Cloudpoint Year in Review

This has been quite the eventful year at Cloudpoint Geographics. We've been fortunate enough to have completed several projects ranging from a SignOps sign inventory for Macon County, IL, to flying a proposed drag racing strip south of Eau Claire, WI. We also said farewell to our friend and colleague Paul Stephenson as he headed west to Nevada. All in all, it was a great year full of great successes. We've put together the gallery of pictures below as a recap of the great events that we attended, and the projects that we completed in 2017. We can't wait to see what 2018 has in store, and we look forward to bringing more great GIS solutions to the masses! 

Happy New Year from the Cloudpoint team!

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Up, Up, and Away! Another Cloudpoint Team Member Earns His Wings!

Cloudpoint would like to congratulate team member Tyler Severson on passing his FAA UAV Drone Pilot exam!

Tyler (Ty) Severson has been an important member of the Cloudpoint team for a little over 2 years. He works on a wide variety of projects including culvert inventories, sign inventories, parcel mapping, and more. Well now you can add being a UAV pilot to the list. Yesterday Ty passed his Federal Aviation Association UAV pilot exam, which will allow him to complete flights for upcoming projects. Ty has been studying hard for the exam as he continues his education at Illinois Central College, and we are very proud to see his hard work pay off. With the addition of another pilot, Cloudpoint has once again positioned itself as the best choice for geospatial services!

This is in-fact on a different day, he just really-really likes that flannel shirt!

Way to Go Tyler!!!

Want to learn more about Cloudpoint Aerial Services? Give us a call at 877-377-8124 or visit www.cloudpointgeo.com/drones

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It's Conference Season!

As the Summer projects start to slow down, Cloudpoint's conference season is heating up. In the past month our team has been to the Illinois GIS Association (ILGISA) conference in Normal, IL; the Illinois Association of County Engineers (IACE) conference in Moline, IL; the Traffic and Engineering Safety (TES) conference in Champaign, IL; and the Esri Wisconsin User Group (EWUG) conference at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, WI. Next week Jonathan and Joe will be attending the Illinois Public Safety Telecommunications Association conference in Springfield, IL, and in two weeks they'll be at the Illinois Association of County Officials conference in Peoria, IL. Needless to say, we've been busy, but what value are we bringing the masses at all these conferences?

The value of GIS, that's what! As an Esri business partner with specialty designations in ArcGIS Online and Local Government, we cover a wide range of professionals with our services and solutions. That means we discuss our parcel mapping, inventorying assets, survey grade GPS data collection, drone mapping capabilities, and much more. One of our favorite aspects of work here at Cloudpoint is talking with real people about how they can get more accomplished with our solutions. Please enjoy the collection of pictures above from the conferences so far, and don't hesitate to reach out to us if we can ever assist your organization in completing its goals.  You can learn more at www.cloudpointgeo.com or call 877-377-8124.

Cloudpoint Geographics

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GeoConX In Chicago

Esri has their mammoth User's Conference every year in San Diego. See Joe's review of that. In an attempt to accommodate specific industries, they also hosts a few much smaller events across the country throughout the year. 

This year the gas, electric & telecom conference, named GeoConX (pronounced geo-connects) was hosted in Chicago. With our client base and perfectly aligned conference in our backyard. both Micah and Paul attended. 

Here are some highlights: 

Opening Plenary of the Conference

There were over 700 attenders learning about GIS and the Esri Platform. 

Why is this crooked Micah?

Specific to the Electric, Gas and Telecommunications industries

ArcGIS Pro

overtime we see it we are more and more impressed with the capabilities and tools available to us. 

10.5.1 Enterprise

There are now several tools available for you to install and configure ArcGIS Enterprise. 

Utility Network

Esri has taken a few years to build the next rendition of the geometric network and they plan on it being around for 15 years. 

Hilton Chicago

Beautiful but Also site of the 1968 DNC that ended in riots. 

Strategies

There should be much thought given to how you will implement your GIS.

