10/22/2003 Quarterly Meeting

October 22, 2003, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

ICN Sites (see Appendix A)

Meeting began at 10:05

Board Members present:  

Todd Bishop, Brad Cutler; Micah Cutler, Kevin Kane, Patrick Brown, Herb Kuehne, Andy Kula, Deanne Popp, Tom Ricker, Tom Samson, Marc Peterson (for Ramanathan Sugumaran)

Others Present

Jess in Davenport; Mark Warren and Ben McCarville of MAGIC in Muscatine; in Johnston : Adam Nolte of DMAMPO, Lawrence Hartpence of Jasper County GIS, Chad Olson of the City of Clive and Alan Jensen (State GIS Coordinator.  At the time of the roll call vote, ICN sites in Des Moines, Dubuque, Creston, Iowa City, Mason City, and Waterloo were experiencing difficulties.  At roll call the sites at Kirkwood, Marshalltown, and Spencer had no one present

The agenda for the current meeting and previous month’s committee meeting minutes were approved and accepted.

Introduction of new officers and board members was conducted with discussion and goals and objectives of each member of Executive Council.

Executive Committee Reports

Incoming Chair Andy Kula stated his upcoming goals for the term were to gather a list of committees that need to become active, increase attendance, address training issues and goals of membership, investigate use of the new lab facility at ISU and use of that facility; bring the new website up and running; and finally build upon the success of the previous IGIC Conference.

New Vice Chair Kris Tuttle shared the responsibilities of her position with the City of Des Moines and what she hopes to accomplish this term.

Treasurer Terry Brase was unable to attend the meeting but his report was given by Andy Kula.  Discussion was entered into about funds and profit from the past IGIC conference.

The new secretary for this term is Brad Cutler.

Past Chair Kevin Kane would like to work with the Strategic Planning of IGIC as a term goal.  Also he has had discussions with Mark Coppersmith of USGS and USGS is asking for IGIC to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between IGIC and USGS that relates to the implementation of the National Map by USGS

Iowa GIS Coordinator Alan Jensen has been looking to reconnect with IGIC members recently.  Out due to medical reasons over the past seven months or so, Alan resumed full-time duties on 9/13/03.  Included in his work plans for the remainder of 2003 are primarily communications and network building in terms of public relations, marketing and awareness of not only his position but IGIC as a whole.  Alan outlined his activities over the past quarter:

Besides reconnecting with IGIC, Alan was able to attend the NSGIC Conference in Tennessee.   Alan hopes in the next year to regain the focus of IGIC activities.  Other activities undertaken by the Coordinator have included work on the Not-for-profit status of IGIC with Bill Kapp; the Centerline Project and GIMS with the Iowa DOT with Bill Schuman; working on the Memorandum of Understanding between IGIC and the USGS on the National Map Project; recruitment and assistance of getting the Metadata server populated.  The metadata server will be an FGDC node and the presence will help with visibility and participation of IGIC on the national scene.

The responsibilities of the list serv have been assumed from Reg at CTRE and moved to Jessica Clinton.  Jessica will be acting as the filter for the list serv and will be updating the list with those who attended the IGIC Conference in July.

Alan has been assisting Terry Brase in setting up the contract.  This license will be a Post K-12 license for Universities, Colleges, and Community Colleges within the State of Iowa

Alan served on the search committee for this position that is ½ University Extension and ½ Community and Regional Planning.  Monica Haddad had filled this position and will be fulfilling those said duties.  Also mentioned were the new training facilities housed at the College of Design on the ISU Campus.  Alan will be working with Monica on a survey and inventory of GIS users within the state.

Future items include the 4^th Thursday of each month MAGIC has a teleconference (conference will next be held April 18^th – 22^nd of 2004 in Kansas City).   Alan has proposed the concept of IGIC sponsoring ½ of a student scholarship with MAGIC.  Motion was made by Kris Tuttle and seconded by Andy Kula to adopt the following proposal:  “MAGIC will offer one scholarship per council and MAGIC will offer up to $500 match per state council with one student from each state in MAGIC.  The Executive Board will serve as the body to choose the student scholarship grantee after a formal application procedure has been established to set criteria and deadlines by IGIC.”  This motion carried unanimously.

Also included in upcoming events were GIS Day activities slated for November 19^th.  Alan will be traveling to Black Hawk County to celebrate their activities.  More information about GIS Day can be found at www.gisday.com.  The 8^th of November is World Town Planning Day.  More information about those activities can be found at www.planning.org/worldtown.

Alan hopes to be sending a weekly IGIC E-mail update to the list serv and meet with both user groups and committees in the next quarter.

Committee Reports

Conference Committee report given by Andy Kula.  Further details will be given during the current projects and issues report.

The Cadastral Committee report given by Ray Willis who discussed the high hopes for developing this committee into something for both counties and IGIC.  There are links established between the Cadastral Committee and ICIT.

