffee, and then go to work on my PowerMac G4 500. I have three maps to get out this week! I download all of my topo's from the GEOCOMM www site. That makes it so much easier than scanning then color correcting for my scanner's gamut mess. My boss (dad) is taking me to lunch since I told him GIS day is a national holiday."
  
  
• The whole of GeoBusiness Solutions Ltd are staying in a hotel in Kingham, Cotswolds in England on November 14th 2001. They are having an "away day" to each present our successes and failures of this year and our plans for next year. Hopefully it will be a fun, productive and interesting day out of the office. It will also help them to understand exactly what each other is doing and step back from the daily interruptions and stresses of a normal day.
  
  
• Journalists will learn how to use powerful GIS (Geographic Information Systems) tools for data analysis and story- telling at a GIS Day presentation on Wednesday, Nov. 14, sponsored by the Institute for Analytic Journalism (IAJ) and Boston University's College of Communication.
  
  
• Rochester-Olmsted Planning Department's GIS Division will be hosting a map gallery to present and demonstrate the multiple uses and applications of GIS in Olmsted County. The main attraction will be 'The Cutting Edge of GIS in Olmsted County'.
  
  
• Kay Aar Software Pvt Ltd.Hyderbad in India will Conduct a Seminar On "What is the Use Of GIS For a Common Man in the Society" At Our Conference Hall.W They are expecting Young and Dynamic Engineers will be participate the program Under the supervision of Mr.Raghu Ganeshan M.S (Civil Engineering). Corporate Quality In-charge,Infotech Enterprise Inc.USA.On the same Day they will be celebrating a Festival Of Diwali. In Andra Pradesh in India.
  
  
• The University of San Carlos in Cebu Philippines will celebrate GIS Day for the first time with a week long set of activites. The highlights include a GIS DAy Exhibit at the lobby of the main campus, the blessing and inauguration of the GIS@CAS laboratory and an open house of the GIS@CAS laboratory for students and facutly.
  
  
• SDI- the spatial data integrators, Dubai, UAE is conducting GIS awareness classes in schools on Nov 14th as part of the GIS Day celebrations. The program includes presentations about GIS and its applications and demonstration of our interactive map site www.dubailocator.com and GRL(Geo Reference Locator).The GRL concept engineered by SDI is to give any physical location a unique globally accessible GRL in a similar manner as a page on the Internet is given a URL. Free registration of personal GRL on DubaiLocator is being offered as part of the GIS day.
  
  
• "We will be holding our GIS day in Kimberley South Africa for the first time, we will be holding an exhibition in the previously marginalised areas of our city on the importance of using GIS information for community planning."
  
  
• The Bureau of Land Management's Wyoming State Office (WYSO) in Cheyenne, Wyoming is hosting a GIS Face-To-Face Workshop for all of the Field Office GIS users. What a great way to spend GIS Day; sharing information on current GIS projects, new software, and training opportunities. Workshop issues include a roundtable of current projects, updates on Arc8 training, national mapping updates, and workshops on digitizing, Image Analysis, CARAT, a Red Hen Media Mapper Demo, Table and Charts, Seagate Crystal Reports, Scripts/AML, and a 3D Analyst Workshop.
  
  
• Pittsburgh is celebrating GIS Day at the Carnegie Science Center on November 16 & 17! The event is being sponsored by the Carnegie Science Center, California University of Pennsylvania, the local URISA chapter, and Thinformation, Inc. (an ESRI business partner). They will be teaching ArcVoyager to students from local middle schools, giving presentations on the history of map making, and showing how GPS is integrated with GIS for vehicle routing and tracking using Air-trak and ArcLogistics Route. The event will also include a geography quiz with prizes such as GIS Day T-shirts, buttons, pens, travel mugs, and other items.
  
  
• The GIS Training and Research Center is hosting its third GIS Day celebration. They have scheduled a host of speakers and demonstrations including hands-on demo's of ArcGIS and Trimble GPS receivers coupled to ArcPad.
  
  
• Penn State's Geography department has offered scholarships for training at its ESRI Learning Center. They will be hosting about 32 high school students and teachers for two free Intro to ArcView classes. There will likely be some future geographers in the bunch!
  
