Registration is CLOSED!

Tuesday, April 22-Thursday, April 24, 2025 Main Conference

Early-Bird Conference Registration – $275 – (February 28 deadline)

Regular Conference Registration – $330

Student/Military (w/ID upon check-in) – $100

All workshops are located on the second floor of the Conference Center.

Monday, April 21, 2025 Workshops

Full-Day Workshop – $120

Half-Day Workshop – $60

Half-Day Workshops

Metadata Workshop (morning 8am-noon)

This course will provide a broad introduction to understanding and creating geospatial metadata and is intended for geospatial students, new working professionals, and anyone who feels like they could use a metadata refresher. Topics will include understanding the importance of good metadata, an overview of common metadata standards and practices, and how to access and edit metadata in ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online. Participants are welcome to bring their own laptops in order to follow along during the example portions of the course.

Legal Issues in GIS (morning 8am-noon)

Hour 1:
Geospatial Case Law: With a special focus on YOUR personal legal liability, copyrights, contracts, open records, and more.

Hour 2: The Many Ways Geospatial People End Up in Court:
1) Making embarrassing mistakes;
2) You are the GeoExpert;
3) You made the geospatial demonstratives for court; and over twelve more ways.

Hour 3: Geofence Warrants (an emerging legal issue):
Geofence warrants have proven to bean effective tool to help prosecutors and police make their case, often when no other evidence leads to a suspect. They are the latest intersection between the geospatial
profession and law enforcement. In some jurisdictions prosecutors petition judges to authorize warrants which scrutinize one or more national location databases, containing location records of every citizen in the US with a smartphone. Many legal scholars say it’s the details of how those data are obtained from the warrant, selected, processed, and then presented in court which may, or may not, off end long-established Constitutional protections found under the 4th and 5th Amendments. We’ll avoid politics in this session and focus on how a Geofence Warrant might affect you professionally.

An Introduction to Easily Implementing AI in your GIS Tools (morning 8am-noon)

The availability of AI has grown substantially over the past two years, and the number of ready-to-use products have taken over the landscape. This will be a surface level workshop on using the backbones of some of the products you may already be familiar with to augment and expand what is capable with these frameworks. This workshop will require a basic level of programming familiarity, but will be geared towards getting the tools and methods into the hands of the users and highlighting how to configure those tools as easily as possible to fit your workflows, with encouragement towards further advancing your programming abilities and expanding your use of these AI tools. Topics to be covered will include implementing an on-the-fly tree planting guide large language model into Survey123 using Survey123 Connect’s Javascript tools and Google Gemini API and preparing and running a basic object detection model using pretrained models through Python.

Transitioning from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro (afternoon 1pm-5pm)

The end of ArcMap has come. Make sure your maps and spatial data do not get left behind. Join us for this workshop on transitioning your workflows from ArcMap to the latest desktop GIS application, ArcGIS Pro.

Revealing River Landscapes with Lidar Data and Relative Elevation Models (afternoon 1pm-5pm)

In this workshop we will convert a lidar-derived digital terrain model (DTM) along a river into a relative elevation model (REM) in ArcGIS Pro or QGIS using a series of geoprocessing steps. We will also discuss different ways to visualize REMs including techniques for using layer blending (with shaded relief and imagery), map orientation and layouts, and color gradients.

The tutorial is geared toward users who have some experience using GIS and have ArcGIS Pro (with a Spatial Analyst extension) or a recent version of QGIS installed on their computer. Users will be provided with an example DTM dataset for the exercise but can also use their own mosaicked elevation model if desired.

Discovering GIS for the classroom (evening 5pm-9pm)

This workshop is geared towards educators, but also any individual wanting to promote getting GIS resources into the hands of students. Individuals and organizations that currently have and are using GIS curriculum with students through their classrooms, programs, and summer camps will share and teach a favorite hands-on GIS activity with participants. The goal of the workshop is to give educators the chance to play with the technologies and give them time to ask questions, touch, break, and build with the tools.

Examples of activities:
Introduction to Esri GeoInquiries and MapMaker
Flying Drones
GPS Units
Giant Maps
Maps and Storytelling
Where to find geospatial open educational(free) resources
Introduction to geospatial careers – Why geographic thinking matters

Full-Day Workshop

Drones: a Game Changer

Over the years the use of unmanned systems has become increasingly more
prominent in the fields of industry and first response. The workshop will be an entry
level look into the use of unmanned systems and how to obtain a 107 license for flying,
real life scenarios and laws for and against unmanned systems use. This workshop
requires no experience of any unmanned aerial systems or a license to operate any
systems. The workshop will consist of videos and presentations of real-life scenarios,
part 107 materials and drone piloting demonstrations.

Tuesday, April 22-Thursday, April 24, 2025 Main Conference

Early-Bird Conference Registration – $275

Regular Conference Registration – $330

Student/Military (w/ID upon check-in) – $100