KCGIS Center News

It's on again—the latest edition of the King County GIS Center's unique, week-long, integrated series of hands-on GIS classes taught by working professionals. If you're one of the registered students, Welcome! If you aren't and want to see what you're missing, check out the Academy page. And then look forward to joining us for the next session scheduled for the week of October 7–11.

The King County GIS Center Training Program offers a variety of standard and custom GIS classes and workshops in its Seattle training facility and at customer locations. For more information see: www.kingcounty.gov/gis/training  or contact Cheryl Wilder, cheryl.wilder@kingcounty.gov.

The King County GIS Center (KCGISC) and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) have collaborated to develop and present custom GIS workshops for WDFW employees which incorporate their own departmental data and procedures. WDFW has made significant investments in GIS in recent years, and one of the ways it is now leveraging those investments is to show its diverse staff the numerous applications GIS data and analysis have for their many programs. Department leaders decided that hands-on, WDFW-focused, GIS workshops could inspire their staff to enhance their projects, as well as day-to-day work activities, through the application of GIS tools, resources, and skills. They turned to the KCGIS Center Training Program for help.

WDFW wanted to develop workshops targeted at two skill levels: one workshop would teach basic map layout and design using Esri’s ArcGIS software, and one would teach intermediate GIS data management and analysis techniques. KCGISC trainers worked with WDFW staff to author the workshops, and then taught each workshop twice to a diverse group of department staff at the WDFW annual employee conference in Wenatchee in November of 2012.

Reviews from the workshop students were uniformly positive and WDFW has already expressed a desire to work with KCGISC to develop more training offerings. We look forward to supporting WDFW’s continuing efforts to put GIS to work throughout its organization!

The King County GIS Center Training Program offers a variety of standard and custom GIS classes and workshops in its Seattle training facility and at customer locations. For more information about bringing KCGIS training to your organization see: www.kingcounty.gov/gis/training  or contact Cheryl Wilder, cheryl.wilder@kingcounty.gov.