Registration for the 2023 MO GIS Conference is now closed. Thank you to all who did register. We look forward to giving you a great conference. All workshops are located on the second floor of the Conference Center.
Monday April 17, 2023 Workshop Day
Half-Day Workshop – $60
-Morning Classes
Data Cleaning with Python – (Pines)
Data can be messy. GIS practitioners commonly lament the amount of time spent preparing data before any analysis or visualization can take place. Potential steps for preparing or “cleaning” tabular data include changing data types, adjusting values for consistency and validation, splitting or joining values, and removing extraneous records, to name a few. This workshop will cover some common data cleaning steps using Python and the Pandas library. Basic knowledge of Python syntax recommended. Workshop content will be presented via a Google Colab notebook. A web browser and Google account required.
Legal Issues in GIS – (Meadows)
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 be an 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, offend 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.
-Afternoon Classes
Working with Spatial Data using Python/Geopandas – (Pines)
Python can be an important component of your geospatial data and analysis toolbox. This workshop will explore common geospatial workflows using the open-source Python library Geopandas. Workshop content will be presented using a Google Colab notebook. A web browser and Google account required.
Becoming a GIS rock star – (Meadows)
Interested in expanding your GIS professional development? Want to always bring you’re “A” game? There is always a need for your expertise, but it’s challenging to know what skills are the most important in the ever changing world of the GIS professional. Every organization is different, but what tools should you have in your GIS toolkit to make sure you stay current? The workshop covers a list of the Top 5 skills that make you the most marketable, as well as suggestions for where can gain those skills. It’s being taught by several GIS professionals from Missouri’s Office of Geospatial Information.
Using and Building 3D Basemaps – (Timberlands)
Maps through Lidar extraction. We will first review existing 3D Basemaps out there and the workshop will cover some best practices for creating 3D Basemaps of various kinds. It will cover over aspects of extracting 3D buildings, trees, extracting power lines, poles, bridges and adding other features from existing 2d services. It will go into strategies for doing this in large areas using bulk processing by using model builder. We will talk about new ways to do 3D including meshes, lidar colorized point clouds. Some examples would be St. Charles Digital Twin (MO) and the State of Connecticut. This class is built on the tools in the 3D Basemap Solution. This solution builds the 3d Basemap that can be used with ArcGIS Urban.
Full-Day Workshop – $120
Python for GIS Professionals – (Columbia Room)
Learn how to create your own script and automate basic workflows!
Learning Objectives:
Morning-Beginner Level:
1. Create a script in IDLE (scripting best practices)
2. Automate a simple ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process using basic arcpy tools.
Afternoon-Advanced Level
1. Tuples, Lists, and Dictionaries
2. For Loops
3. Cursors (Search, Insert, Update)
Tuesday, April 18-Thursday, April 20, 2023 Main Conference
Early-Bird Conference Registration – $260 (Closed)
Regular Conference Registration – $310
Student/Military (w/ID upon check-in) – $150