5 Christmas Gift ideas for the Geogeek in your life.

I admit, this is quite the "Wish List" from your rich Uncle Montague. But they're neat to dream about and hope for someday. 

In no particular order. 

1. Land Carpet.
Who doesn't want to stretch out on a map? Because paper is not really inviting, how about a map made out of genuine New Zealand wool? (did you know there are 7x more sheep in New Zealand than people?) Awesome. However at $2100 for a 6'x8' area rug, it's not for the typical GIS Technician's budget. Something a little more reasonable is the I Am Here Custom play-mat

2. Map Wheel
I know where I am, most of the time. The Map Wheel is a distinct custom made reminder of where that other place is in reference to wherever I call home, or whatever location you choose to be in the center. Kind of like the Direction Pole in the TV show MASH. A custom Map Wheel is about $100 US with about $10 shipping, but it's made in Australia.... soooo, it might have to be a Valentines Day present. 

3. World Map iPhone Case
Easy. $30. Wood. Looks nice. Made in Indiana by a guy named John, how American is that? Boom. Get it. Only for 4/4s & 5/5s. No iPhone 6 or 6+ yet. 

4. Fitbit Surge
I like GPS & I am a watch wearer, but I'm not holding out for a Apple Watch. They look cool, but I don't have that kind of cash. Plus there are literally dozens of other smart/fitness/GPS/bluetooth watches on the market. I like a rectangle design and the Surge price tag of $250.

5. Hand Made Globe
uh. I've tweeted about these before, and actually gotten a response from the folks at Bellerby & Co. These are amazing - beautiful - works of art made with care, precision and an obvious personal touch. My wife would grab her Scrapbooks running out the door in case of a home fire, I would grab this globe. Especially since the desktop version is about $1700 US. Save your pennies kids! Someday. Someday.

There you go. 5  rather unrealistic and completely unnecessary first-world presents to get for your resident geographer to celebrate Christmas.  
Got any other Ideas? Put them in the comments. 

What is a 'Location Strategy'?

Sounds like a buzzword.

Yeah, it is, So? The point of buzzwords are to create buzz around a specific topic or idea. 

Therefore; The idea of conceptualizing your organization's Location Strategy is to get you to think about location. Some of the worst business advice is given by Hollywood; "If you build it, They (he) will come". Not necessarily.  Here's some questions to start you off: 

• What would happen if you moved your office/business?

• Is it important to know the location of your employees? 

• Is it important that they know where your inventory (Stuff) is?

• Do YOU know where your inventory is? How about your replacement?

• Can your clients get to you? 

• What about social media?

• How close are you to your most valuable clients?

• Are you causing your clients frustration because you haven't though about this?

Let me give you two examples

1. Bob the Restauranteur, He makes truly awesome Pizza, but never gave a thought to location. So he opened up his shop in his hometown. He has a short commute but he drives an hour everyday to get fresh ingredients. His little town already has two pizza places, but he has low-overhead, so he stays. He has a great website, but it's not mobile enabled. His kid brother is the delivery man, who seems to deliver a lot of pizzas to his friends outside town. Yelp had a few bad reviews of Bob's delivering brother.  Bob lasted 9 months then went out of business. 

2. Sue the City Administrator, works in the same town as Bob. But she HAS thought about Location, a lot. Infact she regularly updates her digital infrastructure (GIS) on an iPad when sewers get fixed or installed. She also keeps up with her field folks sending them paperless work-orders based on a mobile-enabled app from the general public, which are her 'customers'. She has claimed the locations of city hall on Bing and Google maps, Yelp, Foursquare, and a host of other social media. Sue is 63 and almost ready to retire, so she's training the current public works director to do all of this and sends him to lots of conferences. 

A good location strategy is beneficial to you presently and those around you in the future. With these little self-aware computers we all have in our pockets, location is common. Someone will think about your location if you don't. My advice to you is get in front of the tide. Think of some of the most effective companies; Walgreens, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Casey's General Stores. These guys know the value of a good strategy. Location, Location, Location. 

Rochelle Municipal Utilities: Zero to Hero

Let me lead off by stating the obvious, This project is not complete!!! We've invested a lot of time and energy into RMU and when we were asked to write a summary of where GIS has brought them in the past year, I jumped at the chance and wanted to post it here as well. The Following article has been circulated around their various committees and councils and so we present it here. 

In June of 2013, Rochelle Municipal Utilities Electric Department moved forward in several significant ways to become more efficient in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) They invested in a three-year Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) from Esri Inc. of Redlands, CA for their GIS software package.  This license agreement allows RMU to utilize any and all of the industry-leading Esri software site-wide, as-needed. In conjunction with this agreement RMU purchased a high-end server environment for implementing this software. As well, they 

“Putting our Electrical Depa-rtment records into a GIS has allowed us to communicate more efficiently with office and field staff.”

