Staying Aligned with Esri at its Partner Conference in Palm Springs

Despite the recent COVID-19 setbacks, the Cloudpiont team was represented at the recent Esri Partner Conference in sunny Palm Springs, CA on March 7-9. Jon Hodel and Micah Williamson were able to attend the conference to stay abreast with the latest technology and solutions offered by Esri through all facets of the ArcGIS platform. It was a bit of an unusual conference given the circumstances surrounding the coronavirus concerns as we were surprised by things like the last-minute cancellation of the exhibits, solutions expo, and developer conference, as well as bumping elbows with people we greeted instead of the normal hand shake. Another unique sight was people scrubbing down their airplane seats with cleaning wipes before sitting down. And given the outlook of things it may be the last conference we are able to attend for several weeks.

All of that aside it was still a very productive and fruitful endeavor as we were able to connect with key personnel from Esri to discuss business strategies and meet new Esri partners that could prove to be valuable relationships in the future. Lots of chatter about ArcGIS Indoors, Machine Learning, Services Opportunities, Upgraded Partner Directory, and discussion about benefits of being a Release Ready partner. Jon was even asked to be on a Release Readiness panel with two other founder, CEO’s of GIS companies. We learned that we are 1 of only 77 Release Ready specialty partners. Our team has found tremendous benefit from attending the EPC and looks forward to continued ongoing alignment with the Esri team.

Cloudpoint’s Jon Hodel participates on a discussion panel sharing insights about what it means to be a Release Ready partner. Other participants were Skye Perry from SSP Innovations and Josh Northcott from Hounder.

Cloudpoint Showcasing its best at the 2020 Esri's Midwest User Conference

Its clear to see that after attending the 2020 Esri Midwest User Conference in Chicago, Esri knows how to put on a good show. Cloudpoint was pleased to be a part of this year’s program by being one of just seven sponsors. As expected, the event attracted GIS users, analysts, IT professionals, department managers, local and state officials from across the Midwest. The technical sessions were loaded with new content from Esri including talks about Enterprise Implementation Best Practices, Mobile & Field Collection tools like ArcGIS QuickCapture, Parcel Fabric in ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS, Public Works Solutions for Local Governments, and a slew of others.

If you were not one of the hundreds of attendees at this year’s event, you should definitely mark your calendar for next year. It appears that this one will continue to grow in attendance and continue to attract folks from many different states. As one of our booth visitors put it, “The food here is fantastic. Much better than my last conference where all I got was 2 free drink tickets”. Of course it helps that the historic Hilton hotel in Chicago has such a knack for delivering an amazing conference atmosphere. Here are some photos from Jon, Micah, Erin, and Bill, our four team members who attended the event…

If you missed out this year, contact us or call 877-377-8124 and we’ll make sure you receive a personal invite for next year.

Office Move 2019 is complete!

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do you expand your office space and then hire, or wait until you are too crowded and then seek more space? With being located in a small, rural town in central Illinois, office space can be hard to find. So we decided to expand our facilities prior to increasing the size of our team. On September 9, 2019 we moved into what used to be Hagie Equipment, and prior to that was the Amish furniture store in the main portion of a building originally built by H&D Quality Builders. The new space gives us more room, updated facilities, more parking, better access, and improved visibility as we fill out the middle section of 1407 W. Front St in Roanoke. Here are some photos of the recent move process highlighting our team members hard at work. Thankful for God’s blessings in helping us find new space and looking forward to serving our clients in greater capacity.

Congratulations to Matt Junker, our latest GISP!

Congratulations to Cloudpoint's, Matt Junker, for becoming the team's latest certified GIS Professional (GISP).  Matt recently sat for the GISP examination through the GIS Certification Institute (GISCI) back in June.   Obtaining a GISP certificate involves an extensive application process which now includes the exam requirement.   A certified GISP is someone who has proven to be dedicated to the GIS profession and has a clear grasp on geospatial concepts and how to apply them.

“Matt is clearly one of the most dedicated GIS professionals in the industry", says Hodel. “He has a tremendous impact on our team’s ability to solve critical problems with geospatial solutions”. One of Matt’s main responsibilities at Cloudpoint is to provide on-going solutions to their managed GIS services clients. Matt also serves as the team leader for the company’s parcel fabric team.

Certified Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Professional endorsed by a 3rd party (GISCI) though a peer-reviewed evaluation.The GIS Certification Institute (GISCI) is a non-profit organization that provides the GIS community with a complete certification program, leading to GISP® (Certified GIS Professional) recognition. GISCI offers participants around the world, from the first early years on the job until retirement, a method of showing competence as professionals to employers in the GIS profession. We offer the only industry-wide, internationally-recognized, software-agnostic certification available to geospatial professionals. The following are some notes highlighting what makes a certified GISP:

• Has met the minimum standards for educational achievement, professional experience, and manner in which he or she contributes back to the profession, and practices in an ethical manner.

