Best of the Road and other GIS Competitions

Rand McNally and USA Today are taking votes in the Best of the Road Contest.

Rand McNally and USA TODAY's second annual search for the Best Small Towns in America has begun! Voting ends May 15 so learn more to get started.

You can also submit a video to be part of a team in the 2012 Road Rally (RM only sponsors that). I found the website kind of confusing with so many contests going on... 

- Best of the Road

This contest is for educators from thhe International Society for Technology in Education: .

When it comes to inspiring students in the classroom, no question, you are an A-list star! Give the great work you do the red carpet treatment by entering it into our Passion-Based Learning Contest. As an educator, how do you help your students pursue the ideas or projects that ignite their passions and spark their imaginations? Share your strategies with fellow ISTE members and the rest of the educational community!

Winners will be featured during the ISTE 2012 keynote sessions, and the grand prize winner will receive an all-expense paid trip to ISTE 2013 in San Antonio! We will also publish a selection of our favorite entries in an e-book collection and feature them on ISTE’s website.

- details via @joesephkerski

Hexagon wants to stir up buzz for its upcoming conference in June, so it's having a contest.

To play, simply answer the Hexagon 2012 questions that will be posted every Monday on Hexagon International Conference LinkedIn,Facebook, Google+ and Twitter platforms. For Twitter, use #hex12 when you answer.

Drawings will take place every Friday, and the winner will be announced via our social media channels. Prizes include an Amazon Kindle, Hexagon stainless steel travel mugs, and Hexagon 16GB USB cards!

This is some of the same swag guest bloggers get. If you are thinking about blogging for Hexagon, be sure to read the fine print.

- Intergraph Get Smart Blog

DHS to Re-solicit Remote Sensing for Homeland Security Procurement and other Federal Gov GIS News

In reference to the subject solicitation for Remote Sensing services, the Office of Procurement Operations, Enterprise Acquisitions Division (OPO/EAD) intends to cancel the procurement and re-solicit... 

It's not 100% clear why, but maybe the documents were just confusion. The cancellation notice goes on:

As a result of the response from industry, the Geospatial Management Office and the OPO/EAD will be streamlining the evaluation criteria in order to clarify for the vendors the basis on which their proposals will be evaluated.

- notice via @MAPPSorg

It's been a few years since the news of a new NGA HQ began. Another big milestone occured last week: the master plan was approved.

The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) approved the final plan for a redeveloped intelligence community campus in Bethesda, Md., last week.

The 39-acre campus and former home of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will support 3,000 employees and be run by the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, which is developing the site. Construction should be finished by the end of 2013.

- Federal Times

The NGA released some imagery from the GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellites. The birds and their details were release last fall, but a few images became available in January. Sadly, they are not available for analysis.

The GAMBIT and HEXAGON satellites were formally declassified last September on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Reconnaissance Office.  At that time, the NRO released voluminous documentation on the development of those satellites.  But the associated imagery, which is held by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, was not released.  Now a small number of satellite images have been made public.

However, the newly disclosed images are not originals, but are embedded in “posters” published by the NRO.  As such, they do not lend themselves to detailed analysis, complained Charles P. Vick of GlobalSecurity.org.  Nor are the original negatives of the declassified photos available for public inspection.

- Secrecy News

• AGRICULTURE. Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Matz has been hired by the National Geospatial Coalition to “consult and advocate regarding funding and use of geospatial imaging in federal agriculture programs,” according to lobbying disclosure records. Former Rep. Charlie Stenholm (D-Texas) is lobbying for the coalition.

Olsson, etc. is not a person but a law firm. And, the organization is not the National Geospatial Coalition (no such thing so far as I could find) but rather the Agriculture Geospatial Coalition, LLC, which I wrote about in 2009 (APB coverage).

- The Hill

Autodesk Hooks up With Pitney Bowes Software (No, Really!)

With no warning from either side comes the bizarre news that Autodesk, specifically the infrastrucure/BIM part is hooking up with Pitney Bowes "to help infrastructure owners and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) organizations make more informed decisions and drive greater efficiencies across the plan, design, build, manage lifecycle of infrastructure." 

Continue reading...

Hexagon = Intergraph+ERDAS+LeicaGeo+Metrology; So what do you think? #hex11

I don't think I've ever been asked that questions so many times in one day. Along with, "will the merger work?" The short answer is that it's for the clients of Hexagon to decide, not me. For the record, I stated last year that I thought this merger offered great synergy and was a bow shout at Esri. My thinking is slightly different today.

To think about Hexagon's acquisition of first ERDAS then Intergraph as only a geospatial play or only a remote sensing play or only a geopositioning play (Leica Geosystems) or for that matter a metrology (Hexagon Metrology) play would be narrow minded. This is why Ola Rollen, CEO, suggested as much during his press conference at this conference in 2010.  While the addition of all of these software and hardware products have appealing synergies and integration possibilities, the company strategy is way beyond simple compound addition. It's also simplistic to think of this as an "enterprise IT" play. Again, it wouldn't tell the whole story.

Rollen positioned the combination of solution expertise as having the ability to solve project lifecycle management problems, from design through construction and all the way to post-construction maintenance. If this has a familiar ring I think that's because it sounds more like that of an Autodesk or a Bentley Systems strategy rather than Esri. Perhaps therein lies the possibility of a Hexagon juggernaut because it has all those "arrows in its quiver." But I perceive that Rollen and his management  team care less about the competition and more about seeking the best infrastructure workflows that make the most sense in industries from plant design to public safety.

Listen to the language used in the keynote presentations by the Hexagon management team:
"Provide new technology to improve productivity by 40% in our agriculture business" - Rollen
"We must digitally preserve and share our history" - Jürgon Dold, Hexagon Geosystems (Leica)
" Design-build -operate … Best of class solutions in technology" - Gerhard Salinger (Hexagon, Process, Power and Marine (PPM)
"The future needs innovation" - John Graham, Intergraph SG&I

Other things mentioned were the challenges of "unsustainable growth," "demographic changes" and the use of "renewable resources." To be frank, I thought for a moment that I was indeed early to the Esri UC as these messages are more commonly heard in that forum.

I though it was odd, too, that cloud computing was not mentioned as a strategy in any of the keynote presentations by the division presidents. As I thought about it, it makes sense that this too might be thinking too product centric, something that Hexagon does not want to offer. Because, to talk about the cloud means that you must discuss product features and functions moving to a SaaS environment. If that's what a client wants then I think Hexagon would offer it but that deals with product and not workflow; features and not functional solutions.

Hexagon offered broad visions that gets hearts pounding. But at the end of the day, it's products that sell. That's what must happen for customers to completely buy into the vision. After talking with product managers (see my other reports), I see that happening and I think customers will demand lots of demos and pilot projects to see if it really works as advertised.

However, If Intergraph had perhaps lost its voice since Jim Meadlock and Bob Thurber departed years ago, it may have found it once again.

[Disclosure: Travel for this trip was supported by Hexagon]

Hexagon 2011 - Keynote Presentation by John Graham, President, Security, Government and Infrastructure Division #hex11

In this presentation, John Graham, Hexagon's president of Security, Government and Infrastructure, provides an overview of the company's product integration strategy for geospatial technology products and solutions.

Continue reading...