Prof-Dev Meeting - Oct 2026

Board and Committees Professional Development Committee
,
1

@prof-dev Okay, here we go! Next meeting is tomorrow. Hopefully keeping it on the lighter side, but there’s plenty to discuss.

If anybody has items they want to add to the agenda, just post below!

Start of a new board term is a time people like to make changes, too. If you’d like to bow out of the committee, let me know, and I can remove you from the committee member list.

Agenda

  1. Introductions? [1]
  2. Annual Conference Followup [2]
    1. GeoLounge
    2. Workshops
    3. Tech support?
  3. Webinars and Workshops
    1. Schedule / format
    2. Topics
    3. Presenters
  4. Cross-Committee Collaboration
    1. Regional meetings
    2. MOOC?

  1. I haven’t heard about anybody new wanting to join, but you never know ↩︎

  2. We want to keep this PD-specific. Talk to Program with most feedback and ideas ↩︎

2

In Attendance

Josh Carlson
Dan Bartlett
Meagan Briganti
Samikshya Pantha
Hunter Ray
Burt McAlpine
Britney West

Meeting Minutes

  1. Called to order at: 14:06
  2. No prior minutes to review / approve
  3. Discussion of agenda items
  4. No action items
  5. Motion to adjourn meeting made by Dan, seconded by Hunter. All in favor. Meeting adjourned at 15:03

Discussion Notes

Bylaws / State Law

Committee minutes are required. Votes are necessary for committee actions.
ILGISA bylaws seem to suggest Robert’s rules should apply to committees as well?

We will be calling things to order, approving agendas, etc., same as the board itself.

Josh has reached out to governance to discuss these items, see if there is clarity the board wants to provide or bylaw changes that need to be considered. Out of an abundance of caution, we will do our best to be compliant with the law in how we operate.

Taking detailed minutes also benefits committee members who cannot attend a meeting, keeps them in the loop.

Chairship

Dan Bartlett will co-chair with Josh, gradually taking on chairship until he is sole chair of the committee. At that point, Josh will remain on committee as regular member.

Dan will follow up with Josh separately on the matter as we plan out future meetings.

Conference Followup

GeoLounge had great attendance, good feedback from those who went. Exhibitors maybe didn’t feel like they were “allowed” to be there?

Other folks were busy with sessions, didn’t have time to make it in. But a small group of folks was present most of the conference. Certainly a feature to bring back next time as well.

Can we get refreshments in there?

Could the GeoLounge open earlier? Have tech support in there before the main event starts? No reason not to, and no other conference sessions conflicting.

Tech Support

GeoLounge was too informal, and there was no real visibility to show that a person was there to ask or answer any technical questions. Tech support doesn’t have to be super formal, but does need a dedicated space. Neither the lounge nor the tech lab should have to sacrifice their function for the other.

May need to communicate with Program about potential space at future conferences. Will decide based on space whether tech can get its own room, or if there are other ways to demarcate a different zone in the lounge.

GISP Points

Could we get someone from GISCI to clarify how much the different involvement levels count? Committee is so many points, webinar another value, etc.? Help make the case to presenters, panelists, and so on, how much they stand to benefit in that way.

Webinars / Workshops

Alternate month schedule is fine with us, but members note it is largely participant dependent. 6 webinars and 6 workshop topics per year will be the goal, but we will be flexible.

Workshops

Topics are fairly evergreen. Fundamentals, repeatable. Multi-session topics that stand alone but build on one another.

Dan has a topic he’s working on related to NAIP imagery and pre-trained models, will follow up about getting it on schedule.

Webinars

Three folks sort of in the queue that might be scheduled for upcoming months, but schedules have not been confirmed. [1] September’s webinar who had to cancel would like to present still; a downstate GIS admin would like to share what he does. A municipal GIS person would be willing to talk about feature service webhooks in light of S123 webhooks being deprecated.

Besides traditional webinars, having more open discussion web meetings (“virtual panel” or “podcast” style) could be a nice way to have low-prep content that is tailored to our members.

  • Positive Response? Burt says there may be an early 2027 presentation / Q&A that could happen, but will depend on how things go in the transition
  • Statewide Parcels? Reached out to Wisconsin to see if they’re willing to talk about it.

Work with Other Committees

Regionals

Program would like prof-dev to contribute workshops to the regional meetings. 1 hour, around the same topic as the meeting. No disagreement from us.

Moodle / LMS

Could a self-hosted LMS help us deliver workshop content and make workshops easily repeatable? Could it be how we build up a repository of content that benefits our members? Maybe! Could also be a future home of the ILGISA MOOC in coordination with Rich Schultz and the Education Committee.

If we can reduce the overall website budget, we might make the case for running our own LMS.

Considerations

Who maintains it? Who keeps an eye on the content, archives stale stuff? Is it something we will want to / be able to easily delegate?

Like the main website, this will be volunteer-run. Have to make sure this doesn’t impose a burden on the association.

  1. Josh got an email during the meeting about the third one, though it was stated as two during discussion. ↩︎

3

Thanks again, all! A couple items that didn’t make it into discussion:

GISP Points

Regarding GISP points, once you actually log in to the portal, you can find links to the various point schedules:

So, the carrots we can dangle are

Action Points (initial) Points (recertify)
Be on the committee 2 4
Present or be on a panel 1 3
Lead a workshop (per hour) 0.5 1

I am shocked that workshop leaders get less than presenters…

Webinars aren’t specifically called out, but I’d count them same as any presentation / panel.

Other webinars / workshops

@spantha I know I’ve bugged your colleagues about webinars before. You all have some cool projects that I wouldn’t mind hearing about, if you think anybody’s willing to share something they have worked on in the past!

For everybody: attendance at the annual was < 200, but ILGISA’s membership is way higher than that. Plus we don’t record conference sessions. And even at the conference, people are split between concurrent sessions.

All that is to say that even for a well-attended session, the majority of our members missed it. If there were one or two sessions you particularly enjoyed at the annual, or that one of your colleagues talked about, I say go ahead and reach out to that person and ask if they’d be willing to re-present as a webinar! The presentations already exist and everything, and they could get more mileage out of the preparation they did.

1 Like
4

Sure! I can share this with my colleagues.