Dear CGIA Members,
It's been a tumultuous start to 2025 for many of our members. Just over a quarter of CGIA's followers are based in the Los Angeles area and I know that several of our board members and many of our members have been affected in some way by the wildfires. I know I speak for all of the board when I say that my heart goes out to those who have lost their homes, businesses, and more. And, of course, sincere thanks to those within the geospatial community who are helping with the recovery effort through analysis, visualization, volunteer work, and everything else.
I'm coming up now to the halfway point of my time as Chair. It always takes a month or two for the new board to find their feet, but we've already seen a lot of activity, including:
- The return of the CGIA Community Forum with its exceptional first event on LiDAR for California.
- The CGIA Annual Meeting.
- Planning for this year's webinar series.
- Planning for this year's CGIA Awards.
- Analysis and work on developing advice relating to the Surveying profession as it affects geospatial professionals.
- Ongoing cleanup and consolidation of CGIA's LinkedIn accounts.
- Cleanup of CGIA's YouTube channel.
We have a lot of exciting things coming up, too. We hope to see many of our members at the CalGIS conference in Sonoma County from April 14-16. We are also planning several exciting initiatives which will enable us to offer our members exciting new opportunities. There will be more on that to come!
If you would like to help support these activities and more then please encourage your friends to join! If you're reading this and aren't already a member, these are the kinds of activities that are supported by becoming a CGIA member. Please join today! On top of the list above, you can find details of the member benefits here.
For now, let's hope for some rain where it's needed!
Best wishes,
Roland Martin, CGIA Chair 2024-2025 and Associate at Arup.