It's Time to Register for the 2020 Esri Midwest User Conference
We are excited to announce that the 2020 Esri Midwest User Conference will take place February 25–26, in Chicago, Illinois. We hope you'll join your peers from the Midwest GIS user community for two days of user presentations, technical workshops, training, and more! Get the latest updates in GIS technologies from thought leaders, industry experts, key Esri staff, and pioneering local businesses and organizations.

Registration is now open, and we encourage you to secure your spot soon! You can take advantage of our early bird registration rates, and our registered attendees are the first to receive updates as we finalize the conference agenda and confirm our 2020 presenters.
Learn More and Register
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2020 MidAmerica GIS SymposiumWhen: April 20 - 23, 2020
Where: Omaha Doubletree, Omaha, Nebraska

It is hard to believe MAGIC has been bringing folks together to collaborate on solutions and activities in the fields of map-making, location services, and data development within the geospatial industry for 32 years! Can you believe that?
Of course, none of this is to mention the incredibly affordable knowledge exchange that MAGIC brings to you through our Symposium. We have tons of short courses, days of sessions, amazing keynotes, unbeatable networking - all creating the most affordable and relevant educational experience in the MidAmerica region. Do not miss out!

Registration is now open! For all of the 411, check out the MAGIC website. 

• General Information
• Registration Information
• Submit a Presentation
• Nominate Someone for an Award
• Short Course Offerings
• Keynotes

Symposium SpotlightMAGIC is back with the best yet pre-conference short courses!Register Now Before Courses Fill Up!
 
Are you interested in honing in on a particular skill-set or branching out into new territory to add to your geospatial toolkit?  We know you want to advance professionally and add value to your organization, so check out the short course opportunities below.

The Symposium features over a dozen pre-conference short courses, each are 1/2-Day long during the Monday and Tuesday before the full conference starts.  They are taught by skilled professionals in hands-on labs or as traditional classroom style. These courses range from introductory to remedial to expert level and are one of the best values the MAGIC Symposium has to offer at only $125 per course.  There should be something for everyone in this mix of courses including scripting, ArcPro, project and data management, online, and much more!
 
Will you be attending?
Register
Not attending

EVENT DETAILS:
MAGIC 2020 - April 20-23 in Omaha, Nebraska:
Hotel Location & Accommodations:
Omaha Doubletree
1616 Dodge Street
Omaha, NE
Hotel Website
Room Rate: $149 (Click here to make a reservation)

Other Logistics:
View the General Schedule
Want to get more out of your conference? We have add-on workshops just prior to the Conference! View additional Workshop Offerings
Registration requires a MAGIC membership (don't worry - it's free forever!)
Attendees who register after March 20, 2020 are not guaranteed a MAGIC giveaway!
If you do not wish to attend the entire conference, but would like to register only for a short course, please click here for the Short Course ONLY Registration.
Best regards,
2020 MAGIC Planning Committee
Questions? hello@magicgis.org

Submitted by Mark Yacucci

You may or may not know but ILGISA has a strategic plan. In fact, every three years, our board works through the strategic plan and rewrites it. You can find a link to our strategic plan here. You can also click on the top navigation under About > Governance to see links to our Bylaws, Policies/Procedures and Student Chapter guidelines.
 
The current plan breaks down the directives of the board into five priorities for the three years planned from 2017-2019;
1. Strengthen ILGISA's financial standing
2. Grow membership
3. Provide relevant and up to date educational opportunities
4. Raise GIS awareness throughout state
5. Continually improve membership value
 
Within each of these priorities, there are goals and “rocks” or actions that the board has been actively perusing. Under the leadership of our executive director, each year the board has done a fantastic job addressing these tasks as well as moving forward with the priorities. It’s a compliment to CM Services that, though board membership changes each year, direction has not wavered in its purpose. 
 
Next Month, we will seat a new board that will be rewriting the strategic plan for 2020-2022. This survey will assist that board with understanding the needs of the ENTIRE GIS community in Illinois. Every other year we survey our membership (around 500 geogeeks) with an in-depth questionnaire that is analyzed and poured over by the membership committee. That survey is specific to active members. However, this time we are asking all GIS professionals, users, hobbyists, retirees, interns, students, professors or anyone remotely involved in the community to assist us in crafting the next three years and beyond. The survey is short but written to be a great resource to guide these important discussions.
 
Click, Answer & Share!
 