— Al Corl, Electric Dept. CAD Supervisor

entered into a contractual agreement with Cloudpoint Geographics Inc. of Roanoke, Illinois for set-up and geospatial consultation services. 

Previously all of the Department’s spatial data was stored in AutoDesk CAD format. While accurate and exceptionally maintained, the CAD data was housed on local workstation hard drives. Disseminating the data was complex and not easily achieved. 

Seinor staff understood the benefits of utilizing a central GIS available to the entire staff. As well, they had the insight to select a database structure that was open and standardized rather than closed source or proprietary. RMU’s chosen geospatial consultant, Cloudpoint, had experience with both the Multi-Speak and Local Government information models.  

After several planning meetings and explanation of system-specific terms, the CAD vector data geometry was able to be imported into the Multi-Speak model using the same Esri software that RMU had purchased. In order to insure completeness and accuracy, electric department staff had open and frequent updates and conversation with Cloudpoint. Every attempt was made to keep the data as intuitive and close to the previously used CAD naming conventions as possible while still adhering to standards of an open information model. 

During the same time as this CAD to GIS data conversion, Esri server software (ArcGIS Server) was installed on a dedicated web server for internal use. In the course of this first phase of deployment the intension of staff was to keep the digital infrastructure private to a select group of RMU personnel familiar with the data. However, the software technology was installed and configured with the ultimate goal of deploying the map services as the final product out in the field in a connected tablet environment. 

Even though the Electric Department’s data was an obvious priority, some attention and time was paid to development of other basemap layers. RMU had participated for years in the Ogle County GIS consortium without realizing the full potential and usefulness of that group’s data offerings. Inserting these datasets into the local government model allowed RMU to grasp a fuller picture of their complete GIS eco-system.  

Along with their meticulous CAD drawing, electric department staff had collected over 22,000 photos of their 7,286 electric poles. These data, while extremely useful, was only available on one PC within the electric department offices. Again, with the intension of eventually pushing this information out to field personnel, Cloudpoint moved these photos into the cloud. Because of the foresight of RMU staff and the naming of these 22,000+ photos, a linkage could be drawn from the poles feature class to the images themselves while on a protected and redundant  webserver within Amazon Web Services S3 storage. This link is currently being used on the desktop as well as in the field. 

Internally to the RMU network, there are currently only a few editors of the electrical GIS layers.  While this seems inefficient it actually is an industry-wide ‘Best practice’. Using Esri server-side software (ArcSDE) riding on-top of Microsoft Sequel Server the electric data is currently a protected enterprise dataset. This means that though many have access to see the authoritative data, only a select and qualified few have access to change it. These different versions of the data are synchronized after the author approves the edits. This reconcile and post process can be done on the GIS server by qualified staff. 

During the continued database development stage, sharing was done via ArcMap and a set of shared folders and File Geodatabases. This full-featured software program from Esri has a high learning curve. In order to completely “see” the same layers, users needed to be proficient enough to create layer files, change symbology and then save pathnames as relative or UNC path types. This potential road bump was avoided by utilizing maps created by ArcGIS Online  and disseminating the information via secured webmaps. 

This large step forward allowed the electrical department field crews to use hand-held tablets to see map images & data, aerial imagery, address locations, pole photos, as well as PDF manuals of their departmental standards. RMU purchased four - Apple iPads equipped with 4G LTE and enrolled them in a Cisco Mobile Device Management software solution for protection and accountability.  While this is not an Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) solution, it speeds up response time and efficiency of truck crews by being able to know what they need to replace before ever ever arriving on site. 

The ease of access this allowed garnered a welcomed reception from the field crews and sparked a desire to have more complete and faster updates. This step required the involvement of RMU IT staff to push the previously mentioned map service as provided by ArcGIS Server out to a secured location on the web. In order to effectively and safely open a port in a network’s firewall, many precautions needed to be adhered to. This implementation is no different. Cloudpoint worked with RMU staff as the translator between GIS terminology and their network to achieve both security and speed requirements. This effort was reinforced by RMU with the forward thinking purchasing of quality hardware and an ELA from Esri nearly a year prior. 

Currently, GIS in Rochelle Municipal Utilities Electric Department is in full swing. Edits to the system are changed internally and pushed out to the field crews almost instantaneously. Field personnel have a customized mapping interface that was created with several iterations and face-to-face meetings. As well, field crews can close the feedback loop by highlighting areas that are incorrect (including attaching pictures) or changing attributes of specific features within the map on their tablets. These edits are again propagated back to the office and, if approved, incorporated into the default database version. 

