San Diego (Open Data) App Challenge and other GIS Competition News

Mayor Sanders and the City of San Diego are challenging the software developer community to create new apps using city and partner data. They’re also inviting the public to share their ideas for innovative new apps.

Winners will receive $50,000 in cash prizes as well as promotional exposure. Prizes will be awarded for apps that enhance city services and quality of life for San Diegans, and that use the data in innovative ways. Submitted apps can run on the web, desktop computers, tablets, or smartphones. The public is encouraged to share application ideas related to energy, tourism, economic development, transportation, the environment, health and other areas.

The public will have one month to share ideas for San Diego apps they’d like to see created. Developers will have approximately three months following the challenge launch to build their submissions. A panel of distinguished judges from the tech industry, venture capital, and partner institutions will select winners, and the general public will vote to identify two “Popular Choice” winners.

The Get Outdoors Massachusetts contest is open to the public and seeks public participation in developing technologies that feature Massachusetts outdoor and natural resources. The goal of the competition is to provide software developers with data to create a mobile application for the public to use a smart phone to map to public lands, access points and other outdoor venues for outdoor recreation. The agencies will provide data about state parks, wildlife management areas, public boat ramps, agricultural tourism locations and parking locations and lists of available activities at each facility or location.

The 2012 IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest is designed to investigate the potential of multi-modal/multi-temporal fusion of very high spatial resolution imagery. This year, participants will download three different sets of images (optical, SAR, and LIDAR) over the downtown of San Francisco and each participant will get to choose their own research topic to work with. Proposals should describe in detail the addressed problem, the method used, and the end result.

Harvard’s WorldMap and other Education GIS News

I think the online mapmakeing tool WorldMap is out of beta, but the article does not make that 100% clear. It's open source and developed by Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis, 

- Harvard Gazette

The GeoTech Center has published its 2012 newsletter (pdf).

- GeoTech Center Blog

A team of students from the University at Buffalo Law School has been named a winner of the 2012 New York Redistricting Project, a national competition that challenged student teams to draw new congressional, state senate and state assembly district maps.

- UB News Center

Free Google Fusion Table Course and other Education GIS News

On Monday, January 9th Geospatial Training will be releasing a free self-paced, web based, e-learning course titled: Bringing Data to Life with Google Fusion Tables

Part 1 of this course will be released in January with  Part 2: Programming the Google Fusion Tables API coming later this year. The course has video lectures and exercises. I wonder how geography/GIS eduators might use these resources?

- Geospatial Training Blog

FIG is offering acadmic grants in areas related to geospatial to those who qualify who are in approrpiately designated countries. Proposals due Jan 15!

- announecement via @micheal_d_gould

The GeoTech Center has made ten sample questions for its National Geospatial Technology Comptetition Round 1 multiple choice test available in a PDF. I'm pleased to report I got them all correct, though some of them were on topics I never studied. The actual test must be taken by March 15 to be in the contest. This year both Round 1 (test) and Round 2 (project) scores will be used to determine the six semi-finalists who will be invited to the Esri EdUC.

- GeoTech Center Blog

Anzac Recalled in School GIS Project and other Education GIS News

Using state-of-the-art Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, the Year 10 Society and Environment students [at John Calvin School] have combined a map of Albany’s [Western Austalia] “Avenue of Honour” with images and stories of the 178 soldiers it commemorates.

The project will be enterred in the national 2011 Spatial Technology in Schools (STiS) competition, coordinated by the Western Australian Land Information System,

That's great. I wonder what sentences like this do for the general public's understanding of GIS. I am concerned about the term "sophisticated":

John Calvin School is partnered with Esri Australia, an organisation that specialises in GIS - a sophisticated spatial technology that visually represents information on maps.

- Albany Weekender

GIS technologies allow students to tackle real-world issues while developing critical thinking skills. And, as the work of the students and teachers in Virginia who participate in James Madison University's Geospatial Semester program seems to indicate, it might just revolutionize project-based learning in K-12 schools.

- THE Journal

Edge Hill University in St Helens received a grant from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation – a charity that supports closer links between Britain and Japan - to help forge new links with the country and improve GIS learning.

#EsriEdUC 2011 National Geospatial Technology Skills Competition Finals

The six finalists (below, left to right) from the previous rounds gathered at EdUC for final presentations. 

• Sarah Tucker from White Mountains Community College (1st)
• Evan Maier from Central Piedmont Community College
• Nathanial Wigington from Monterey Peninsula College
• Felicia Glapion from Northern Virginia Community College (2nd)
• Feather Stolzenbach from the Community College of Baltimore County (3rd)
• Paul Giers from Central Piedmont Community College

The rules for this year's contest (and next years) are on Geotech Center page and the links to the student videos should reappear soon (or find them on the YouTube Channel now). The goal for next year is 500 students taking the exam (round 1) and 100 producing videos (round 2). Suggestion to instructors: Make participation mandatory for your class! Why not? It's free to enter and they might end up with great trip!

Each finalist had up to six minutes to present the same project featured in the submitted video in round 2. (I'd seen them all before since I viewed all the videos.) The attendees participated in the judging based on these criteria, each worth five points for a total of up to 25 points:

• PowerPoint effectiveness
• Poise and non-verbal communication
• Voice clarity and quality
• Professional Appearance (the gents agreed to wear GeoTech polos, the ladies chose not too do so; I wonder if that helped the ladies "sweep"?)
• Timeliness (4-6 minute total)

Then, the attendees (with family/faculty of the finalists removed) ranked the students from 1-6 on a ballot. I found that complex because the students were not listed on the ballot in the order in which they presented!