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By markgreninger, on November 30th, 2011  Passing this along:
URISA is pleased to announce the results of its latest salary survey for GIS professionals. The 2011 publication has been further expanded and includes a much wider-range of detailed information. Additions include more job titles and information pertaining to the increase/decrease of department size, professional certification, specific technical skills and soft skills and salary information. This is an ideal resource for both job seekers and also for those who are hiring GIS staff in 2012.
For a limited time, those who purchase the 2011 salary survey will also receive a copy of the 2007 salary survey (while quantities last). The publication is available on CD to URISA International members for $99 and Nonmembers for $199.
The 2011 Salary Survey addresses the following questions:
- How have salary levels changed since 2007?
- Have GIS departments increased in size?
- Are more non-technical skills required?
- What GIS software proficiencies are necessary?
- What benefits do employers typically offer?
- How long is the average workweek?
- How has GIS certification impacted salaries?
- Are GIS professionals actively pursuing continuing education?
Here’s a preview of information included in this year’s Salary Survey:
- GISPs, on average, earned $10,000 more than non-GISPs
- The average salary of survey respondents was $61,540 – an increase of 2.5%
- GIS Managers saw a 3.8% increase in salary in 2010-2011 – from $67,302 to $69,842
- Over 65% of respondents are employed within some level of government, from local to federal agencies
- Most respondents to this survey hold GIS-related titles, with many possessing management responsibilities
The URISA Salary Survey debuted in 1998 to keep GIS and IT Professionals informed of the latest information related to salary, required skills, job advancement and professional certification. To purchase the URISA 2011 Salary Survey for GIS Professionals, or for additional information, please visit www.urisa.org/2011SalarySurvey .
By markgreninger, on November 28th, 2011 LA NOW (the County’s channel) profiled GIS Day – it’s a great little clip at the beginning of the segment.
Take a look – some of our GIS folks were profiled!
http://lacounty.smugmug.com/Other/LANow/14373652_ETmPu#1605258277_KBDVP8v-A-LB
By markgreninger, on November 23rd, 2011 With the County moving more and more toward virtualization, I found this very nice document discussing some testing that VMWare and ESRI did to test virtual vs. physical machines.
Esri ArcGIS Server 10 for VMware Infrastructure (.pdf file)
It includes some very nice benchmarks.
Some quick takeaways:
- Doubling the number of cores doesn’t appear to double capacity. A single 4-core machine provides 73% of the capacity of an 8 core machine in terms of transaction capacity, not the 50% you might expect.
- Virtual machines, if configured correctly, will have similar capacity to physical machines (52,344 vs. 56,574 transactions per hour for physical and virtual setups, respectively).
- The optimal setup for virtualization causes issues that may well impact the viability of virtualization.
Let me explain #3.
A physical machine with 8 cores means one installation of the OS, one hard disk supporting the environment, etc. The optimal virtual machine setup has 8 virtual computers, each with one one virtual CPU (vCPU). One machine runs the ArcGIS Server SOM, which distributes mapping requests to 7 machines (each with 1 vCPU) running the SOC.
Basically we will now need to license, maintain, patch, and deal with 8 different machines as opposed to one. Imagine having to install ArcGIS Server Service Pack 1 on 8 machines instead of just 1. Theoretically with virtualization you just do it once and then recreate the images, but with each server requiring a different name, this may not be feasible.
One very much hidden piece to this covers the disk space. Each virtual server would need to have space for the Operating System, ArcGIS Server, security, etc. Let’s say around 100 Gb. That means that we would need to have 800 Gb of space to run this. Most virtual environments charge for disk space – rates vary, but per Gb charges are not inexpensive especially on fast SANs that are used for this type of stuff.
Even with costs for storage going down, it’s not free.
So – as we expand we’ll do a hybrid model – getting some physical and some virtual machines. We had major problems with virtual machines in the past, and have transitioned back to physical. I am going to be more careful this time. Virtualizing machines generally sounds good, but do it carefully.
By markgreninger, on November 23rd, 2011
By markgreninger, on November 21st, 2011 Thanks Doug for passing along:
College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita is pleased to announce the above-referenced employment opportunity. The Employment announcement for this position, which includes all requirements, and application materials may be downloaded from our website: http://www.canyons.edu/L2_Jobs.asp or may be requested by calling our job line 661-259-7800, ext. 7231, or our office 661-362-3428.
This information was provided to you by the CCC Registry as a result of your voluntary registration at www.cccregistry.org.
Please use the contact information provided above to contact the college directly should you have any inquiries about the contents of this email.
To unsubscribe from the CCC Registry please reply to this email and type “Remove” in the subject line. Thank you.
By markgreninger, on November 18th, 2011  The LA County Solar Map (http://solarmap.lacounty.gov) is featured in this fall’s Environmental Observer (click here to read). It gives good background on what the application does and its benefits.
Download and read the Environmental Observer article.
By markgreninger, on November 17th, 2011  Join us at the Edison This year the GIS Day Committee is having an apres event social. It will be on Thursday (the day after GIS Day) since many of us are going to be pretty tired after a long day of organizing.
We invited anyone to join us at the Edison, which is apparently a very cool place in Downtown LA. See you there at 5 pm!
Los Angeles County GIS Day After Social Flyer
Edison Website
By markgreninger, on November 17th, 2011
By markgreninger, on November 16th, 2011 GIS day is a great success! Thank you everyone who came and made it another wonderful event!
Here is a picture of Richard Sanchez, CIO, kicking things off.
By markgreninger, on November 16th, 2011 Happy GIS Day everyone! This is LA County’s 4th GIS Day (if the 5th anniversary is wood, is this the cardboard anniversary?)
Looking forward to a wonderful event today. I’ll be posting from time to time to keep everyone up on what’s going on. Hopefully if you get this you’ll be able to make it, and make it the best event we’ve had!
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