How Sweet It Is!
GIS Day "Takes the Cake"
Many organizations have sweetened their GIS Day events by serving a GIS Day cake (or cookies) that was almost too pretty to eat.
Did you take a picture of your GIS Day cake? Send it to gisday-success@esri.com, and we'll post it here for others to see and get ideas from!
2007 Photos
The Rutherford County Government OIT/GIS department was invited to Bradley Elementary School's 2nd grade class to explore GIS. The cake was sponsored by True North Geographic Technologies, a local vendor in Murfreesboro. The cake was chocolate with white butter cream frosting. It was a hit! Read more about their event. Submitted by Sharon Stevens, GIS Technician.
At Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, the Department of Geosciences (students/staff and professors) hosted a bake-off to celebrate GIS Day and raise money for the GeoClub. They raised $80 selling pieces of their baked goodies. They had cakes with Oregon State, a Rum Cake, and United Nations Cookies Flags celebrating flags from around the world. All of their event details are online. Submitted by Michelle Kinzel, Campus GIS Teaching Assistant.
 First place winner features the Oregon mountain ranges. |
 Second place winner features the state outline and capital. |
 Third place winner, rum cake made by Melinda Peterson, Office Manager |
 World flag cookies, made by Tracey Kugler, PhD Student in Geography |
 Cherry chocolate chip cookies, made by Dr. Dawn Wright |
Click to see an enlargement of each cake. |
This is the cake made for the Open House and reception held at Haywood County, North Carolina. Submitted by Stephanie Parkins, Land Records/GIS Director.
Pulaski Area GIS (PAGIS) in North Little Rock, Arkansas, had this cake for their 9th GIS Day. The cake, complete with satellites floating over it, was created by Delia Niblett to represent the Earth exploding from a GPS device to go with this year's theme, "Discovering the World Through GPS." Read more about their event. Submitted by Julie Kent.
The City of Longview, in partnership with Gregg County Appraisal District and East Texas Council of Governments, presented an entertaining, educational, fun-filled GIS Day extravaganza at the City's fairgrounds. This awesome cake was made by Michelle Cahal, formerly with East Texas Council of Governments, now with Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. Read more about the Longview event. Submitted by Justin Cure, GISP, GIS Manager, ESRI Authorized Instructor.
Bowyer-Singleton & Associates in Orlando, Florida, had this cake for their GIS Day event. Read more about their event. Submitted by JoAnna Duguay, GIS Analyst.
Jahangirnagar University in Savar, Bangladesh, had this cake for their event. Read more about their event and see photos. Submitted by Jamail Basir, 4th year student of the Department of Geography and Environment.
The GIS cake from Northwest Elementary School's 3rd Grade GIS Day in Pikeville, North Carolina. Two classes of 20 students learned all about GIS through ArcExplorer and GIS activities, and we wrapped up the day with cake and goody bags with all of kinds of GIS "toys." Submitted by Ginger Huff, GIS Analyst, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
Aeroterra SA served this GIS Day cake at their event in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Submitted by Marcelo Portela. Read more about their event.
The City of Eugene, Oregon, celebrated its first citywide GIS Day with three cakes including this orthophoto cake. The orthophoto-themed cake was a two-layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, topped with an image of downtown Eugene showing the central transit station and new library. The cake design was done with ArcGIS. Submitted by Doug Terra, Senior Planner. Photo by Sarah Zaleski, GIS Technician. Read more about their event and find out how to get an orthophoto onto a cake.
McLean County GIS (Bloomington, Illinois) celebrated with this detailed county map cake. Submitted by Khalid Hasan, GISP, Director of Regional GIS. Read more about their event.
Tereza Koudelkova and Michaela Hola, GIS administrators at Mostecka uhelna a.s. (MUS), one of the major producers of brown coal in the Czech Republic, made this cake for their first GIS Day celebration.
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Click to see enlargement of each cake.
Hannibal School District, Kenney Middle School located in upstate New York created eight large sheet cakes for the entire student body to consume on GIS Day. The cakes were created by two 7th grade classes under the direction of the Home and Career teacher and a cake designer on our staff. Teachers, principals, and student council members served the cakes to
all 600 students in the school. Submitted by Robert Jones, Technology Teacher
Olds College in Alberta, Canada, celebrated their GIS Day activities with this large white cake. Read more about this event.