The GIS is not, and will never be, completely done. RMU senior staff understands that in creating these efficiencies, there will be  perpetual training and maintenance of the system. Software updates will be needed, new layers created, deployments to be made, etc… It is a dynamic infrastructure just like the electrical system that it represents. They also understand the significance of how far they have come in one short year.

Doing Small Business using 'The Internet of Things'

If you haven't caught-up yet, The Cloud is over. 

What we expect these days is everything syncing, everything secure, everything available all the time. And when I say all the time, I mean At Any Second. Truly. 

It's not just us in tech that expect this. It's all of us together. The 1st World public at large. When we see commercials depicting pausing a movie in one room and moving to another to watch the rest, all without breaking stride or spilling the popcorn. That sets an expectation. Those professionals in Geospatial are used to this. Google has been setting public expectation for our industry for over 10 years. 

So... we at Cloudpoint are purveyors of these expectations as well as consumers. Here's what we use to do what we do as cost-effectively and efficiently as possible. (in order of adoption) 

Carbonite - Jon has been using Carbonite faithfully since his county engineer days. It's cloud-based mirroring backup system that has paid for itself ($70 year) time and time again in possible lost hours (See the DropBox note below). The first initial back-up takes a day or two but it's worth it in the end. 

QuickBooks Online - Cloudpoint is full of geospatial and engineering professionals, not MBAs and CPAs. QuickBooks Online helps us keep all of our finances in one place and lets us know what is important with it's canned reports and monthly metrics. At tax time you can give the keys to your accountant and everything is there for him to comb through. 

DropBox - Who isn't using dropbox.... anyone? Buehler? This is our workflow. We have a paid professional account that we all share. Most of our customers have a free version (or we create one for them) and then we "share" our project folder with that user. So when I RDP onto the Rock Falls server that .dbf of addresses is already sitting there. **One point of Note: while using ArcMap, it's best to pause the syncing, GIS files like to get corrupted if they're saving and syncing at the same time. 

AWS - In early 2012, Jon purchased ArcGIS Server and Micah (as a sub-contractor then) helped him put it onto an Amazon EC2 Server. Our relationship with Amazon Web Services was solidified. Now we use it as back-up, Image hosting license management and that machine is a part of our local network. the Up/Down Speeds do vary with they size of server, but that's something you can throttle and even pause.  It's one of our goals to learn and use more of what's available to us as a Service from Amazon. 

SquareSpace - This is a great company. Based out of NY, NY, it's our website hosting company. We pay for the middle-tier package for $16 a month. I spent about a week porting over all of our information to get the site up and running. A few months ago, before our yearly fees were due, I flirted with a few other companies/website services. Eventually, I just cleaned up the cobwebs a bit and the site feels fresh again. Their support is amazing as well. 

MerakiSystems Manager- Mobile Device Management. We rent iPads, or as we call them Mobile Data Collection Devices. Cisco purchased Meraki almost  year ago for their network and access point solutions. So they made the System Manager aspect free. I love free. This allows me to track, wipe, manage or lock any device before it leaves the building. The user interface and set-up is a little cumbersome, but did I mention it was free. 

Pertino - Best for last. I contacted this small startup about 9 months ago for a free trial. It's a cloud-based VPN service. Their company has grown in the last year and I'm glad to have been in on the start. I have already detailed the road traveled with this group. I gladly now pay for a monthly subscription to be able to print to the office printer, RDP to any computer on the network, directly share files, and see services (like an ArcGIS license manager) as if that computer was sitting next to me. Safe and Secure. 

Well That's it! Most of what Cloudpoint uses to fully channel the 'Internet of Things' . While certainly not an exhaustive list, (of course email, texting & the like) but fairly complete. I hope this helps someone who is looking to filter out the noise and just understand what everything is for. As I'm sure this list will grow in the future, I do feel like what I have here is honestly vetted and in practice. 

EF4 "Washington" Tornado Mapped

With all of this technology, With all of this knowledge with all of this progress, planning and pride, in the end, all we can do is stand and watch...then help rebuild after the storm. 

We really haven't been in the office too much this week. For obvious reasons. However thanks to the ease of ArcGIS Online and work of some other GIS folks in the area, we are able to set up this map depicting the relative path and some field verified points of destruction in the area. http://ow.ly/r49V0

Zoom Out to see the ESTIMATED Tornado Path and More areas Affected.

View Larger Map

Also *Special Shoutout to City of Pekin GIS and the OSM Volunteer Editors busy digitizing home footprints.