What makes the world wobble

What makes the world wobble: "Like a top spinning on a table, Earth's spin axis undergoes a complex mix of wobbles. Thanks to the exquisite accuracy of the ... "

Once again, another wonderful application of GPS technology is brought out in mainstream media.

McAninch and GPS Technology

The June 19th, 2006 Business section of the Des Moines Register had a very interesting front page article on West Des Moines based McAninch construction and their adoption of GPS technology.

The full article can be read here: http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060619/BUSINESS04/606190316/1029/BUSINESS but a couple of interesting observations.

1. "This year, trade magazine Engineering News-Record named him its award of excellence winner. Because of McAninch's leadership, the magazine called Des Moines the "center of the digital earth-moving universe."" Quite a high praise for the company. For me, the intersting note is in the sidebar where it mentions the size of the McAninch fleet, more than 400 Caterpillar machines that move more than 375,000 tons of earth per day.
2. "It's just like television or anything else, it's irreversible now," said McAninch. A fine example of a real-world, day-to-day business application of geospatial technologies.

Why blogging?

OK. I started tinkering with blogger back in May. For whatever reason I think I've been a little slow to the table in adopting some of the "Web2.0" technologies/innovations but I'm starting to slowly figure out the capabilities of some of these technologies.

I think the biggest thing for me was hearing a statistic earlier this spring that mentioned 5% of internet users were utilizing RSS. There are plenty of sites out there that explain RSS so I won't go into detail about RSS but what struck me was the potential for utilizing RSS technologies to better connect with Iowa's geospatial community. So if you take a look at the number of geospatial practitioners in Iowa and utilize the 5% figure, the audience is pretty small at this point for something like an RSS feed of a blog, but its a starting point.

So, how can blogging, RSS, social bookmarking, content management systems, and other technologies impact geospatial coordination in Iowa? I don't really have an answer for that one, but I'm excited to find out.

If there are IGIC members out there who have an interest in becoming more involved and learning about some of these technologies and how we can harness them to impact coordination and council activities in Iowa, drop me a line.

IGDC

What is the IGDC you ask? It is the Iowa Geospatial Data Clearinghouse. The "clearinghouse" is in the process of a redesign and also a relocation to a new url. The new url will be: http://www.iowagis.org/ and a big thank you goes out to Patrick Brown for all the work he has been putting in on redesigning the site.

Just one more thing to remember about the IGDC, a clearinghouse is only as effective and useful as the data that gets published to it. If you haven't taken the time to publish your metadata to the clearinghouse, get in contact with Patrick and he will be more than happy to walk you through the steps.

IGIC's new URL

After hearing input from folks over the last several years about the length of the IGIC URL, the Board of Directors at the last quarterly meeting decided to adopt a new (and hopefully) easier to remember URL for the organization. The new URL is: http://www.iowagic.org and while the old URL of http://igic.gis.iastate.edu is still around, you may want to go ahead and update your bookmarks now.

July and August schedule is filling up fast

For those of you who haven't taken a look yet at the calendar posted on the IGIC website, take a second and check it out.

• Just completed ICIT conference that was held in Mason City provided some ESRI training courses for registrants
• Summer 2006 IGIC quarterly meeting will be held on July 19th in Pella on the campus of Central College.
• The first GIS Metadata retreat will be held on July 20th - 21st also in Pella. If you have an interest in this one, please contact Micah Cutler or Patrick Brown to reserve a spot. Space is limited.
• The following week sees a workshop on the NHD (National Hydrography Dataset). Jeff Simley from USGS in Denver will be on hand to assist participants in gaining a better understanding of what the NHD is, what it can do, and what Iowa can be doing with regards to the NHD. For more info on the NHD workshop, please contact Bob Lemen, Iowa's USGS liason.
• Four GeoTREE workshops are scheduled to be offered in July and August in Cedar Falls. For more info on the GeoTREE offerings, check out their website.
• And then of course there is the International ESRI User Conference in San Diego if the above items aren't enough for you.

If you have more events that aren't listed or mentioned either here or on the IGIC website, drop me a line and let me know.

GeoTREE Course Offerings for Summer 2006 are announced

For those of you who haven't heard of GeoTREE yet, please take the opportunity to visit their website at http://www.geotree.uni.edu to learn more about their plans and offerings.

GeoTREE has just announced four short courses that they will be providing for free to federal, state, local, and tribal (FLST) entities. These courses are being offered in response to a survey that GeoTREE conducted earlier this year looking into the training needs of FSLT entities operating in and around Iowa.