CMUG Update and Our January 20th Meeting!

Hello all!

I hope everyone had a nice holiday and that we are all off to a good start to the New Year!

On September 16th, 2011 we had another successful CMUG meeting hosted by the Community College of Baltimore County’s Catonsville campus. Special thanks to Julia Fischer from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development and York Grow from Earth Vector Systems for presenting to the group. PDFs of their presentations can be downloaded here:

Julia Fischer – MD Department of Business and Economic Development – MD iMap

York Grow – Earth Vector Systems – Lightsquared and GPS

York Grow – Earth Vector Systems – Coalition to Save Our GPS - Members Update

Anthony Puzzo from ESRI also gave a presentation on some of the highlights, major rollouts, and user feedback from the 2011 ESRI User Conference. Thanks to Anthony for bringing us up to speed!

Our next CMUG meeting is quickly approaching and will be held at KCI Technologies, Inc. We will be meeting at 8:30am on Friday, January 20th, 2012, on the 4th floor of their Sparks, Maryland office. Thanks to Marshall Stevenson for offering their facility!

A final agenda with directions, parking, visitor information, and maps can be found here:

January 20th, 2012 – CMUG Final Agenda

And please remember to register for this event through ESRI. The registration link can be found here:

January 20th, 2012 – CMUG Registration


Click here to see the meeting location in an ArcGIS Online Viewer!

Looking ahead, we are planning our spring CMUG meeting for Friday, May 11th, 2012. We are currently looking for an agency or organization to host, two presentations, a food sponsor, and ideas for what you would like to see in the ESRI technical presentation. Please let me know if you’re interested in contributing to this or any other future meeting.

So that’s it for now. Please mark Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 8:30am on your calendars. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and learning about what we have going on in our region!

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at jalvarez@ccbcmd.edu or 443-840-1315.

Thanks!
Jaime

Finalized Agenda for the September 16th, 2011 CMUG Meeting

Hello all!
Just a quick note that the final agenda for the September 16th CMUG meeting is available. You can find it here: CMUG Agenda - September 16th, 2011.

IMPORTANT!!!
Please note that there is a special permit at the bottom of the agenda for you to print out and place in your windshield for the duration of the meeting. Please remember to park in white-lined spaces ONLY. Your best bet for parking will be Lot #5 on the southwest side of the H building. See the attached campus map in the agenda.

And please remember to register for the event! Register Here!

Looking forward to seeing everyone this Friday, the 16th at CCBC Catonsville!

Thanks!
Jaime

Hello all!
On April 15th, 2011 we had a very good CMUG meeting hosted by the Maryland Department of the Environment at Montgomery Park. Thanks to Fred Schenerman for working with us to get that meeting scheduled at a great facility!

Special thanks to Zhanping Shi from CSC and Kierran Sutherland from Towson University’s Center for GIS for sharing their work with the group. PDFs of their presentations can be downloaded here:

Zhanping Shi – CSC – How to apply WMS and WFS services from ArcGIS Server and other Open Sources to create a web-based mapping application

Kierran Sutherland – Towson University, Center for GIS – Ramona – GISInventory.net

We also had a great technical presentation given by Brad Songer and Jim Michel from ESRI’s Philadelphia office on Imagery in ArcGIS 10 with focus on LIDAR and elevation data management. These new capabilities in ArcGIS 10 should prove to be extremely valuable tools! Links to other information on Imagery in ArcGIS 10 can be found here. Thanks to Brad and Jim for making the drive and presenting to the group!

Our next CMUG meeting will be held at the Community College of Baltimore County, Catonsville Campus. We will be meeting at 8:30am on Friday, September 16th, 2011, in H-308. A final agenda, directions, and maps can be found here. If you would like to present at this meeting, well, you’re out of luck. We already have the presentations booked. Please let me know if you’re interested in presenting or even hosting a CMUG meeting or sponsoring refreshments. See below for future opportunities.

Starting with this September’s CMUG, we will officially be on a September, January, and May rotation for our meetings. So looking into the future a bit, we already have our January 2012 meeting scheduled. Thanks to Marshall Stevenson from KCI Technologies for offering their facility in Hunt Valley on Friday, January 20th. We are currently looking for two presentations, a food sponsor, and ideas for what you would like to see in the ESRI technical presentation. Please let me know if you’re interested in contributing to this or any other future meeting.

On another note, if you were at the April 15th meeting, you may remember the attendee database that we started building. We will use this database as our means for keeping our information current and checking in at future meetings. If you inputted your information at that meeting, then all you will need to do at the next meeting is click a checkbox near your name and you will be signed in. You will also have the opportunity to update any information as needed. If you were not able to input your information or you were not at the meeting, do not worry. You can still input your information at future meetings. I will continue to use the current email list in Excel until I get everyone’s email move into the database.

On a final note, when you look at this coming September’s agenda, you will notice that there will be a special academic presentation by Feather Stolzenbach, one of our students from CCBC. Feather placed 3rd in the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM) skills competition at the 2011 ESRI Educational Users Conference in San Diego. Congratulations to Feather! Her presentation at the EdUC and her willingness to present at CMUG got me thinking. I would like to include this type of academic presentation in all of our future CMUGs. I think CMUG is a good venue for undergraduates and graduates to show off what they have done with GIS in their curriculums. It would also be good for connecting the CMUG group with new talent and potential hires. With such a large number of colleges and universities that we could draw from in the region, I would think that we could find students that would like to come and present their work. So if you are a student or someone who teaches GIS and you have students that would benefit from presenting and getting their work out there, please feel free to contact me so that we can schedule a presentation.

That’s all I have for now. Please mark Friday, September 16th, 2011 at 8:30am on your calendars.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at jalvarez@ccbcmd.edu or 443-840-1315.

Thanks!
Jaime