Happy Belated GIS Day

I had spectacular hopes of doing this event while I was at my work conference after our “conference day” was done.  Clearly that was a silly idea as each day we were provided with a different evening event which included dinner.  Convincing non-gis folks into skipping dinner or paying for it elsewhere so we had a location where I could set up my computer and not have to shout over 1800+ people was out of the question.  When I returned home, with the flu I might add, I used my spouse and some other family members who were in town to listen as I reviewed my blogs with them.  I think they especially liked the surgical mask I wore to prevent spreading my germs.  Thank goodness for the 72” tv as I could keep my distance from them and project the laptop to the tv.  I knew one day I could rationalize that purchase!  Anyhow, I spent a few hours going over the maps we have been creating from the beginning of this program forward.  Most of them had never heard of GIS so it was exciting to see the spark when they made connections with what they see in the real world and how it comes together.  My brother, who lives in Manhattan, even got in on the mix as he had mailed me a political map from the New York Times and asked if this was done with GIS.  I had previously tortured him with my classwork when he last came to visit.  That was also a nice feature to show everyone.  They were all very interested in how GIS aided in preventing and responding to both natural and terrorist disasters as well as the effective use of statistical data to make predictions to aid police in crime fighting or determining better locations for new stations.  There was one aunt particularly interested in the map we did on Wine consumption in Europe, I believe she is now considering relocating abroad, lol.  Overall the event went well.  They were all excited to see what I’ve been doing locked away in the home office for the past year.  Because we live in South Florida, they liked the segment on hurricane tracking and analysis as well as the exercise on damage assessment.  They all just thought the tv studio had map backdrops and they just animated them with stuff.  They had not made the correlation that the data from tracking planes and other information was used to build a GIS model of the event that could be described pictorially.  I think they all left with a deeper appreciation for GIS and for those of us interested in continue to use and develop new concepts for mapping.    

Please see the attachment for one of the maps I explained using the big screen.