U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Hosts Virtual GIS Day Event
GIS Projects and CorpsMap Utility Shared Agency-wide
Like many GIS Day participants, Will Rogers, regional geospatial program manager, North Atlantic Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was faced with several obstacles when planning for its 2008 GIS Day event. As part of a national geospatial team, he wanted to share geographic information system (GIS) initiatives from many locations throughout the agency, to a very large group of geospatial colleagues located across three continents, in a cost effective way. His solution was to organize an agency-wide virtual GIS Day webcast event.
"I am not a webcast guru, but we pulled it off—the team supported me throughout the process," said Rogers. The agency-wide virtual GIS Day event encompassed 15 presentations broadcast to more than 1,100 agency members worldwide. Rogers acted as session moderator and coordinated 30-minute presentations that were jointly conducted by GIS professionals and project managers.
"One of the keys to our success in delivering an enterprise GIS solution is having these two groups collaborating on their geospatial data and analytic needs," Rogers emphasized. "These types of collaborative exchanges are a critical component helping us accomplish our enterprise goals at all levels throughout our agency. Communication is the key."
The virtual format benefited both the presenters and the agency's Geospatial Community of Practice by allowing participants to attend from their own desks, in their own time zones, according to their own work schedules. It also provided a unique opportunity to widely share information about the agency's new national CorpsMap viewer utility, a single standard viewer that displays geospatial data, both internal and external to the organization, in an interface conducive to nontechnical GIS end users. CorpsMap allows all staff members to geospatially visualize infrastructure assets, related management data, and specific geospatial analyses generated by GIS subject matter experts.
"The audience thought the event was wonderful. Everyone was excited and eager to see more," Rogers said. The Geospatial Community of Practice is considering leveraging the idea by offering monthly webcasts based on the nine main business elements of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "For us, the virtual GIS Day solution was a time-efficient, cost-effective, and successful method for sharing geospatial data and information throughout the large Geospatial Community of Practice."