President's Message 2024

Dawn McCall Photo

Dawn F. McCall, GISP President, NYS GIS Association

Greetings All,

The 2024 Geospatial Summit will be held on September 23-24, 2024 returning to a favorite location, The Lodge in Skaneateles, NY.  The Annual meeting will be held on Monday the 23rd at 4pm.  This year we are co-hosting NYS Alliance for Digital Public Record Access along with NYSAPLS before the annual meeting.

The New York State GIS Association was established in 2003 and represents the interests of the entire geospatial community within New York and is the premier statewide professional organization for GIS and related industries. The Association is uniquely positioned to advocate in the state and nationally on issues of importance to the GIS industry (e.g., legislation and funding), reach out to sister organizations in other professions in building strong collaborations, and provide a statewide forum for advancing our profession through shared experiences, learning, and training. 

This past year we had a bylaws amendment where we expanded our board from 4 Board Members to 6 Board Members and also added a 3rd Officer Position, the addition of an Information Officer to our Secretary and Treasurer has enabled us to start to focus on organizing our back office with the implementation of Google Workspace and we are starting to look expanding our membership database capabilities to better support the organization’s needs.

The true strength of the association is our 9 Committees. The committees include the Awards Committee, The Communications Committee, The Education Committee, The GeoSpatial Summit Committee, The Legislative Committee, The Membership Committee, The NY GeoCon Committee, The Professional Development Committee, and the Regional Coordination Committee. The important work that happens in each of these committees helps strengthen the GIS Profession as a whole. I would like to highlight just some of the great work that is happening in our committees now.

Currently, the NY GeoCon Committee is working on their 2025 event. The GeoCon 2025 will be happening on October 8-10, 2025 in beautiful town of Lake Placid, New York.  The host committee needs your help before and/or during the conference. If you are interested in joining the host committee (you’ll earn GISP Points), please let us know by filling out the Survey123 or email Karyn Tareen. Your volunteer commitment can be as much as you decide!  Stay tuned for more details on Sponsor Registration and the Call for Abstracts. Please Save the Date and Make Plans to Attend GeoCon 2025!

One of my goals throughout my presidential tract was to get the dates of our events set earlier to allow for better planning for our membership and sponsors to be able to participate. I am very thankful to both the GeoSpatial Summit and GeoCon for having helped make that a reality.

Another goal of my presidency was to continue to encourage participation in all our committees. Our committees provide an opportunity to allow our members to contribute to the success of the New York State GIS Association in areas that interest them. Another committee that I would like to highlight today is the Legislative Committee.  Since joining the Legislative Committee, we have been able to work more closely with one of our sister organizations, the New York State Association of Professional Land Surveyors. We started simply with outreach to the Surveying Society and the synergy grew from there to focus on Public Access to Digital Documents through the power of GIS and highlighting the power of the New York State Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Clearinghouse. We have recently rebranded our coordinated efforts to create the New York State Alliance for Digital Access to Public Records, with the goal of working with more organizations across the state to increase access to Public Records through the modernization of processes.

2024 was an exciting year, here are some of the accomplishments from this past year.

  • Information Technology Officer Role was implemented
  • Progress on Google Drive for Business and ownership of documents
  • Decision on Membership Software -Membership Press
  • Earlier start on the GeoCon to enable announcements in time for annual budget for attendees and vendors
  • Updated Annual Task Lists to begin items earlier
  • Focused on Working Groups to get specific tasks accomplished
  • Membership Drive
  • Greater use of Social Media
  • Outreach & Support
    • Sponsored 2024 Westchester GIS User Group meeting and Annual GIS/SIG Conference
    • NYSAPLS & NYS GIS Association Joint Committee on Government Relationship Committee
      • Creation of the NYS Alliance for Digital Access to Public Records
      • NYSAPLS 2024 Annual Conference Roundtable
      • NYSAPLS 2024 
      • NYS GIS Association 2024 Annual Conference Roundtable

If any of this sounds exciting to you, or if you know the best way to migrate documents in various ownership to a Google Workspace, or if you have ideas on what should be content at our next events, or have some other passion you would like to share with the Association I encourage you to join one of our committees and start getting more involved today!

The New York State GIS Association’s board is made up of volunteers who took those steps and were willing to get involved. 

I look forward to seeing everyone at the Summit and GeoCon!

Dawn F. McCall, GISP