GEOTALK. GEO Social. February 25th Craft Beer Market Ave SW Calgary 5 pm - 7 pm Light Refreshments provided. Brad Ashley Past-President

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1 VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1 PAGE 1 OFFICIAL NEWSLETTER OF ALBERTA GEOMATICS GROUP February 2016 In this issue 1 GeoAlberta SAIT News 2 Map Town 3 SAIT 3 GIS Day Recap 3 Abacus Datagraphics 4 Spatial Technologies 4 Lethbridge News 5 Map to the Future 5 TECNOVATE16 Mark Your Calendars! Upcoming Events GEO Social Calgary - February 25 Map to the Future Calgary - March Lunch Presentation Lethbridge - March 29th Calgary - April 2016 TECNOVATE Calgary - June 22 AGG AGM Calgary - September 2016 GeoAlberta Update Leah Lilley: Director & AltaLIS Ltd. Record levels of support shown by the sponsors, tradeshow vendors, keynotes, workshop instructors, industry speakers and delegates of GeoAlberta 2015, held in Edmonton, October 26-28, are a testament to the need for a premier Geospatial Conference in Alberta. Despite an adverse economy, this event brought over 300 industry professionals together to Learn, Share & Network. Highlights of the conference included an unprecedented lineup of Keynote speakers, highly qualified Workshop Instructors, facilitated Think Tanks, an AGG Social at the Lion s Pub, a TECTERRA Social on the Delta rooftop and Sam Hester s live graphic illustration (small snip-it show above) which captured the conference from the eyes and ears of an amazing artist. GeoAlberta is like a family reunion that unites people from all walks of the Geospatial community and welcomes new members with open arms. It is incredible to witness moments like a 1st time delegate chatting it up with a seasoned Keynote speaker, the 3rd year student introducing themselves to a table of professionals over lunch, or a municipal GIS professional sharing tips and tools with a neighboring County after a session. You can look around a packed social event and see EVERY person is engaged in conversation, sometimes with old friends but often with new. The volunteer team from AGG, URISA & GeoEdmonton spend countless hours collaborating and planning every detail of the GeoAlberta conference in efforts to satisfy the varying needs of our sponsors, speakers & delegates. Although the conference is a unique experience for every individual, there is a passion shared within the organizing committee to improve and raise the bar every year! After careful consideration, the next GeoAlberta Conference will be held in the SPRING OF The venue and location will be announced as soon as a contract is Alberta Geomatics Group Questions? us at info@albertageomaticsgroup.ca GEO Social February 25th Craft Beer Market Ave SW Calgary 5 pm - 7 pm Light Refreshments provided Board of Directors Andrew Pylypchuk - President Verda Kocabas Treasurer Scott McHale Secretary Brad Ashley Past-President Bill Smienk Director Carey Prendergast Director Leah Lilley Director Steve Reed Director Matt Wirzba Director Steve Myshak Director Kyle Nadler Director

2 PAGE 2 SAIT News Verda Kocabas, Treasurer & SAIT The Geomatics Engineering Technology Student Club at SAIT Polytechnic held its GNT Industry Night on January 19th, The Alberta Geomatics Group participated with a silver sponsorship. It s wonderful to see the caliber of companies that took part in the event: Stantec, WSP, Watt Consulting Group, Boundary Technical Group, EllisDon, Integrated Sustainability, Quest, Shell, Can-Am Geomatics, Site Energy, Tecterra, Midwest Surveys, Challenger Geomatics, Global Raymac, and Caltech Surveys. There were approximately 100 people in attendance including industry reps from 16 companies, alumni, students and faculty. Carina Butterworth and Lance Hummel, both GNT faculty members, are organizing a Geomatics competition this year. The Geomatics competition has 3 components: Peg finding, geomatics photo contest and geomatics promotion video contest. The theme of the competition is SURV WARS. Each part is separated out into 3 episodes of SURV WARS. Survey crib support member Travis Hilliard has been designing the posters and the trophy.

3 PAGE 3 GIS Day Recap Scott McHale, Secretary For the second year running, the Alberta Geomatics Group, Calgary Regional Partnership, and SAIT helped our colleagues and community members, along with their families, celebrate GIS Day with an event designed for learning and sharing and generally getting excited about cool things in geomatics: the measurement of the world around us. We had some great giveaways thanks to Divestco, ESRI Canada, IHS, and Intergraph for each of the 300 people registered and the Brad & Verda roaming GIS Quiz show helped us to connect a host of great prizes from MapTown and Blackbridge with deserving winners. We had 75 kids registered! There was a coloring station, some air-brush tattoos from FunkyFaces, and lots of interesting displays but it was easy to spot the two kids favorites. Abacus Datagraphics, our Gold Sponsor, built and hosted an augmented reality sandbox to let the kids see the impact on water flows as they changed the topography in the sand. This was fun for kids and a great opportunity to learn about geomatics without them even knowing it. Also, robots! Calgary s own EZ-Robot brought out their robots and were able to not only let the kids ( and adults ) remotely control the robots, but also see how the robots could be programmed to perform certain actions and how they used geomatics to identify and track the location of people and objects around them. Thanks to everyone for making the evening so fun and engaging. See you next year!

4 PAGE 4 Lethbridge News Matt Wirzba, Director & BlackBridge, a Planet Labs Company In Sunny (and windy) Lethbridge, the AGG has enjoyed a great partnership with the Canadian Remote Sensing Society (CRSS) Lethbridge chapter for a little over two years now, and we are looking forward to continuing that partnership with an exciting 3rd year planned. By working together, we have been able to create a relevant and exciting avenue for networking and learning in our quickly growing geomatics industry in Lethbridge. This March we are putting on two great events; the CRSS will be hosting a 1 day workshop at the University of Lethbridge on March 1st. This very practical workshop will be on Network Branding for Employment Success. Following this, on March 29th there will be a Lunch and Learn at Lethbridge College, hosted by the AGG with support from the CRSS. Not only will there be a fantastic lunch from the college s culinary program, but we are very excited to have the folks from the city of Lethbridge Electric Utility Administration present on their ArcGIS/ ArcFM enterprise solution that they use to keep the city plugged in. Did you know Membership with the Alberta Geomatics Group helps provide scholarships to students in Geomatics programs annually? Helps provide opportunities for community events and personal development? Allows the AGG to support community initiatives such as career fairs and networking events? Become a member today! Turnouts for our spring events are always fantastic, so please stay tuned for more info to come shortly.

5 PAGE 5 Please join us on March 15-16, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency in Calgary to map out a path forward for the Canadian geo community Visit for more information and to register.