Hello there! I’m Josh!
I’ve been at Kendall County, IL, and a member of ILGISA, since 2019.
Like a lot of folks, I didn’t set out to be a GIS Person, I sort of fell into it on my way to something else. Thought I would be doing environmental research and fieldwork. My friend and advisor said I really ought to look into GIS to round out my skills.
I figured, sure, why not. Well, once I realized what GIS was, I was sold.
In hindsight, it should have been obvious, but oh well!
Working for the Man
I love being a public servant and finding ways for GIS to make Kendall County run just a little better. It started with nudging boundaries in ArcMap, but over the years, we’ve automated away a lot of the boring stuff, and that’s freed us up to collaborate with other departments.
Across the County, there has been a lot of low-hanging fruit. People storing addresses in Excel, doing fieldwork on paper, using Google Maps to look up addresses. It’s been great to get more value out of our Esri license; heaven knows we weren’t going to be using field apps to update our tax maps.
Involvement with ILGISA
There was one year, maybe 2021 or 2022, but I remember feeling pretty nonplussed about the annual conference. In the closing remarks, one of the board members said something to the effect of:
If you aren’t seeing the kind of content that interests you here, consider becoming a presenter!
Well, I felt pretty seen. So I decided to start submitting stuff! And that’s when I really started to get into ILGISA. You get out of something what you put into it, right? And now I was invested, I cared about what this organization could be.
I got elected to the Board in 2023, and have been happy to contribute my efforts to ILGISA’s success since then.
I may elaborate more later, but that’s your intro to me for now.