• Must abide by higher guidelines for ethical behavior.

• Continues to educate and reeducate him or herself while preparing for recertification.

• Has had their professional background scrutinized and reviewed by an independent third party organization. An Institute comprised of leading non-profit associations (AAG, NSGIC, UCGIS, GITA, URISA, and GLIS) focused on the application of GIS and geospatial technology.

• Can come from anywhere in the world, and current, active GISPs reside in all 50 States and 25 foreign countries.

• Is more than a practitioner of GIS technology.

• Is a Professional.

Well done Matt!

Cloudpoint recap of CFTA 2019 in Austin,Texas

Here’s a collection of photos from my trip to Austin, TX for the CFTA 2019 (Campus FM Technology Association). Great conference ran by outstanding people. Lots of campus facilities leaders who are extremely talented at integrating data solutions, BIM, and GIS. And it was a beautiful city filled with music, culture, electric scooters, history, and a whole lot more.

Jon’s Top 3 Highlights of Austin

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1. The bat colony

This is a must see, Austin has the largest urban bat colony in the world. 1.5 million bats emerge from under the Congress St Bridge every night. Its a continuous stream for about 45 minutes.

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2. Scooter rides

I found that this is the best way to get around the city. Faster than a car during heavy traffic times. Just pickup a scooter, scan the barcode, and take off. Once your done, you can leave it anywhere and just scan the code to “lock” it. This saved me lots of walking. OK, so the cool app with a tracking map might also have had some influence over me…

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3. LBJ library & museum

Learned a lot of history and details on the life of LBJ. You’ll definitely need at least half of a day to cover the whole thing. It’s well worth the visit.

City of Pekin ready for GIS Excellence

The Cloudpoint is excited to have the opportunity to take the City of Pekin’s GIS to the next level. The city has used Cloudpoint’s professional GIS services off and on for the past five years but after losing their full-time GIS coordinator last fall, they realized the critical importance of maintaining their GIS system and decided to take their relationship with Cloudpoint from one of courting, to a more serious partnership. With that, Cloudpoint and the City of Pekin have engaged in a two-year contract for professional GIS services to support the various departments throughout the city. The team has begun intensive meetings with city staff to further dive into their needs and how they can better utilize the GIS system for their daily workflows. With the new contract, Cloudpoint staff will be onsite for up to 30 hours per month, with additional technical support services coming in the forms of enterprise GIS management and GIS application deployment. One of the main objectives is to enable city staff to take more ownership of GIS data and make edits and updates for their department with user-friendly web-based applications. The Client has a wealth of GIS data which has been well managed and distributed in the past but with greater editing capabilities, the use of real-time GIS updates should further enhance the value of their data. In addition, the city hopes to easily share this authoritative data both internally as well as externally to contractors, consultants, and developers. For more information on Cloudpoint’s Managed Professional Services (MPS) please contact us or call 877-377-8124.

New office Coming Soon!

It’s been almost 4 years since we moved into the old dentist office in Roanoke, IL and at the time we knew that space would be limited if we continued to grow. We are thankful and blessed to have experienced consistent growth and realize the time has come to secure some additional space. Remodeling work is well underway at the new location which will be on the west side of Roanoke. The new building will allow additional space for our staff and offer some flexibility for our continued growth. The team is excited to be relocating and we look forward to bringing you more details in the near future.

City of Rockwall, Texas gets Parcel Mapping upgrade

Cloudpoint Geographics’ Land Records team will be providing parcel fabric migration services to the City of Rockwall, TX. The City has approximately 18,000 parcels and would like to take advantage of Esri’s most advanced parcel mapping functionality. With the new fabric they can take advantage of Plan Directory, Least Squares Adjustments, Control Points, Historic Parcels layer and more. For more information on how you can benefit from Esri’s parcel fabric please contact Cloudpoint’s Land Records team.

SignOps Celebrates 5 Years!

It was 5 years ago this month, in 2014, that Cloudpoint introduced its first and only asset management application, SignOps, for traffic sign inventories. SignOps was introduced as an innovative, web-based sign inventory management system that will make your team more efficient and your inventory tracking a snap. Since then, public works and transportation crews have been enjoying the SignOps mobile app, which allows users to easily collect GPS location, photos, and even scan barcodes to track maintenance history, retroreflectivity, and sign inspection information. This is just one example of how Cloudpoint Geographics is helping its many clients use location based technology to make informed, data-driven decisions. For more information about SIgnOps sign inventory management system visit cloudpointgeo.com/signopsinfo or call 877-377-8124.

Facts about SignOps

• Over 120 users

• Over 30,000 maintenance activities

• Over 750 pre-loaded sign types

• Scalable, Secured, Performance cloud-based storage

• Unmatched technical support

• Developed and tested with End Users

Here you can find printer friendly versions of our SignOps Brochure or the Signs of Success Case Study