It was reported by Kevin Kane that the Clearinghouse Committee has not met for some time.

Kris Tuttle reported that the E911 Committee has never truly met and the only two known members of this Committee are Kris and Bill Schuman with the Iowa DOT.

Report on I-Team activities will be given by Alan during his report.

The membership roster of IGIC is being updated after the conference in July.  There has been some talk about the act of charging a membership fee for IGIC but no dollar amount has been decided upon.  Report given by Kevin Kane.

The newsletter report will be covered by Alan during his presentation.

Discussions on nominees and the upcoming elections for IGIC will be undertaken in January of 2004.

Todd Bishop of the Remote Sensing Committee reported the Iowa Color Infrared (CIR) Project is now operating in the black with the county mosaics having been extremely popular.  At the time of this meeting the Iowa DNR has distributed over 3,000 CDs of CIR data to users.

There have been discussions between Alan Jensen and Kevin Kane about restarting activities in the Strategic Planning Committee.

The Weather, Climate, and Environment Committee has no new activities but  Andy Kula does mention that the Iowa Environmental Mesonet does have new stuff and that Daryl Herzmann will be speaking during the Education and Development Session of the meeting today about “IEM Access and Free GIS”

Herb Kuehne stated the need for starting an education committee that will be started by Reg, Herb, Terry Brase, and Alan

Current Projects and Issues

There has been a list developed of 38 people interested in planning for the next IGIC conference.  Ames will again be the site of the conference with the last week of September being the timeframe of the conference occurring at the Schemen Building.  Kevin Kane stated that it is tradition that the Vice-Chair works on the planning committee for either the MAGIC or IGIC Conferences.  Kris Tuttle needs to begin working with Andy Kula in transitioning responsibilities and to begin establishing committees for the next IGIC Conference. 

Patrick Brown of the ISU GIS Facility gave an update on current activities being undertaken at the Facility with regards to the IGIC website, GIS Clearinghouse, and Resource Guide.

The first issue discussed by Patrick was the website and clearinghouse activities of the IGIC Portal in an updated capacity and bringing the Iowa GIS Resource Guide online.  The Iowa GIS Clearinghouse has been an information bottleneck because of site management and increasingly inconsistent application of content and design.  This has caused a loss of information with a small group of people having access to contribute information to the clearinghouse.

The IGIC website has been making the transition to a website based upon plone.  Plone allows for content providers to provide content rather than worry about design issues.  Content management is conducted through a web interface with easier access for a larger group of IGIC members to participate in information sharing. Clearinghouse content is provided by traditional web pages but new items have been added.  These new items include news items, events, links, discussion forums and all items are able to be controlled with expiration date so content is kept more current.  Contact management is also provided with addition to site done by login and an editor is provided with options to edit current window text or addition of new documents.

The basic structure of the site has been established with approximately 10% of content has been migrated with the bulk of the content involving introduction pages and previous meeting minutes.  Syndication of events is integrated into the site.

The test site will be put up online by the beginning of November and can be found at http://namibia.gis.iastate.edu

The topic was brought up about the need for a future education session on how to post and fully utilize the capabilities of the site.

The Iowa Geospatial Data Clearinghouse is online at maps.gis.iastate.edu/clearinghouse and is an FGDC approved node.  If you would like to test publishing to the site please contact Patrick at patrickb@iastate.edu  There are currently 8-10 who have been recruited to test publishing.

Future Projects and Planning

Monica Haddad was introduced as the new faculty member of CRP at ISU.  The position as was mentioned earlier is 50% teaching and 50% Extension.  Monica discussed the new GIS Certificate and a new Graduate Program mailing should be in the mail shortly.  The College of Design at ISU has a new lab and will be having short courses related to GIS.  These course topics are open to suggestions on topics and locations. 

A survey and inventory of where people are in terms of GIS software and how they are using it to get a “Big Picture” of GIS in Iowa with follow up to get information from surveys is has been proposed by Monica Haddad.

Motion was made by Ray Willis, seconded by Herb Kuehne and accepted unanimously to have IGIC make a financial commitment of $2,500 for materials and postage of the data inventory portion of this project.

It was moved by Micah Cutler and seconded by Andy Kula for IGIC to incur ICN costs for connecting a site in Muscatine for IGIC Quarterly Meetings.  This motion passed unanimously.

Discussions were undertaken pertaining to ISU Extension and their furthering commitment to funding half of the State GIS Coordinator for the upcoming fiscal year.  It was stated that Andy Kula, Alan Jensen, and Steve Padgett will need to have discussions for IGIC’s role in the upcoming budget year.  In the current budget year, IGIC has provided $5,000 for the Coordinator’s position.

Meeting adjourned at 12:05

Respectfully submitted

Brad Cutler, Secretary