The Bean!

Paul had never seen The Bean. This is the obligatory Selfie. 

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We were happy to attend at the behalf of our gas, electric and telecommunication clients. There is much to look forward to in the upcoming technology. Notably an entirely new Utility Networking system built to last,  Attribute Validation Rules, Survey123 working with Collector & Workforce, ArcGIS Enterprise Builder, Web-based Dashboards, Hexagon Bins ... Well lets just say it was all notable. 

Ask us more!

Worried about crop health? Cloudpoint Aerial Services has you covered!

Cloudpoint Aerial Services is excited to introduce new imagery capabilities! We've recently added a drone to our growing fleet, but what makes this drone special is the camera that it carries. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is a way to collect data regarding plant health and live vegetation by calculating the amount of visible and near-infrared light that is reflected off of a each plant. By doing this, we can now show which plants are healthier than others. I could explain it all day, but it's probably easier to just show you some imagery.

Here you can see an example of NDVI imagery. Although you can adjust the colors to your liking, healthier plants show up as various shades of green, and the red hues reflect plants that are struggling.

With this new feature, we have expanded the geospatial services that we offer. We already have GIS solutions for agriculture land assessment, and now we can help farmers increase their yields with the NDVI. Are you a farmer who's looking to take your crop management to the next level? Contact us today at 877-377-8124 or cloudpointgeo.com/drones to learn more.

Also, a special thanks to Mike & Eric Hoeft and Stewart Family Farms who were kind enough to let us fly their test plots.

Is your Address Data ready for NG9-1-1?

Do you know the quality of your address data in your GIS?  Did you also know that the accuracy of this data is of critical importance for the future of NG9-1-1?  As an Esri business partner, Cloudpoint Geographics understands the value of ArcGIS Solutions for Local Government, including address data management, and has been implementing these solutions for several years.  Our professional staff has the ability to review the quality of your road centerline address ranges, as well as a review of your road names in accordance with standards from the USPS to provide you with a rating score on the quality of your data.  In addition they will make recommended updates and provide a cost estimate associated with such updates.  The following are just a few solutions powered by Esri's Local Government that the Cloudpoint team can implement for you:

Data Reviewer for Addresses

Address Data Management

Address Crowdsourcing

Address Field Verification

Community Addresses

Our local government experience in building GIS solutions on the Esri platform helps us offer value-added services to agencies needing a professional solution in a timely manner.  Don't wait for Next Generation 9-1-1 to come to you, make the effort to be prepared.  For more information on pricing contact us at 877-377-8124 or submit below.

Cloudpoint becomes official aerial service provider on DRONERS.IO

Cloudpoint Geographics excited to announce its official approval and receipt of pilot's badge from Droners.io, an online collection of drone service providers where customers and drone pilots can connect on projects.  

"As a professional service provider its not only important to know what we do well, but also to know what we don't do.  Droners.io provides us the opportunity to specify which drone services categories that we offer creating the best possible client-vendor match", says Jonathan Hodel, founder & CEO of Cloudpoint.  For Cloudpoint Aerial Services we currently limit our drone services for locations in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kentucky for the following categories:

• Surveying & Mapping
• Agriculture
• Construction
• Infrastructure
• Roof Inspection

Using droners.io customers can easily create an account, post a job to the job board, and get quotes immediately.  Of course we also offer our customers to contact us directly for an immediate quote through our contact page, however droners provides another networking opportunity for people to reach out to us when they need professional drone mapping services.  With two (2) professional certified pilots on staff and growing, Cloudpoint Geographics is a fully insured mapping and geospatial service provider and able to deliver short turn-around times for drone imagery and topographic mapping projects.  Our recent entry into the Agriculture market is allowing us to offer value-added services to growers and researchers in a timely fashion.  For more information contact us at 877-377-8124 or visit our site.

