Customer Spotlight - Cassidy Killian, GIS Coordinator, Normal, Il

Cassidy has been the GIS Coordinator for the Town of Normal for 8.5 years, it will be 9 in May. Before this current GIS position he worked with SAIC in St. Louis on NGA projects with 'Top Secret' clearance. Since he graduated from Illinois State University's Geography program, working for the Town was something of a homecoming for him. 

There are many bright spots in working for Normal (aside from the many jokes). One is being able to hire great staff from just down the block at ISU, like GIS technician Daniel Moore. He says his biggest challenges lie far outside City Hall: "It's tough to keep up with the pace of Esri's changes". Something we all struggle with. To do that Cassidy has a steady diet of Online training, Seminars and Conferences including the massive User Conference during the summer. 

Lately, GIS at the Town of Normal has been picking up the pace. Much of the utilities data is now fully digitized. That allows their digital infrastructure to be edited and checked out in the field on connected devices. "Implementing the Sanitary Server Master Plan forced us to push data out to the field," said Cassidy. With a series of iPad Minis and Trimble Geo 7s field folks can view, edit, and maintain their digital infrastructure as it exists while still onsite. This includes the new geometric network that the water system has courtesy of Cloudpoint Geographics. 

There are plans to use a newly installed version of ArcGIS Geoevent Server to help field vehicles become an efficient fleet. In addition to the aforementioned applications, Cassidy is in the midst of creating GIS tools to be used by the park district and other municipal departments. With an Esri Enterprise Agreement, the GIS team at the Town of Normal are only limited by their imagination. 

ESRI Water Conference 2016

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the 2016 ESRI Water Conference in Austin, TX (not a bad place to be in February). This was the second annual iteration of the conference, and this year they included not only utilities, but also water resources. And I think that was an interesting move, to expand the scope to a broader look at the water cycle.

Naturally there were a plenty of interesting GIS uses and technologies showcased from streamflow and flood prediction to a growing number of mobile applications. Primarily interested in the keeping up with the latest ESRI has to offer, I got the most excitement out of the upcoming releases of applications like Collector and Survey123, and the news of development for a new Utility Network Model. It was also pretty awesome to hear what other organizations like the City of Philadelphia are doing with the technology and water management.

Austin was a great venue and the downtown scene had plenty of great food and music. And for those dealing with water and GIS, I'd recommend this conference if you get the chance. It's a nice, more focused alternative to the UC, or early addition / sneak peak.