BTAA GIS Conference 2022 Wrap-Up Report

Issued: December 15, 2022

Summary

Established in 2020, the BTAA GIS Conference is a virtual event organized by geospatial information users and educators in Big Ten institutions to present their work, exchange information, and develop potential collaborations. It is open to all participants, including those outside the BTAA network. 

The third annual BTAA GIS Conference was held on Tuesday, November 15th, 2022. The conference spanned the hours of 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM Central Standard Time. The general schedule involved:

• Short Introduction (5 minutes)
• Lightning Talks (50 minutes)
• Three Presentation Sessions (1 hour each)
• Keynote (1 hour)
• Professional Development and Career Panel (1 hour)

Conference Statistics 2022

Keynote Speech

We invited two speakers from Native Land Digital to give our keynote speech. The organization itself chose which members of their team (Tanya Ruka and Rudo Kemper) would deliver the speech. The BTAA-GIN provided a $1000 honorarium to each speaker. This cost ($2000 total) was the only expense incurred by the conference outside of in-kind staff time.

BTAA GIS Conference 2022 Planning Group:

The Conference planning group met 8 times between June and November. The group divided up roles and responsibilities by identifying task leads, including communicating with the keynote speaker, managing the website pages, issuing proposals, putting the conference agenda together, building the map gallery, coordinating Zoom, and editing the videos. See Appendix 1 for the member list.

Timeline of Planning Group Activities

Key Takeaways

Plusses

• We found that divvying up responsibilities helped us understand individual expectations better and took the burden off of the chairperson to lead all the activities.
• The Slack Channel was helpful and timely for communication.
• Working with the BTAA was a vast improvement in promotion and coordination.
• We had approximately double the engagement compared to last year:

• 2021: 162 registrants, 96 unique attendees
• 2022: 307 registrants, 193 unique attendees

Minuses

• The facilitators had some challenges doing the screen sharing for presenters.
• We did not figure out how to do a “backstage” area to let someone test their microphone and video before presenting.
• Several presenters went over time, and we did not have a strategy in place to alert them.

Planned changes for next year

• The Community Engagement Committee will take over the pre-planning activities in the coming years.
• After the conference, we put together a planning document to help determine the roles needed and the activities to schedule.

Appendix 1: BTAA GIS Conference 2022 Members

• Karen Majewicz (Chair), Geospatial Project Manager & Metadata Coordinator, University of Minnesota
• Tara Anthony, GIS Specialist, Penn State University
• Caroline Kayko, Map and Geospatial Data Librarian, University of Michigan
• Shirley Li, GIS Analyst, Purdue University
• Laura Kane McElfresh, Cartographic Metadata Librarian, University of Minnesota
• Theresa Quill, Map and Spatial Data Librarian, Indiana University
• Josh Sadvari, Geospatial Information Librarian, Ohio State University
• Nicole Scholtz, Librarian for Geospatial and Numeric Data, University of Michigan
• Amanda Tickner, GIS Specialist, Michigan State University

Appendix 2: Full Conference Schedule

9:00 - 9:10 CST / 10:00 - 10:10 EST - Welcome

9:10 - 9:50 CST / 10:10 - 10:50 EST - Lightning Talks

• 1. Range Shifts Predicted with Climate Change in a Common North American Songbird
• 2. Estimating Urban Rooftop Solar Power Production Potential In Chicago
• 3. Developing A Predictive Cultural Heritage Model of Michigan
• 4. Deep learning-based tree species identification using UAV RGB images
• 5. How would SES and neighborhood environment influence individuals' physical inactivity and psychological distress in the City of Chicago?

9:50 - 10:00 CST / 10:50 - 11:00 EST - Break

10:00 - 11:00 CST / 11:00 - 12:00 EST - Presentations Session 1: Justice and Social Geography

• Reconstructing Historical Neighborhoods from historic Sanborn Maps Using Machine Learning
• Using maps to communicate the relationship between broadband and health
• Overcoming the challenges of developing a geospatial database for longitudinal study of urban childhood obesity

11:00 - 11:15 CST / 12:00 - 12:15 EST - Break

11:15 - 12:00 CST / 12:15 - 1:00 EST - Presentations Session 2: Climate and Carbon

• Detecting forest carbon storage by remote sensing
• Modeling Present and Future Ecosystem Services and Environmental Justice within an Urban-Coastal Watershed

12:00 - 1:00 CST / 1:00 - 2:00 EST - LUNCH BREAK

1:00 - 2:00 CST / 2:00 - 3:00 EST - Keynote - Our Home on Native Land: Connecting People and Stories using Indigenous Geographies

2:00 - 2:10 CST / 3:00 - 3:10 EST - Break

2:10 - 2:50 CST / 3:10 - 3:50 EST - Presentations Session 3: GIS Data: Infrastructure and Application

• Revitalizing the Indiana Spatial Data Portal
• Geospatial Analysis of Fire Incidents in Pittsburgh using SimplyAnalytics

2:50 - 3:00 CST / 3:50 - 4:00 EST - Break

3:00 - 4:00 CST / 4:00 - 5:00 EST - Professional Development and Career Panels

• Panel 1: How to Keep Learning After Graduation: Professional Development and Continuing Education in the Spatial Workforce
• Panel 2: URISA BIG 10 Alumni Panel