The event — actually a two-day online gathering, Nov. 18-19 — will include a roster of 20 speakers in nine categories. The second-day keynote speaker will be Dr. Fred Calef III, the geospatial information scientist and “keeper of the maps” for the Mars Science Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology. Other speakers and presenters will include various representatives of the county government, academia and the private sector.
The county’s own geographic information officer, Dr. Steve Steinberg, is moderating the event and, in a phone interview this week with Techwire, provided an overview of what vendors and others should expect from the event.
This year’s event, Steinberg said, will be “something obviously very different than our past 12 GIS Days, which have all been on-site, in-person events.” Because the traditional one-day event has been expanded to two days, he said, “We have twice as many talks going on.”
“The thing to get out of the talks is two-pronged,” Steinberg said. “One is a variety of talks that give explicit examples of work being done by or with the county — whether that’s county staff or partners — to learn what we do with GIS and how it permeates so many of our department workflows. Secondly, to get a sense of new innovations, new directions.”
The county’s uses and potential uses for GIS and related technology will be of interest to those in the private sector who sell to the county, Steinberg said.
The second day’s keynote, Calef, will deliver a more universal message.
“The speaker from JPL is going to talk about mapping Mars with the rovers,” Steinberg said. “But the techniques, the technologies that are used there, with unmanned systems and imagery, certainly can be applied here on Earth — here in the county.”
On the county’s GIS Day website, Calef says: “I’ll present how we make maps to explore Mars’ surface with the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers' science and engineering teams at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).”
The two-day online event will include more than 35 GIS-related exhibits from various county departments, vendors, universities and community colleges. The event will also include a weeklong “virtual expo” that will highlight vendors’ and other partners’ activities involving GIS.
Attendance is free but registration is required. A detailed agenda of the event is available online, as are registration details. And, in a nod to those familiar with GIS Day’s customary cake-baking contest, Steinberg says that custom will be upheld, albeit in an online fashion.
