The 2009 Geospatial Technology Competition has been a wild and crazy journey.  It all started just over five weeks ago with a project manual being sent by Digital Quest.  The project entailed doing a site suitability analysis of a school campus to locate a suitable garden spot.  It took the entire five weeks, but I was able to get it completed along with a written and oral presentation.

I arrived in Kansas City, MO on Monday to check-in and attend the orientation for the event.  The check-in was interesting as they tried to tell me that I needed to check with my NC delegation to obtain my info.  I however did not go through my local delegation and chose the option of direct membership (Read more about that: Registration Clarification or SkillsUSA Registration and the Social Media Scene #GeoComp09 ).  Once they realized that I was the Geospatial contestant the registration people knew who I was.  I apparently was a very unique situation.  They hooked me up with my name badge and conference materials.

With all of my check-in stuff out of the way, I proceeded to the orientation room.  There were three other contestants there from Central New Mexico Community College.  Shortly thereafter, Austin Smith and Eddie Hanebuth with Digital Quest arrived to fill us in on what to expect.  They told us that we would take a 100 multiple choice test and a five story problems to solve with the ArcGIS software.  They then went to start listening to our project presentations.  We all however didn’t expect to do them until Tuesday.  Thankfully a couple of the others did not have the presentation with them, so that part got moved back until after the exams.

On Tuesday morning, I arrived ready to take this massive exam.  The exam was not as bad as I expected.  There were about 10 questions I was not for sure on but was able to come to reasonable answer.  Once that had been completed the story problem part was given to me.  They loaded the data on my computer and I was off.  Everything seemed straight forward.  The first four problems went by fairly easily.  I had some difficulties with the fifth.  I wasn’t sure how long it might take, so I did not spend too much time on the first problems.  I focused on getting the main parts completed and decided to leave the sprucing up of the maps to the very end.  Lunch was drawing near so I figured that I would focus on the last question after lunch.

Lunch was pretty good.  There was a roast beef sandwich with chips and a cookie.  The coke that came along probably did me more good.  After about a half hour break, I started back on the problem.  The data seemed to have projection issues.  I tried setting its projection with about ten difference projections; still nothing worked.  Come to find out two hours later the data was corrupted.  The coordinate system was messed up.  New data was passed out and we were on our way again.  The actual problem for number five was fairly simple.  It was complete in about 15 minutes.  I reviewed over my answers (PDF Maps) and submitted the work.

At 3:00 pm we gathered for our presentations.  The folks from Central New Mexico Community College did all of their presentations first.  They all were pretty good.  I was able to tell that some spent a little more time than others, but they were all put together fairly well.  I then presented my project.  Everything seemed to go well until the last few slides.  My computer battery died and I had to wing it.  That wasn’t a problem though as I made it though fine.  I did however go a bit over the ten minute time limit.  All in all it was an exciting day.  I was exhausted but happy with what I brought forth.

The awards presentation was on Wednesday.  It was combined with the Advisor Call to Action Session.  It all came down to this one moment.  They called out the third place winner as Rachel Harris of Central N.M. Community College (bronze), the second place winner was Denver Dobbins of Central New Mexico Community College (silver), and the first place winner was Timothy Hales of Central Piedmont Community College.  I was very excited and relieved.  The medals were presented by LTG Benjamin C. Freakley of the U.S. Army Accessions Command.

Here are some pictures from the competition.  A couple were taken by SkillsUSA.