Surveying, Mapping and GIS

I recently got word via Chuck Ghilani that surveyor, attorney, forester and author Walter G. Robillard will be speaking on Monday, April 23rd at 6 PM in T101 of the Penn State Wilkes-Barre Campus.

Mr. Robillard is a well-known authority on boundaries and legal issues in surveying. I am hoping to attend, and am currently digging through some of his many books as a refresher. I have

to which Mr. Robillard has contributed, particularly on legal aspects.

This event is free, but donations to benefit the Penn State Surveying Honor Society and to defray the cost of bringing Mr. Robillard are greatly appreciated.

I was able to enjoy some time at the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors' 2007 Conference. It was great to see many old friends again, such as the great folks at PSLS that put the conference on, the Penn State Wilkes-Barre Surveying faculty (they have an excellent program there - I was fortunate to be able to tag along as an observer in the last ABET visit to Penn State, and have known Tom Seybert since my own days at Penn State as a student), as well as many fellow surveyors, PAMAGIC members, POBers and other folks - the conversation was great, I got a lot of input and thoughts on Continuing Professional Competency, data standards and geodesy, and many other things swirling around in my life of late.

My focus was to attend some of the GPS sessions, and though I was tied up with many other things, I was actually able to attend some, such as the "Horizontal Control Survey with GPS " session by GPS guru Dr. James P. Reilly, and the "Static GPS Post-Processing" session by Brian Naberezny, of PSU and University of Maine.

I also greatly enjoyed the excellent presentation put on by Patrick Lee, as a Daniel Boone re-enactor. As a pioneer in his westward movements, Daniel Boone was involved in surveying and land grants - and some of my own Searcy ancestors were colleagues of Boone, and were also surveyors in early Kentucky.