Micah Williamson
Membership Committee Chairman

It has been about a year and a half since ILGISA began working with the Office of the Illinois Statewide 9-1-1 Administrator on Illinois’s migration to Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1). Around this time last year, a group of ILGISA Members formed a committee to work alongside Cindy Barbera-Brelle (Statewide 9-1-1 Administrator) to develop the GIS Policy Document and Data Standards. This update will cover some of the accomplishments to date, as well as what is to come.
In the fall of 2018, the committee finalized the IL NG9-1-1 Data Standards and IL NG9-1-1 Governance Policy documents. In conjunction with the documents, there was a series of regional presentations across the state that provided information on the NG9-1-1 project as a whole, the role of GIS, and the documents that were created for the project. The presentation and the documents can all be accessed at the Illinois Statewide Administrator’s Project Website.
Towards the end of the 2018 calendar year, the committee released two additional resources. The first was an NG9-1-1 Readiness Checklist. The document provides data stewards with the process preparation, data creation, data validation, and delivery methodology. The document provided links to resources for specific tasks, as well as, contact resources per region for those that have questions or concerns. It is important to note that this is a living document and as the project progresses, more resources and processes will be added to provide data stewards an accurate path to success.
The second resource released by the committee was the IL NG9-1-1 Geodatabase Template. Inside this compressed folder you will find two different geodatabases, one with and one without the topology rules. Topology, while not available on all licensing levels, is a vital component to ensure the accuracy of call routing in an NG9-1-1 system. Each Geodatabase has feature datasets for the Required, Strongly Recommended, and Recommended project feature classes and alias tables. The geodatabase is preset with domains and values. Those domain values can be viewed in spreadsheets that are supplied alongside geodatabases in the compressed folder. An XML database schema is also provided if you wish to generate your own geodatabase and import the schema. Both of these resources can also be found on the Illinois Statewide Administrator’s Project Website.
In 2019, the committee has continued to work on the project. There have been a series of regional meetings to discuss the project with local data stewards and data maintainers across the state. These meetings have provided positive feedback to the committee and helped re-shape policy and data standards for the project. The committee has also set up a temporary data storage system and has begun the process of aggregating data for the project. This aggregation of Public Service Access Point (PSAP) boundaries provided our first look at the statewide data coverage as it stands today. As the project progresses, it will grow into a fully functional statewide GIS.
Later this year training will begin for data stewards and data maintainers across the State. The training will aim to familiarize everyone with the process and the data needed for the projects success. ILGISA is thankful for this opportunity and proud of how it’s helping the State and our industry move into the future through GIS. A statewide GIS initiative of this magnitude is very exciting for Illinois and we are hopeful that the project will lay the groundwork for many other GIS focused collaborations at a state level.

Eric Creighton
ILGISA President
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Edited by Thomas O'Malley
Outreach Committee Chair

Data, data, data.  There’s so much data out there that now it’s not necessarily trying to find the data, but rather what to do it with once you’ve obtained it.  In the past, whether it’s drug seizures, car crashes, or school shootings, analysts within the Illinois State Police have had to toil with large and complex datasets to dive deeper into the data.  Now with Insights for ArcGIS non-GIS users can harness the power of GIS in a timely, effective, and visually appealing manner. 

Giving analysts the power to analyze data within minutes has changed the way large and complex datasets are viewed.  No longer does the data need to go through the technical process of being formatted, geocoded, symbolized, and then combined with graphs created in Excel and other programs.  Now our analysts can drop a spreadsheet into Insights and create maps, graphs, and charts within minutes.  And the best part is, they aren’t static.  The interconnectivity of everything that’s created within the workbooks, allow us to dig deeper into the data.  For example, we can use Insights to better understand a nationwide school shooting database.  If we want to select a time frame during a day and see exactly where shootings occurred during those times and what types of guns were used, we can do that.  As you click around the cards that are created within Insights, you’ll see the graphs and maps change to reflect what’s connected to what you’ve clicked on.  In law enforcement, time is critical, and Insights takes away the longer processes that have been in place in the past when dealing with GIS.  It is also much easier and intuitive with a drag and drop interface. 

One of the big questions we first had with Insights however was, how can we share out the cards that we create?  The good news is that there are multiple ways of sharing data, including embedding the cards that you create in Story Maps or Dashboards.  One of the other great features is that everything you do within Insights is recorded and saved as a model, so you can upload an updated dataset without having to go through the card creation process that you went through originally.  This also allows others within your organization to use the models you’ve created, and enter their own datasets. 

​We’ve just scratched the surface with Insights, but we’re excited to see the potential uses for it.  We’re also excited to put GIS into the hands of non-GIS users and let them see how GIS can benefit them.  Whether its Insights, Operations Dashboards, or Survey123, it’s crucial that public safety personnel stay up to date with new geospatial technologies to better protect the citizens they serve.

Nicholas Gray
Disaster Intelligence Officer
Illinois State Police

Just a few months ago, when this blog began, the Outreach Committee simply updated the submission guidelines from GIS Notes. In the following weeks and months, many meeting conversations surrounded the requirements of these guidelines.  
 
As a result of these conversations we have decided to simplify the submission guidelines for the GeoTalk Blog based on two reasons; 
1. A Blog is not simply a digital version of a publication. The original title “web-log” was intended to be an online diary of sorts. The format is normally casual and conversational. Longer articles are better suited to professional peer-reviewed journals.  We knew that some blog articles will be used for ILGISA communication, not just GIS project reports.
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2. We want article submissions! Long guidelines inhibit submissions. This may be the most controversial reason. It is very difficult to get all of our wonderful members to write about their jobs. I understand, it seems…. arrogant. The Outreach Committee would rather see 10 ‘boastful articles’ about successful GIS projects rather than just a committee report from the Finance Chairman (sorry Jason).  Besides, our membership is gracious and humble. I hardly see that becoming a problem. 

