In an effort to keep the many public COVID-19 maps and pages that have been flying around in emails, the Illinois Geospatial Data Clearinghouse has created a Storymap Journal of many that we feel are valuable including ILGISA President Chad Sperry's WIU Dashboard!  These can be accessed from the link below and from the Clearinghouse Homepage.  If anyone knows of other useful sites we have not included please contact us. 

The Illinois GIS Association (ILGISA) has established the ILGISA Scholarship Fund to help students working toward a degree in Geography, GIS, or related discipline. This scholarship is funded through donations from private individuals, organizations, and other funding activities of ILGISA.  The scholarship application deadline for 2020 is July 31, 2020. One scholarship in the amount of $1,000 will be distributed annually at the ILGISA Conference.

Eligibility

Applications shall be submitted to the ILGISA Education Committee using the proper form. All applications must be typed and all application materials (i.e. letter of recommendation) must be submitted together in order for the application to be considered.

• Applicants must be accepted or enrolled in a full or part-time curriculum that will result in a diploma at an accredited two or four-year college or university in the state of Illinois.
• Applicants must be registered as a member or student member of ILGISA before the application deadline of July 31, 2020.
• Applicants receiving their degree before the submission deadline will not be considered for the scholarship.
• Applications for the ILGISA Scholarship shall include the following documents in order to be considered:

1. The completed application form 
2. A 400-word statement of educational objectives, future study or research plans and professional activities, and relationship of activities and/or research to mission of ILGISA
3. A digital transcript showing records for the academic year previous to July 1.
4. One letter of recommendation from a faculty member or supervisor that addresses the applicant's academic ability, professional potential, applicable work experience, community service, extracurricular activities, or any other relevant information that supports the candidate's application.

• The scholarship recipient will receive the award after providing confirmation of registration for the current or next term to the ILGISA Executive Director. 
• The award will be presented in the form of a check made out to the winner.
• The recipient will be notified by September 17 following the submission deadline.  The recipient will be acknowledged on the ILGISA website and at the  ILGISA Conference in October.  The recipient will also be awarded a complimentary registration to the ILGISA Conference where the award will be presented.

Selection Criteria

Valid applications for the ILGISA Scholarship will be reviewed by the ILGISA Education Committee.  The ILGISA Education Committee will make recommendations about award recipients to the ILGISA Board of Directors.  The ILGISA Board of Directors will make the final decision on the winner of the ILGISA Scholarship.  The decision of the ILGISA Board of Directors is final.

Applications will be judged according to the following criteria:

• 50% academic record
• 20% applicant's statement
• 20% letter of recommendation
• 10% professional activities (ILGISA membership, conference participation, publications, community service, work experience, volunteer or academic projects, etc.)

Level of financial need will be considered, to break ties if necessary, after the primary criteria have been considered.

If the situation warrants, the ILGISA Board of Directors can choose to award no scholarships.

The ILGISA Outreach Committee is excited to announce the launch of its new and improved Job Center!

The ILGISA Job Center is a resource for geospatial employers, professionals and students. The Job Center provides a listing of available geospatial jobs, internship opportunities, and resumes of geospatial professionals.
ILGISA members are invited to post geospatial job openings and internship opportunities at no charge. Positions may be full-time, part-time, or unpaid that primarily cater to Illinois and surrounding states.

Non-members are also welcomed to post job openings for a nominal fee of $100.

The new Job Center offers the following improvements:

• Overall layout is more user friendly
• Upgraded search functionality
• Option to sign up for job alerts each time a new job is posted
• Option to purchase a “featured” job listing which:
• Promotes your job listing at the top of the job board
• Publishes your job listing to the Google Jobs Network
• Non-member postings & featured postings can be purchased via credit card directly on the job form

Click here to check out the new job center! 

Looking for resources and maps about the outbreak?  These are good resources.  ILGISA has embedded the Johns Hopkins site on our homepage and under resources.  Code to embed this on your own site is included below.

Johns Hopkins

Illinois Department of Public Health

Centers for Disease Control

National Alliance for Public Safety GIS
​

<iframe width="650" height="400" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" title="2019-nCoV" src="/gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=14aa9e5660cf42b5b4b546dec6ceec7c&extent=77.3846,11.535,163.5174,52.8632&zoom=true&previewImage=false&scale=true&disable_scroll=true&theme=light"></iframe>

Last week, the FGDC hosted a webinar to share information about Geospatial Data Act (GDA) implementation. I am passing on two resources from it:

FGDC slidedeck

They also indicated they would be posting information on the website. 

These are good resources to help keep current on GDA implementation and building the NSDI.  

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
​

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
​
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