Over the past few weeks, I had the opportunity to attend two large GIS conferences in Wisconsin. This post is a recap of the proceedings of both the Wisconsin Land Information Association’s (WLIA) Fall Regional Meeting and the Esri Wisconsin User Group (EWUG).
A Meeting By The River
Mid-October brought me to La Crosse for the WLIA Fall Meeting in the driftless region. Over 90 GIS professionals attended a three-day affair, which included updates on statewide initiatives, educational sessions, targeted user group meetings, social networking opportunities, and even a silent auction with proceeds going toward GIS student scholarships.
Wednesday kicked off with a Municipal User Group (MUG) workshop. This MUG meets at most WLIA conferences and occasionally branches out to a local municipality to discuss GIS issues that are specific to the needs of cities, towns, and villages. Their focus tends toward asset management and GIS automation to better serve their constituents.
This MUG featured a couple of different presentations. OPG-3 talked about and showed their Laserfiche product and how it helped streamline the Cross Connection Program for the City of Chippewa Falls, which ensures that contaminated water cannot backflow into clean drinking water supplies. Their presentation was followed by a demonstration by the City of Waukesha showing their sidewalk inspection program. They use Survey123 to gather sidewalk repair needs to facilitate planning and repair efforts.
Land Information Funding Issues
At the Wisconsin Land Information Council (WLIC) meeting, statewide GIS and land records initiatives were discussed by the members comprising representatives from various sectors that develop or use land information records.
One topic addressed was the ongoing troubling downturn in document recordings across the state. County Land Information offices depend on retained fees generated by these documents to fund their land information activities, including data collection, GIS automation, and even GIS staff salaries. This revenue downturn has WLIA and the WLIC looking for alternative funding sources. The latest pursuit involves the possibility of increasing the percentage of Real Estate Transfer Fees returned to County Land Information programs. Time will tell, but until then, GIS/LIS offices continue to do more with less. Stay tuned for more on the struggle to make the value of GIS a priority among state policymakers.
Drifting into GIS in the Driftless Area
Much of the rest of the WLIA meeting featured user presentations. Because these meetings move around the state, this one had an emphasis on local issues within the Driftless Area. For those new to the term, the Driftless Area is a diverse landscape of coulees, hills, waterways, and extensive underground cave systems untouched by the glaciers.
The social event on Wednesday brought attendees to a small theater in downtown La Crosse for a viewing of Decoding the Driftless, an award-winning documentary about the area. I highly recommend the film as an educational tool to better appreciate the driftless area of WI, MN, IL and IA. Fascinating stuff.
The WLIA community is an integral part of GIS and land records activity in the state. We are lucky to have it and I’m fortunate to be a part of it for the past 28 years! Looking forward to the WLIA Annual Conference which will be held in Appleton in 2025.
Leaping to Lambeau
Every November, Esri users from around Wisconsin convene at Lambeau Field in Green Bay for the ESRI Wisconsin User Group Conference. The site is arguably “hallowed ground,” from a football perspective, and is home of the infamous Ice Bowl football game between the Packers and Cowboys in 1967.
The conference kicked off with morning presentations by Esri Staff showcasing the latest technology. They also make a point of acknowledging the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award winners from the state. This year’s award winners were the City of Waukesha and The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD).
Later that morning, Esri’s Jarod Fox ran down a list of the Top 10 exciting developments that came out of the Esri UC this year. Jarod has an engaging presentation style and showcased things like the ability to create Thematic Maps in a map series inside of ArcGIS Pro, as well as the ability to use an X-Ray tool to export geodatabase schemas, including domain lists and relationships. Exciting stuff ahead for the entire ArcGIS Enterprise platform.
The Realness of Artificial Intelligence
Perhaps my biggest takeaway from the EWUG Conference was the coming tsunami of Artificial Intelligence and its impact on GIS. The topic was the subject of a handful of presentations and made at least a mention in many others.
One of the more interesting sessions was “A GIS Professionals Guide to Generative AI” by Emily Sudar and Chris Dickerson of Waukesha County. They presented how they each use Generative AI in their workday and their personal lives. AI can be used for everything from creating a Python Script shell to organizing minutes from a meeting, to crafting better emails. The talk was not without caveats on the careful use of AI within government agencies and within your own creative circles as well. It mentioned and described the differences between various engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and GovAI.
AI Maps!
Another interesting session was presented by Frank Conkling of Panda Consulting, who showed the potential for AI in building COGO traverses for use inside the Parcel Fabric. Artificial IntellCloudpoint Geospatialigence character recognition can read a legal description and create a closed traverse with essentially no human interaction. Problems still exist with determining where the parcel(s) fall in geographic space, but this coming technology displayed by Esri at the UC showed great promise to take some of the time-consuming work out of parcel maintenance. It could be the start of parcel mapping’s Brave New World!
GIS Going Strong
Both of these conferences served as a reminder of how Wisconsin’s vibrant, engaged GIS community comes together to share their successes, knowledge, and excitement about all things spatial. Whether it’s using LiDAR to map sinkhole locations in the Driftless Region or AI to generate a Survey123 template for water lateral inspections in Green Bay, GIS is making America’s Dairyland a better place to live and work. On Wisconsin!