Hi All! I am the GIS Technician in the Spatial Analysis Lab (SAL). My job is to support all the courses and research being conducted in an in conjunction with the SAL. While I get to do quite a bit of analysis in my job, I also have to keep all the wheels moving with back end data management and organizational efforts. That means I don’t always get to do all the fun exciting mapping projects that I and others think up! I’m excited for this course to give me more time to work on visualizations and online mapping presentations.
Last semester I played around with Carto DB for the first time and really enjoyed it. However, I quickly realized there are many ways to customize the applications and I did not have enough time to teach myself. I am looking forward to gaining more experience working with this program that will translate into other mapping alternatives as well. I have used ArcGIS Online quite extensively, but not spent nearly the amount of time on the style/visualization aspects as on the back end data management side. I think this class and the assignments for it will help me sit down and spend time thinking about what looks nice, what can I change/alter, and why do I want to display data in this way? Since I am often so busy juggling multiple projects in my position I don’t focus on the striking final products. I think this class will help me round out and practice my skills even more!