Customer Spotlight - Cassidy Killian, GIS Coordinator, Normal, Il

Cassidy has been the GIS Coordinator for the Town of Normal for 8.5 years, it will be 9 in May. Before this current GIS position he worked with SAIC in St. Louis on NGA projects with 'Top Secret' clearance. Since he graduated from Illinois State University's Geography program, working for the Town was something of a homecoming for him. 

There are many bright spots in working for Normal (aside from the many jokes). One is being able to hire great staff from just down the block at ISU, like GIS technician Daniel Moore. He says his biggest challenges lie far outside City Hall: "It's tough to keep up with the pace of Esri's changes". Something we all struggle with. To do that Cassidy has a steady diet of Online training, Seminars and Conferences including the massive User Conference during the summer. 

Lately, GIS at the Town of Normal has been picking up the pace. Much of the utilities data is now fully digitized. That allows their digital infrastructure to be edited and checked out in the field on connected devices. "Implementing the Sanitary Server Master Plan forced us to push data out to the field," said Cassidy. With a series of iPad Minis and Trimble Geo 7s field folks can view, edit, and maintain their digital infrastructure as it exists while still onsite. This includes the new geometric network that the water system has courtesy of Cloudpoint Geographics. 

There are plans to use a newly installed version of ArcGIS Geoevent Server to help field vehicles become an efficient fleet. In addition to the aforementioned applications, Cassidy is in the midst of creating GIS tools to be used by the park district and other municipal departments. With an Esri Enterprise Agreement, the GIS team at the Town of Normal are only limited by their imagination. 

Map St. Chuck

Historic St Charles Missouri has a very modern tool for you to explore. We were delighted to help the staff of St Charles to create a hosted StoryMap that lets the general public discover all the city has to offer. Using ArcGIS Online templates and hosted on Amazon S3, we built the mapstchuck.com website in relatively short order and were able to customize it to meet staff requests.

The responsive website has 7 tabs across the top showing 7 categories of points of interest for the cities downtown area. Most every business, parking location and cultural landmark in St Charles is listed on the map. using the bookmarks available on the web map, we were able to also note the routes/detour locations for easy navigation around the city. 

Best of all the staff of St. Charles has complete control  over the content using ArcGIS Online organizational account to add, update or delete locations within the map. No continued cost or obligation to us or anyone else. Make it better!! 

Matthew Junker joins the Cloudpoint Team

As of June 29th, Matthew Junker is the latest addition to start working with the greatest GIS consultant This side of the Mississip!
(possibly the other side too)

Psst! the 'J' is pronounced like a 'Y' but he's used to that by now. Matt is originally from Varna, Illinois but currently lives in Chillicothe with his wife and two young sons. In some bizarre-unplanned-coincidence he also has a BS from Illinois State (that makes 3 Dr. Sublett survivors). However less-so coincidental, his local government experiences are exactly in line with Cloudpoint's needs and wheelhouse. Matt brings years of parcel mapping to our firm and with his help, we expect to expand our offerings of parcel-fabric conversion.

Don't be fooled by his quiet demeanor, He's handy with a hammer and knows enough stats on Chicago sports to make your head spin. He already has a nickname because of his twitter handle: midRangeJ We look forward to introducing our clients to him and I'm sure they will find him just as professional and knowledgeable as the rest of our outstanding team. 

Welcome Matt! 

Meet Joe!

Though often bearded, I've never seen a mustache this big!

Joe Christian joined the Cloudpoint team at the beginning of April. The first day, Joe showed up in business dress but with a backpack of clothes for field work. He said, "I didn't know what to expect, so I wanted to be ready". Great job Joe! passed on-the-job test #1. Joe is a former employee of LT Environmental in Colorado and the City of Bloomington (IL) Engineering Department. Many people might also recognize him from his dugout dancing days working for the Peoria Chiefs organization or being lead guitarist/singer in local band "The Kritters". Joe graduated in 2014 with a degree from ISU in Geography, as well 2008 from Western Illinois. We're excited to have Joe's energy and talents to work for us. He will be quite useful in the field tagging traffic signs as well in the office kicking out the map projects, however we don't have any dugouts to dance on.