It has been an excellent year for the Florida Region of ASPRS, we have built upon the traditions we started in 2008 and expanded on them in 2009.
We had two technical meetings this year. We had our Second Annual Geospatial Symposium in Gainesville, FL at the Best Western Gateway Grand on February 24th & 25th, with multiple presenters, paid sponsors and a very well attended Certification Preparation Course with Bob Burtch. Information on the Symposium can be found by downloading the agenda at the following link: http://flasprs.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/2ndannualgeosympprogram.pdf, it is also attahed. Special thanks to Brian Murphy for organizing the event once again this year. It was very well attended and much expanded from last year. We advertised on our website and at all of the events we attended
In 2010 we plan to participate in the ASPRS Fall Conference and will temporarily suspend the Symposium. It was the decision of the Florida Board to host a Symposium on the years that there will be no National ASPRS meetings in the state, so that we can focus our energies on one main Technical meeting per year.
In 2009 we once again participated in the Annual Florida Surveyors and Mappers Conference with another full day of classes, three 2 hour presentations, taught by our Board Members, as well as a Florida Region ASPRS exhibit booth. This was also advertised on our website www.flasprs.org and the website for FSMS http://www.fsms.org . Conference schedule attached with ASPRS track highlighted. At both of the Technical meetings we held board meetings where all were invited to attend and participate; several members took advantage of this and joined us for our meeting.
We advertised the open positions for the Board of Directors on the website and had 4 candidates for 3 positions. We sent out approximately 450 ballots and received 85 ballots returned.
The Region Newsletter has become fully digital and is hosted on our website as our weblog section
Here you can find out all the happenings and events for the Region as well as articles from our members. When a new article/announcement is posted it is automatically sent via email to all of our members. This also includes a Quarterly President’s Message to keep everyone informed of Region activities.
Our membership committee and Board members have contacted all of the unpaid members in the Region via phone or email, unless their information was out of date and they were not able to be located. The campaign spreadsheet is attached.
In an effort to recruit new members we were able to exhibit this year at the University of South Florida GIS Day (and hope to join in with them again and other GIS events in the future) http://flasprs.org/blog/?p=116 In April of 2009 the FL Region ASPRS additionally had an exhibit booth at the National GITA Conference held here in Tampa.
Our National Director, Jeff Young, has attended all of the National meetings and has passed his report along to the board members and it is available to all FL Region members.
In 2009 we also started a new tradition for Awards to honor members and non-members in our Profession with a 1 year full membership and one year paid renewal.
The Award will be an Annual Professional Recognition Award and the Nominees will be selected by our members via an online Nomination form to be found on the website http://flasprs.org/blog/?p=109 . After the nominations are collected the Board will read them over and vote for the best candidates for both Awards in 2010.
The Florida Region has completed all of the requirements under Article V Section 6 of the bylaws in order to receive our full Region Rebate for 2009. This will be my last post as President and I want to be the first to welcome incoming President Evan Brown and wish him success in his endeavors in the coming years.
Regards,
Erin McCormick
Florida Region President ASPRS
