Upstate FAUN in Greenville is back!

I wrote a few months ago about a great GIS organization here in Upstate South Carolina. The group is known as FAUN (Foothills Arc Users Network) and they do great things to help GIS folks in the Upstate area. Well I became a little concerned a few weeks ago when I could not access the FAUN Website. After going through many fiery, technical hoops, the Website is back up and informing us again of what is going on with the FAUN group. Thank you Amy Wright Webber for all of your efforts to get the Website issue resolved.

A FAUN meeting was held on May 19, 2010 and it was another great gathering of like minded GIS professional sharing ideas and networking in order to improve the GIS profession.  At the meeting, Tim DeTroye, the SC State GIS Coordinator, spoke about how he and his office are pushing for GIS resources that will be accessible to most, if not all, state agencies. This will be powerful in letting different agencies actually try to view the same information and work together to solve issues.  He also informed the meeting about a Yahoo Group, GISandFlexApps.  This is an excellent resource for all people involved with GIS in SC.  This Group gives SC GIS professionals a place to interact with one another and ask questions and get answers to GIS issues and concerns in the State of South Carolina.  Thank you Tim for going the extra step to help all SC GIS users!  For information regarding GIS in South Carolina look at the Website: http://gis.sc.gov/.  Tim DeTroye is always a pleasure to have come and speak.

Next, Amy Wright Webber, the FAUN Treasurer, gave everyone a run down of the latest initiatives by ESRI to promote and support a cloud computing GIS project.  She attended a seminar held by ESRI where they spoke about ESRI using Amazon Cloud Services in order to provide Web-based access to many GIS resources.  This included access to base maps and other GIS information to provide a place to upload and share GIS data amongst private organizations and groups.  ESRI is attempting to build a stronger, better supported, GIS community where everyone can learn and benefit from each other.  This shows that ESRI is fully embracing the Web 2.0 mentality and moving forward to promote unity and comradery in the GIS realm.  Thanks to Amy for letting us all know about this wonderful new initiative from ESRI.

The final speaker was Kevin Armstrong from ESRI and he explained to the group about Model Builder.  Kevin demonstrated and explained some of the key attributes and advantages to using Model Builder.  Work processes and automated procedures can be easily planned and constructed using Model Builder.  A great quick tip that Kevin shared with the group was using the "in_memory/filename" to specify local input or output paths for parameters of Model Builder.  This trick can greatly reduce latency times and speed up response to processes built within Model Builder.  Another great advantage that Model Builder holds is the ability to do iterations of a process automatically.  This can be a huge time and frustration minimizer when a large amount of data needs to be run.  Kevin finished the presentation by briefly touching on aspects of the Network Analyst tool that can be purchased to compliment ESRI products.  It is an ESRI extension that can help to determine and improve problem areas in GIS data and processes.  Thanks to Kevin Armstrong for a highly informative and educational presentation.

To conclude the FAUN meeting, Amy Wright Webber went through administrative tasks for the group.  The main accomplishment was the nomination and election of Matt Hebert, GIS and Technology Director at Site Design Inc., to the position of Communications Officer.  He replaced Justin Glenn at the position of Communications Officer for the FAUN group.  I am looking forward to seeing how Matt utilizes his role as Communication Officer for FAUN.  Also, Amy mentioned that an application is being developed/released for the Droid mobile operating system.  iPhone and Blackberry users are not the only devices that will have GIS capabilities.  For a copy of the meeting agenda, feel free to click the Meeting Agenda Handout link.  Also, peruse the FAUN Website to get more information about joining this helpful group or to get more information about ESRI training and upcoming events.