GIS in the Idaho Panhandle

GIS Day was November 18, 2009 and the North Idaho GIS Users Group planned their annual day long conference on this day. The event contained presentations from attendees on the current projects that they have been working on in the past year. There was a wide range of representation from local, state, and federal government agencies to private sector businesses.
One of the overwhelming concepts was the idea of a regional resource center. This is from the State of Idaho's strategic planning for the Idaho Spatial Data Infrastructure being organized by the Idaho Geospatial Office. The Regional Resource Center Proposals are broken up by region and can be found here. The idea of a regional resource center to house spatial data and be a source for training and assistent is appealing. Most appealing to smaller juristictions that are feeling the pressure to take on and complete projest that require a vast amount of spatial data creation and analysis. This would give them a local place to seek data and training.
A second concept that was in many presentation was using Web Mapping Applications to display local data. Most interesting was the amount of people that currently have ArcServer deployed and are either developing custom web mapping applications or are customizing the out-of-the-box Web App. For rural North Idaho there were many juristiction using this technology to simplify distribution of their spatial data out to their users.
This event showed off the work of many GIS practisioners in Northern Idaho and showed a strength of GIS technology in the rural north. Thanks to those who planned it! And thanks to the Norther Rockies chapter of URISA for sponsering the event.