  
• In Seychelles we are going to celebrate GIS Day on a low scale. For the past years there has been a GIS Steering Committee that was addressing GIS needs in our country, then finally in 2000 the committee decided to appoint a Technical Committee to handle the user needs and the Steering Committee will handle only the decision-making end of the GIS community. They have decided to activate the Technical Committee on GIS Day to emphasise the need for a framework to the GIS community. Even though they are not going to involve the public in this years GIS Day we are quite sure that by next year the GIS community of Seychelles will be in a better order and a better position to make the technology available to the public. Also we are planning to spend the whole of next year in trying to educate the youth of the need for GIS in the community.
  
  
• The USGS Rocky Mountain Mapping will host over 130 students and teachers for GIS Day 2001 in Denver Colorado. The Rocky Mountain Mapping Center is where GIS technologies and methods are used to investigate urban growth, natural hazards, biodiversity, and other topics. The attendees can also tour the location where 3D models of the earth and digital images are generated, and where nearly 50 million USGS topographic and thematic maps, books, and CD-ROMs are housed under a 17-acre roof. Details at http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/public/outreach/
  
  
• Craig Johnson tells us that The Louisiana Geographic Information Center (LAGIC) is spending GIS Day with seventh grade social studies students at University High in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. We will give three presentations and man a GIS Day booth.
  
  
• Long Beach City College - is having open lab all morning on GIS Day to publicize GIS on our campus. We are encouraging instructors to bring their class and make maps, or individual students can come by, and earn extra credit from their instructors for participating. There will prizes for the best maps.
  
  
• EMA Inc. Sponsors GIS Day Celebration - Lexington Park, MD - EMA Inc. is a nationally recognized leader in defense and federal contracting that will host an open-house on GIS Day 2001, November 14. The event is open to the public and will demonstrate the latest in GIS technology. Where: Chesapeake Professional Building, 22454 Three Notch Rd. (Rte 235), Suite 101, Lexington Park MD. When: 10 am – 6 pm. For more information: Andy Maracini 301-863-2199, andy_Maracini@emainc.com
  
  
• The South Coast Regional Information Centre (RIC),South Coast of Western Australia, tell us that to celebrate both GIS Day and Geography Awareness Week, they are conducting two two-day training courses in ArcView® for representatives of catchment (watershed) groups and landcare groups. The training course, plus all meals and ArcView® software licences, have been fully funded through the State Salinity Council Community Support Scheme project. The skills learned will help these groups make better natural resource management decisions using some of the latest techniques in information technology.
  
  
• The FIRST GIS day EVER to be held in Northern Ontario will take place in Timmins. A simple idea has "snow-balled" into a very impressive schedule events including:
  - a special newspaper insert,
  - a 1-hour presentation by Dr. Roberta Bondar (first female astronaut) videoconferenced live to two other major cities
  - A poster contest for all Northeastern elementary schools
  - All libraries were asked to set-up a "What is GIS?" display
  - 18 exhibitors will cover just about every sector that GIS is used in
  - GIS Day cake shaped like a globe
  
  
• The City of Rapid City (South Dakota in the beautiful Black Hills) is sponsoring GIS Day 2001 along with Kadrmas, Lee & Jackson Engineers and our company, Horizons, Inc. (aerial photography/photogrammetry). They are having demonstrations from 9-11 am on Wednesday, 11/14 at the city office. Elementary and middle-school children have been invited along with the general public. Demonstrations will include 'A Day in the Life of GIS', 'Orthophotography' and examples of GIS work.
  
  
• Zoran Stojanovic, a reader from The Netherlands tells us of his plans to visit a symposium dedicated to the World GIS day and organized by the Geo-Database Management Center (GDMC). GDMC is the research and development center for Geo-Information technology of the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. The topic of the symposium will be location-based services with presentations from both academia and industry.
  
  
• James A. Martin, a GeoCommunity reader from Yuma County Mapping plans on celebrating his 48th. birthday on GIS Day by taking a mapping class. Good luck James!
  
  
• ESRI - Discover GIS Day 2001 Celebrate Your World

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