2006 NSGIC Conference: Day Five, Thursday, October 5

The fifth (and final) full day of a NSGIC conference is when you start to see who the most dedicated members are. After four long days of presentations and meetings, we are all tired, but we carry on because there are issues to discuss.

The morning started with a discussion of the FEMA Flood Map Modernization program and continued with an issues briefing by representatives of the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS).

After a break, I had the honor of making a scattershot, chaotic presentation on the many avenues of communication opened by blogging software, wikis, tags and other social networking tools. I demonstrated blogging by posting the Day Four report live form the podium. I have created a tag-list of sites I used as resources in putting that presentation together.

We finished the morning with the second part of the NSGIC business meeting. There were Achievement Awards given to Stu Kirkpatrick, of Montana, Milo Robinson, of the FGDC, Jill Saligoe-Simmel, of Indiana, Nathan Bentley, of Idaho, and Shelby Johnson, of Arkansas.

This meeting is also the point at which the outgoing NSGIC President hands-off to the incoming President. Missouri's Tony Spicci handed the ceremonial NSGIC President's Mug to Ohio's Stu Davis.

After lunch, we had a panel discussion on using GIS and spatial data to more effectively manage sales tax programs.

We finished the day, and the conference, with a state-member caucus at which we discussed several major issues that the group will work on for the coming year:

• Next steps in pursuing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure
• The need to have more state representation on the various committees of NSGIC
• The GIS Certification program
• The governance model for the NSDI
• The DHS Data Model
• Ways to effectively share data among different levels of government

It was a long, tough conference, but it has been another very successful conference. Thanks go out to our hosts in Little Rock, to the Conference Committee, and to all the folks from state, local and federal government, and our private sector partners, particularly our sponsors.

Next? Travel home.