Tuesday, April 19, 2011

MIMS is done (?)

Hi everyone;

I just went to the MIMS web site (for something unrelated to CRP RGIS), and got the "white screen of doom". It looks like MIMS is no longer supported, and anyone who was using it is now on their own.

How does this effect CRP (or other) municipalities? Does this force changes to your TCA reporting protocol? I know many of you were not using MIMS, but others were waiting to see what the business model/costs look like - what are you going to do now?

Maybe this is old news to those of you who work with this every day - but I thought I'd throw it out there regardless, and see if it generates any discussion.

best,
greg

Monday, April 18, 2011

GIS Course for non-Technical People

Hi everyone;

I posted this to my favourite GIS-related listserve. I thought I would re-circulate it here, to see if any of you have any ideas. I will be sure to post a summary of what I discover here.

Here is the posting:

We at the Miistakis Institute are considering development of a short course in GIS/RS/Mapping aimed at non-technical users of these technologies. Before we dedicate too much effort to this however, we want to make sure we are not re-inventing the wheel, stepping on toes, or creating a redundancy.

I am therefore canvassing the group with the following question:

Do you know of any existing offerings of a non-technical GIS Course?
That is, a course that aims not to teach people how to technically use GIS, but rather to teach the practical applications of GIS: What GIS/RS can (and can't) do, what the technical and data challenges/limitations are, where/how GIS can contribute to the decision-making process, how to communicate effectively with GIS technical people, and so on.

I'd appreciate any ideas/suggestions/comments you can offer.

Thanks!
greg

OpenData Progress

The City of Medicine Hat follow in the footsteps of Nanaimo, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, and Edmonton in launching its OpenData catalogue. http://data.medicinehat.ca/

Monday, April 11, 2011

A Public Welcome!

Hello, and Welcome to the Regional GIS Blog!

This blog is maintained as part of the Calgary Regional Partnership's Regional GIS Initiative. The majority of contributors to this blog are Technical GIS Professionals at member Municipalities of the CRP, and the majority of the posts relate to the kinds of issues these people face in their daily work, and in building effective collaborations across jurisdictional boundaries.

The CRP RGIS Blog has been active for a few years now, but until today it was closed to public viewing. On reflection, we realized that this approach was more than a little incongruous. This blog is about improving communication and collaboration, and many posts celebrate the burgeoning open data movement - so why would we restrict access to the blog only to contributors, when there almost certainly is value in sharing this information more broadly?

Take a look around - browse past posts, and leave a comment if you see something interesting and would like to contribute to the discussion.

Thanks!
greg, on behalf of the CRP RGIS Technical Committee.