General News
GIS Day Expo 2005
By Karen Tuerk, GIS Certificate Program Manager
On November 16th the Department held the third-annual GIS Day Expo at the Memorial Union. 40 organizations took part this year, to demonstrate how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is used for planning, analysis, management, problem-solving and education. UW students and faculty/staff, local and state agency employees, area high school students and member of the general public attended the event.
The Expo once again consisted of exhibitor's booths, a map gallery (link to gallery page) and a speaker seminar (link to speaker page).
Twelve presentations where given. Topics ranged from a basic introductory
GIS talk to discussions of GIS applications in a variety of fields to
demonstrations of new GIS tools and resources. Robinson Map Librarian,
Jaime Martindale presented information with other campus representatives
on GIS data, software and other resources available on the UW-Madison
campus. There was a special presentation by the new state Geographic
Information Officer (GIO), Dave Mockert.
Photo at left: Prof. Mark Harrower holds an interactive web-based map demo of his students' class projects.
In addition to volunteering at this year's event, the undergraduate
Geography Club organized a "Where in the World?" contest with
aerial photographs from the Robinson Map Library. The club donated their
infamous Geography Club Cow T-shirts to the 3 winners (a three-way tie
of perfect scores!). 
Club president and contest organizer, Ben Spaier,
reports that next year's contest will have to be a lot harder for this
geographically savvy crowd.
Another new feature of the Expo was an exhibit by local artist Leah Evans of quilted maps, bringing the high-tech in contrast with "primitive" artistic rending of maps and satellite imagery.
The event ended with a door-prize drawing (link to door prize page) of many fabulous prizes donated by the following participating organizations: UW Land Information Computer Graphics Facility, UW Environmental Remote Sensing Program, the State Cartographer's Office, the National Park Service, UW-Aquatic Sciences Center, ESRI, Leica Geosystems, Mapping Specialists and the Department's Certificate program and Geography Club.
For more information and a list of all participants see: www.geography.wisc.edu/GISDay.
Are you a Geography Department alumnus who uses GIS? Would you like to present or exhibit at next year's event? Contact us at kstuerk@wisc.edu or 608-265-9975.
Photo at left: Michael Brandt, from the Non-Profit Center of Milwaukee is the lucky winner of a GIS Day mouse-pad.