Either of those reasons alone is enough for us to change our guidelines. Together they compel this committee chairman to make the change. And So, I submit to you the simplified GeoTalk Submission Guidelines:
 

• Author Name & Contact
• Blog Post Title
• Text -  ½ page to 2 pages max
• Inserts: Pictures, Maps, Links, Screencaptures OK
• Citations/Acknowledgements (if needed)

That’s it. Zip & Ship! Rend & Send! Set it & Forget it!

​Of Course, upon submission, all content will be editorially reviewed by the ILGISA Outreach Committee prior to publication on the Blog. We will try our best to lay out the article as best we can. 
 
At the Annual Conference next month, I will be imploring all the speakers to write ‘a short article’ about their topics of discussion. Look for me, I will have a gift for anyone who agrees to submit. 

-Micah Williamson
​(Outreach Committee Chairman)

​ILGISA is subsidizing daycare at a rate of $25 per conference attendee per day. There are 5 slots available on a first come first serve basis. Rates vary with the age of the child. To enroll, email contact@ilgisa.org

Visitation:
Parents can visit at any time. The daycare is located near the conference hotel, accessible by hotel shuttle or a short drive.
 
To enroll, email contact@ilgisa.org. Last day to enroll is September 21st. 

Thomas O’Malley
Membership Committee Chair

​if the table above is not formatted correctly, here is a PDF of the same article. 

As I sit here typing this blog post I have a thousand things running through my mind.  I am sure most GIS professionals can relate.  How are we going to update this data layer? When can we roll out this new app? How can we use GIS to solve a problem in our community?  How in the world am I going to keep pace with all of these software updates? One thing is for sure, GIS is changing faster now than ever before. 

Hello! I’m Thomas O’Malley, your Membership Committee Chair. Did you know that there is a whole group of volunteers dedicated to improving the ILGISA member experience? Well there is, and we’ve been hard at work this year making sure that everyone that participates in ILGISA gets the most out of their experience. It’s a big job, but thankfully we don’t live in a vacuum, and we can take cues from other successful organizations and conferences.

One such improvement is the addition of a conference Code of Conduct. We value our members and want them to feel welcome and respected. This simple code reflects the values we’ve always held, and institutes a system for reporting and handling infractions. We think we have a great community, and we aim to keep it that way!

Have you noticed the banner ads at the top of the page? Those are ILGISA Gold Sponsors! This year we were able to improve our sponsor packages, making them even more appealing. Better sponsor packages means more sponsors, and more sponsors means more services provided to our valued members! Going forward we want to connect sponsors directly with those services. Last year we had the Wi-Fi sponsor, this year we’re offering a Conference Schedule App Sponsorship. We are fortunate to have generous sponsors that help us add value to ILGISA membership, and we don’t want to see any of that goodwill going to landfills, so we’re doing away with the Padfolio and Registration Bag sponsorships and focusing on more green options.
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I’m excited to see what can be accomplished in the years to come.

-Thomas O'Malley
(Edited by mwilliamson)

Several nights this Spring a team from the Adler Planetarium launched balloons into the night sky.  Altho not specifically in celebration, cheers resounded as the balloon reached altitude and hundreds of images of the nighttime landscape below were captured.  Each flight contributed immediately useful information that was then applied to the next flight, culminating in a seriously successful flight the night of April 29th over Kankakee and the surrounding area. 
 
 
Designed to measure the nature and intensity of artificial light spilling upwards into the night sky, these flights are part of the on-going NITESat project, part of the larger twelve-year old Far Horizons Program.  Ken Walczak, project manager, and Geza Gyuk head up the team, which includes an ever-changing, enthusiastic group of interns and volunteers.

 These first flights allowed the team to fine-tune their cameras’ aperture size, length of exposure, and frequency of image capture.  Three cameras capture slightly differing views of the landscape.  One points directly downward, truly a nadir view, while the other cameras flank this central lens, collecting images at an oblique angle of about 20 degrees.  A series of subsequent flights are scheduled in this ongoing project.
 

 After capturing the imagery, the individual images are sorted to select the best shots in the sequence – there is much intended redundancy.  Remember the balloon is propelled by our variable winds, moving at irregular speeds while performing slow pirouettes as it travels across the night sky.  Not every image will be of usable quality.  The selected images are “stitched” together to form a mosaic of the landscape over which the balloon flew.  Images must then be registered to the actual ground.  While the cameras geotag the images when captured, the precision of this step is not sufficient to really lockdown the nighttime balloon imagery over another set of imagery captured during the day -  the aerials typically seen on Internet mapping sites.  Those road intersections and building corners are kinda hard to make out in night-captured imagery. ​