Activities and Events
2008
- Project sustainability planning: Nandhini and several key participants from NNNN and WHP have been working hard this year, together with Sarah and the executive directors, to prepare for the end of the funded portion of the project. We have assembled all maps and other resources created over the past 5 years into digital and hard copy 'resource books' for ongoing use in the community. Nandhini and Kate Gems (NNNN) have pulled together and expanded the materials from all of the Community GIS tutorial session and Winter/Summer Workshops into a training handbook for future GIS users at both organizations. Thanks, Kate and Nandhini! Finally, with a UW-based research assistant, Milissa Orzolek, we prepared a funding resource guide, for efforts to continue funding technology efforts at WHPFCDC and NNNN. Thanks, Milissa!
- June 2008: Celebration Luncheon: In June, we celebrated the conclusion of 5 years of hard work, with a luncheon hosted at DePaul's Egan Center. We presented certificates to all community participants, as well as the completed resource books for future use. Sarah will continue to working to disseminate some of our project findings, and we look forward to the continued spread of GIS capacities in Humboldt Park and beyond!
- Our book chapter is out! The book chapter we
wrote last year has been published, and we are pleased to see it in
print at last. The full citation information is:
2008. Elwood, S., Feliciano, R., Gems, K., Gulasingam, N., Howard, W., Mackin, R.,
2007
- Ongoing: Extending Community GIS tutorials & work sessions. As always, thanks Nandhini, for organizing and facilitating our weekly work sessions. and welcome to new participants from other organizations and parts of the city!
- June 2007: Annual summer workshop with CommunityGIS participants. After last year's land audit project, this year we concentrated on acquiring data from secondary sources, especially new spatial data being made available by the City of Chicago.
- We are writing a book chapter! We've been invited to contribute a chapter to an edited book on particiaptory action research. During Sarah's June visit to Chicago, everyone recorded their experiences and feedback on tape, and we will pull together these remarks into a book chapter in the next 6 months or so.
2006
- Ongoing: Extending Community GIS tutorials & work sessions. Thanks, Nandhini, for organizing and facilitating our weekly work sessions. Welcome to new participants from other organizations and parts of the city, and welcome back to long-term participants who are sticking with the project even as you start new jobs elsewhere!
- May 2006: Annual summer workshop with CommunityGIS participants. This year, instead of taking a 'tutorial and review' approach to the workshop, we worked on creating, practicing and evaluating tools for a 'land audit' field survey of neighborhood conditions. We created a field survey instrument, data classifications, and base map shapefiles for the field survey data, then field- and lab-tested these materials for future use by both groups. We are now joined for the Winter and Summer workshops by staff from other community-based organizations in the Humboldt Park area and beyond. Thanks to those NNNN and WHPFCDC participants whose ideas for these new collaborations are helping us broaden the impact of CommunityGIS's resources across the community.
- December 2006: At this year's annual winter workship, we'll work on some new skills for incorporating locally-gathered information into a GIS. Both groups are doing much more mapping that begins with gathering their own data, so we want to focus on some practical ways of incorporating that information for mapping purposes.
2005
- April 2005: ESRI Business Development Summit in Chicago.
Nandhini and Reid attended this on behalf of CommunityGIS, to
learn more about other efforts to use GIS in local economic
development. The meeting organizers were interested in including
some of your work at next year's meeting so keep an eye out
for more information from Nandhini.
- June 2005: Community GIS Refresher workshops
and with NNNN and WHPFCDC participants. At this 2-day session,
we reviewed some frequently used spatial data collection and
analysis skills unique to our project's community development
applications, practiced gathering spatial data with handheld
GPS units (and adding attribute data to those points), and introduced
the data and map download procedures from this website. Click
here for a copy of the
workshop tutorial packet. And click here
to see a few pictures of the workshop in action!
- September 2005: ArcGIS skill-building with new staff at NNNN.
- October 2005: Extending CommunityGIS tutorials. The NNNN Community Mapping Lab is hosting weekly tutorials so that some of the HPEP partner agencies can get some experience with GIS. Welcome, new participants, and thanks to everyone at NNNN for this great idea in extending the CommunityGIS Project's resources across the community.
- December 2005: Community GIS Winter Workshop with NNNN, WHPFCDC, and new community organization participants from the HPEP network. At this 1-day session, small working groups practiced designing and planning a small GIS application from start to finish, and breaking down the process of data collection and preparation into clearer steps. Thanks, Nandhini G., for developing the project design protocol! Click here for a copy of the Winter Workshop packet.
2004
- April/November: Continuing ArcGIS training with NNNN
& WHPFCDC staff members
- January - June: Community Study of greater Humboldt
Park area completed by DePaul students, in collaboration with
NNNN and WHPFCDC staff. The Community Study surveyed approximately
900 properties on major streets for land use, business use,
building conditions, and residential occupancy; and developed
several new data layers for the Community GIS Spatial Data Library
(environmental contamination and abatement, zoning, and more).