"We must concede that we don't stack up to geo-uberbaker Katherine Loving at the University of Kentucky [see below], but this was our first event. Bluegrass Community and Technical College would like to thank our colleagues at the University of Kentucky for enlighting us on the flour and sugary aspects of GIS, and for their support in getting the word out about our GIS Day 2007 event. GIS cake photos by Michelle Ellington and Ryan Kelly." Submitted by Ryan Kelly,
Associate Professor of Geography and Geospatial Technologies Coordinator, GIS Certificate Program, Bluegrass Community & Technical College, Lexington, Kentucky.
"University of Kentucky Facilities [in Lexington, Kentucky] celebrated GIS Day 2007 by bringing back 'geo-baker' Katherine Loving for another GIS Day cake, this time with an eye toward the third dimension. The 1"=50' scale E-size map comprised a portion of UK's main campus with 27 edible structures. Attendees laughed about eating their former dorm residences, and some commented that if UK's library was really made of chocolate, students might spend more time there! Administration reported building maintenance costs were going down with every bite." Submitted by Michelle Ellington, GISP, GIS Analyst.
CyberTech Systems and Software Ltd. in Thane, Mumbai, India, celebrated their second GIS Day with four cakes. They started out with the one above (a fresh fruit cream vanilla cake), but as more and more participants kept coming during the day, they had to keep ordering more cakes, and they ended up serving four cakes! See the other cakes on their success story page. Submitted by Gaurav Jobanputra.
Miami-Dade County [Florida] Enterprise Technology Services Department had this cake that was half chocolate and half vanilla with butter cream icing. It was decorated with their municipality layer in blue icing drawn by their own very talented Bibi Oung. Submitted by Clare M. Sibori, Senior Operating Systems Programmer.
The MapTeam at Wayfinder Systems AB in Lund, Sweden decided to celebrate GIS Day by inviting their colleagues for GIS Day cake. This is their typical Swedish "kladdkaka" (sticky chocolate cake) "with an attempt at 'world coverage'. (Sorry about Florida, Hudson Bay fell on it.)" Submitted by Maria Hedberg.
"Our GIS Day cake has our Mason County [Shelton, Washington] GIS logo on it. It was chocolate with raspberry filling, and chocolate butter-cream frosting." Submitted by Jennifer Radcliff, GISP, GIS Technician.
"The GIS Department at TERA Environmental Consulting in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, served up this impressive cake at their GIS Day celebration. The bottom part of the cake was chocolate and the globe was vanilla, all covered in butter-cream icing. Everything but the toothpick labels was edible (and delicious), including the white-chocolate polar ice caps!" Submitted by Melissa Jozwiak, GIS Cartographer.
The cake at the Alaska DNR GIS Day Map Gallery in Anchorage. Submitted by Tricia D. Saulnier Littlejohn.
The Scholars' Lab at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, hosted GIS Day festivities with a map gallery, interactive displays, and a talk by Andrew Green from the Office of the University Architect on "GIS at the University Scale." The chocolate GIS Day cake was decorated with the GIS Day logo. Submitted by Kelly Johnston, GIS Specialist.
For their 2nd GIS Day, the Environmental Unit of the Province of Bologna made a huge cake - hazelnut flavour - for 100 people. They put a flag on the cake, so everybody could see the location of the town of Bologna. The event was a conference about the major laws and regulations relating to geographic data and environmental information in Italy and Europe. Submitted by Patrizia Govoni.
The GIS staff of Forsyth County, Georgia, served this beautiful cake at their GIS Day celebration. The cake was half chocolate with chocolate ganache filling and half wedding white with fresh strawberry filling. Even though this was a full sheet cake, there was not a single crumb left after cutting. Sent in by Mary Jo Black Enderby.
Employees at ESRI in Redlands, California, enjoyed this chocolate sheet cake with banana cream filling in the ESRI Cafe.
This cake was served this morning at a small celebration held at the City of Ottawa, Canada for their two GIS guys (Paul and Warren) who do all the mapping for their branch - Community and Protective Services. It was a chocolate cake made by Nancy. The globe is a styrofoam ball that she coloured with markers.
Staff at the ESRI GIS Library in Redlands, California, celebrated GIS Day with a transportation-themed cake. The library provided ESRI employees participating in GIS Day events with materials for presentations to K-12 students. Colleen Conner of the library worked with a local grocery chain to design/make the cake. It was a marble cake with raspberry filling and went fast.