Recap of the Township Highway Commissioners of Illinois Summer Seminar

Each year, Township Highway Commissioners travel to Peoria, IL to attend the annual THCOI Summer Seminar. It's a great way for them to continue education about their role, as well as, connect with colleagues. This year Cloudpoint was eager to attend the seminar and discuss SignOps with the commissioners.

SignOps is our in-house developed sign inventory program that allows organizations the ability to track location, detailed attributes, and maintenance records for each sign in their jurisdiction. Cloudpoint currently has a handful of Illinois townships that our using SignOps, and hopefully more will be on board after talking with Joe about the various capabilities while at the Cloudpoint booth.

Meet Honorary Roadie "Bessie" Sue. Bessie is a 50 year old Caterpillar motor grater that Cloudpoint client and Morton Township Highway Commissioner Greg Menold still operates!

All in all, it was a great seminar! Joe was able to meet with some existing clients as well as make several great new connections. If you want to take control of your sign inventory, contact us today for more information or a free demonstration of just how powerful SignOps is! And remember, for sign inventories there's only one way: SignOps!

Updating town-wide aerial imagery!

Recently Cloudpoint completed a drone flight of Roanoke, IL. The mighty burg of Roanoke is home to Cloudpoint HQ and often times is our guinea pig for implementing or testing new services. We set out to fly all of the town and capture detailed, crisp, clear imagery with our drone mapping capabilities. Although some of you instantly understand what a benefit this can be for a municipality, we thought it may be helpful to talk about the advantages to having Cloudpoint complete an aerial photography flight for your organization.

Here you can see the difference between the standard imagery basemap from Esri on the left and from Cloudpoint Aerial Services on the right. The updated imagery can assist in inspecting hard to reach areas like roofs and water towers.

First of all, the most important benefit is the amazingly detailed imagery that is collected. Below you can see a side by side comparison between standard Esri ArcGIS imagery and the images that we collected.  The difference is clear.

Here is another side by side comparison between Esri's base imagery on the left and the imagery collected by Cloudpoint's drone. While the left image is pretty blurry, the updated imagery allows you to see inlets, road patching areas and much more detail.

In addition to providing superior imagery, the timeline for deliverables is another plus for having Cloudpoint complete a flight of your city. Since we handle every step of the process in house, you can get your imagery brought into your GIS in days instead of months. With the ability to track projects from the sky, compare new and old imagery to look for unapproved parcel improvements which generates revenue, and the ability to locate manholes, valves, and inlets, a town-wide drone flight is a powerful tool for enhancing your GIS and mapping. 

Click here to view the Roanoke 2017 Ortho webmap

Although Cloudpoint can fly yearround, the best times for getting imagery is in the Fall after the leaves come down or in the early Spring after the snow melts and before vegetation starts to grow.

If you have any questions, please contact us at 877-377-8124 or you can visit www.cloudpointgeo.com/drones

Live from San Diego, it's the Esri User Conference!

Recently Joe traveled over 3,500 miles from Central Illinois to San Diego and back to attend the Esri User Conference. This was Joe's first UC and it was a great, albeit sometimes overwhelming, time! Joe was able to learn about the latest GIS services available from Esri, as well as connect with colleagues from around the globe. It was truly a worldwide conference, and he was able to connect with people from the US, England, Canada, Sweden, Chile, Russian, and many more countries.

Every year thousands of GIS professionals gather in San Diego, California for Esri's annual User Conference. It was once again held at the San Diego Convention Center.

Each day and night presented the opporunity to learn more and expand your understanding of GIS. By attending various classes on improving GIS use for public utilites, parcel management, drone mapping, and utilizing field applications to increase efficiency, Joe is excited to bring these new applications back to the office to get implimented. Below you can see Joe's photos from his trip.

Joe was able to take a lot of great information about up and coming GIS implementation and technology. In addition to the aforementioned info and tech updates, it instilled a desire to better serve our clients through the Esri platform and the Cloudpoint team! As always, if there's ever anything that Cloudpoint can do for your organization, please don't hesitate to contact us at 877-377-8124 or fill out our contact page.

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