BIO:
Dan McConnell began his geoscience career with Scott-Pickford, a British geoscience consulting group. He began to focus on marine geology and geophysics when he joined Fugro-McClelland Marine Geosciences in Houston in 1997.   There, he interpreted offshore 3D seismic data, high-resolution survey, geochemical, and geotechnical data in support of offshore engineering and drilling operations.   Dan left Fugro in 2003 to start a Houston-based geohazard consulting group at AOA Geophysics, which would augment their seafloor mapping and seep survey business.  Dan returned to Fugro in 2011 when AOA Geophysics was acquired and integrated with Fugro’s offshore consulting group. For a brief time, Dan managed Fugro’s Houston-based offshore consulting business.  He now works on aligning and integrating Fugro’s service offerings across the Americas.

Dan has written numerous articles about deepwater site conditions. His main contribution has been the identification and quantification of gas hydrate deposits from seismic data that culminated with the landmark Chevron- US Department of Energy drilling expedition in the Gulf of Mexico in 2009. Dan holds two degrees, History and Geology, from the University of Texas at Austin.

PRESENTED BY: Denis Riordan, NOAA/National Geodetic Survey (NGS).

The official geometric datum (horizontal) for the United States is the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83).  This national datum has had three major updates since it was first published, with the last one being the NAD83 (2011) national adjustment.  The official U.S. vertical datum is the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) and is referenced through bench marks that are subject to change over time.  This network of passive control has associated inaccuracies, and is deteriorating daily through various types of construction, crustal movement, lack of re-observations, etc.  The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) is currently working to define and adopt a geocentric reference datum for the United States to replace NAD 83.  At the same time, NGS is working to compute an accurate geoid model which will serve as the defining surface of a new vertical datum that will be accessed through GNSS technology.  Access to orthometric heights will be determined through future high accuracy geoid models, replacing NAVD 88 as the defining vertical datum.  These two changes are dependent upon one another in a variety of ways and are currently planned to occur simultaneously. 

This presentation will provide a brief history of datums for the U.S., discuss why we need more modern datums, and how NGS is working to develop these new national datums.  As time allows, information will be provided on two other NGS products, the Online Positioning User Service (OPUS) with emphasis on OPUS Projects and the control mark search program, DSWorld.

PRESENTED BY: Eric Gakstatter, Editor of Geospatial Solutions, Contributing Editor to GPS World Magazine.

I'm not a trained geodesist. I'm not a mathematician. I know enough to be dangerous, and enough to know this subject is going to be a nightmare for people managing geospatial databases. The only reason it’s not a nightmare today is because most of you don't know it’s even a problem. Or, you know it’s a problem, but let it slide because dealing with it is not easy. It’s going to get worse in the future, much worse. It’s going to get worse because sensors (GPS, GNSS, imagery, etc.) are getting much more accurate. The cost of acquiring high-precision (centimeter-level) data, whether it’s via GNSS, scanning or?? is falling hard and fast. High-precision GNSS receivers are getting much cheaper. Geodata 2.0 is coming, and it is making existing geospatial databases look like my kids’ coloring books. Join me in a discussion about GNSS, horizontal datums, and geospatial data.

This talk concerns the evolution of the North American Datum from inception to NAD83(2011) epoch 2010 and on to the planned movement away from NAD to a New Geometric Datum (NGD) to support improved GNSS positioning . The NGS 10-Year plan states "NGS [will redefine] the national horizontal datum to remove gross disagreements with the ITRF"

PRESENTED BY: Ashok Wadwani, Applied Field Data Systems Inc.

The Worldwide GIS Industry is anticipated to grow from US $4.4 billion in 2010 to US$ 10.6 billion by 2015 driven by growth of Tablets and Smart phones with built in GPS, increased awareness and various compliance requirements. To find new employees, most of the companies no longer offer apprentice/intern programs due to cost and time constraints. Companies are looking for "just in time employees -trained and ready to go". They want fully trained workers but want some others to train them.
 

Due to various reasons, colleges and educators are not offering proper curriculum/ courses to future GIS graduates. How often has a educator contacted a business person to see how their curriculum fits their needs?  How often has a business person contacted a college to offer any advice? There is very little communication between colleges and potential employers. To put it bluntly "before you build a better mouse trap make sure you have mice around. Here we are producing graduates but do we know if they have the right skills or employable?

The presentation will offer suggestions we all can use to improve the upcoming shortage of "Qualified GIS professionals".

PRESENTED BY: Ellen West Nodwell,  Integrashare Solutioneering, Inc.

From about the year 1939 AD through time came the Ships (short for shipments) loaded with more and more bits and bytes of data in boxes (tapes, all sorts of disks, USB sticks, hard drives, Bernoulli, ROM, the list is long).  The people who had to manage this data came to be known as the “data management people”.  They wore funny glasses so that they could see the Lines and rows of characters and numbers on the dark screens.  They grew gnarly over time and more cantankerous, as they became virtual curmudgeons, sticklers for accuracy and quality against a world full of defective inaccurate bytes of data.  It became a virtual war to be fought through future times by many brave men and women who call themselves soldiers in these data wars.  On “The Streets of Fire”, they call them the “data wranglers”.  There is more to the story…lots more.

PRESENTED BY: Kris Berglund, Blue Marble Geographics

Going from theory to practice always presents unique challenges.  As Blue Marble implemented functionality around the EPSG Dataset’s Area of Use Polygons into the Geographic Calculator, some fairly unique challenges arose in the process.  What can be described in fairly simple terms as “limiting choices of coordinate systems and transformations based on geography” turns out to be a fairly complex problem when thousands of polygons and millions of data points enter the mix.  Issues such as data formatting, geography based searching, and processing speed all appeared in this unique development that required a bridge between simple database lookup, and true geospatial analysis.  This talk will explore both the challenges as well as some of the solutions that were arrived upon.