Tomorrow night is the second meeting of GeoDC, a new group meant to bring together all the people doing great mapping work in Washington, DC to share ideas and learn from each other. Tomorrow’s meetup will kick off with three short presentations:

• Luke Beckman of InSTEDD will present on GeoChat, a tool that integrates SMS with location awareness and mapping to help coordinate emergency response.

• Mike Alonzo of Casey Trees will talk about how his organization uses GIS to study DC’s tree resources in order to better target their activities and reach out to the public.

• Bob Bouvier will discuss how he uses open source GIS technology at DAI to help monitor and control Avian Influenza outbreaks in Indonesia.

After the presentations, we’ll have lightning talks from Kate Chapman of MappingDC, the district’s local Open Street Map group, and other members of the community. We’ll get started at 7:00 pm at Stetson’s Famous Bar and Grill and save some time at the end of the meetup for beer, foosball, and open discussions. Hope to see you there. More information about the speakers and their projects is available below.

Luke arrived at InSTEDD in the spring of 2007 and serves as the U.S. National Response Liaison developing InSTEDD’s efforts in Humanitarian Relief and Disaster Response. In that position he manages relationships with crisis response organizations and his focus is geographical rather than topical, focused primarily on issues within US borders. Luke has been working in disaster response and pandemic influenza for the past four years, focusing on community resilience and the increasing of collaboration between citizens and the government in times of crisis.

Mike joined Casey Trees in 2007 in the role of GIS Specialist. He holds a B.A. in Geography from Middlebury College and an M.A. also in Geography from the University of Denver. Prior to arriving at Casey Trees, Mike worked as a GIS consultant for a community in suburban Denver and as a health care IT consultant in Madison, Wisconsin. Mike is glad he returned to his childhood competencies of making maps and digging holes.

A GIS team leader at DAI, Bob has 14 years of international experience in survey design, relational database development, remote sensing, and GIS. He works primarily in sustainable international development, natural resource management, and feasibility studies, and is skilled in GIS development for international development program planning, monitoring, and reporting. Before joining DAI, Mr. Bouvier worked on long-term community development and survey efforts in Southeast Asia. He holds master’s degrees in biology from Humboldt State University and GIS and International Development from Clark University