WELCOME TO PROFESSIONAL SURVEYOR MAGAZINE ONLINE
Response to GIS Blogs on July Editorial
Our July issue focused on surveying for GIS, and in my editorial, I espoused how the survey and GIS communities are harmonizing and surveyors are seeing opportunities in GIS but that there still remained legal licensing issues to resolve. To point this out, I stated that an author withdrew a feature story from the issue because a state licensing board expressed concern to him that it depicted GIS practitioners as doing surveying work and should be licensed to do it.
To set the record straight (and in response to the online conversation here), we had no part in getting that story reviewed by a licensing board or pulling it from the July issue. In this instance, we worked through a company in the industry who assisted us in soliciting the story, but we never received this story. For the record, we would not ourselves ask a government agency to review an article to gain their approval, as we strive for fair and balanced journalism.
While we take no sides in the discussion about the licensure of surveyors and GIS professionals, we are glad to join in the discourse, so both sides can ultimately resolve these issues to everyone's benefit. Fittingly, the topic will be covered in a panel discussion coming up as part of the Survey Summit at the ESRI User Conference in San Diego in early August.
Tom Gibson, PE, Editor
Under Construction
Dear readers,
We're excited to announce that we'll be unveiling a brand-new website with a new look and new features this fall. We'll keep you updated as we near the launch date.
Until then please be patient with the content here. The articles for May, June, and July will all go into our archives as usual, but what's on the page as "our latest issue" may not correspond with the month's issue you have in hand. If you can't find an article by clicking on the latest issue to the left or by searching our archives, email us.
Stay tuned for our new site! We promise it will be worth your wait.
-the staff at PSM
Announcing the 2009 Surveyor's Red Pages
Over a one-year period, more than 100,000 individuals and companies will have looked at and used the inaugural edition of Professional Surveyor Magazine's Surveyor's Red Pages.
Work on the second annual edition has begun. It will provide users with even more details about you and your business.
The 2009 edition will be printed and distributed to our nearly 40,000 subscribers with the November issue of Professional Surveyor Magazine and distributed at several major trade shows, including the ACSM attendee packages. In addition, the 'live' continually updated online version will provide even more information about the companies listed.
- Get listed in the FREE directory portion of the 2009 edition
- Get more information about available advertising possibilities in the 2009 Surveyor's Red Pages
- View the 2008 Surveyor's Red Pages online, as it was printed
- View the updated online Surveyor's Red Pages of surveying companies and organizations
Win a Free HP 35s!
In honor of the 35th anniversary of Hewlett-Packcard's introduction of its HP 35 scientific calculator, so popular amongst surveyors, Professional Surveyor Magazine will be giving away 35 of Hewlett-Packard's newest HP 35s. Every month, three new questions will be posted on our website. The answers can be found in the content of the 2008 Red Pages. We will randomly select three winners every month from the correct responses, and each winner will receive a FREE HP 35s calculator, courtesy of Hewlett-Packard and Professional Surveyor Magazine. The contest ends soon, so enter NOW to win!
GIS — The Greater Extent: We Are the Same, Just Different
By J. Allison Butler, , GISP, AICP
Surveyors and GISers are the same, just different.
In my last column, I suggested that requiring the licensure of GIS professionals as land surveyors was a poor solution to ensuring competency. Before that, I said that trying to license photogrammetrists as surveyors dilutes the surveying profession while doing nothing to increase the quality of photogrammetric products. This time, I am going to go one big step further and suggest that licensure of professional land surveyors has also become a poor solution, and this magazine is my first piece of evidence.
Just look at the articles now being published in Professional Surveyor Magazine that cover aerial photography, GIS, RTK GPS, robotic total stations, terrestrial photogrammetry, precision farming, lidar, and precision construction. Many of the technical topics appearing here are also found in GIS-oriented publications. The surveying and GIS professions share much of the same technological and scientific foundation, but they remain quite distinct in other ways that define them as separate professions.
The tools of boundary surveying and the methods used have evolved, certainly, but not all at once. The old methods work perfectly well for however long it takes for us to acquire new technical skills. Besides, as www.LandSurveyor.us says, "It is important to realize that most Land Surveyors will tell you that surveying is an 'art,' not a 'science'."1 Boundary surveying has always been about the law and its application, the discovery of evidence and its interpretation. This has not changed. It is also what makes surveying a profession.
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Gigglebytes: Down Periscope
By Thomas G. LaCorte, PSM
Surfer dude goes swimming with surveying equipment.
"What's up, dude?" was the greeting I received from my assigned instrument man.
My regular man was out sick. This guy, with long blonde hair and a cocky attitude, was the epitome of a "surfer dude." That's not such a bad thing in itself, but he was obnoxious and rude. More than once he muttered inaudibly, only to have the satisfaction of saying, "Why don't you clean the dinosaur crap out of your ears, old man? Then maybe you can hear me when I speak." I was 25 years old and he was 17.
After several small projects in the morning and a most intolerable lunch together, we reached our assignment for the afternoon. We were to lay out survey control points for a freshly dredged canal for quantities of fill dirt. The canal was very long, so several crews were assigned to this job. After arriving at our section, we got out of the truck to access the situation. I quickly came up with a plan of attack, and it was time to get started.
[...]Don't miss the rest of this and other exciting articles! Subscribe now to Professional Surveyor Magazine, (free of charge in the U.S.).