WGGL and King County host GIS Portal Summit to share knowledge

By Joshua Greenberg (WGGL Chair)

Over 85 GIS users gathered in Seattle at the King County’s King Street Center Conference Center on February 3^rd to share their knowledge and experiences using Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise portal. ArcGIS Enterprise portal “brings together all the geographic information in your ArcGIS platform and shares it throughout your organization” (Esri). It has become clear to organizations that Enterprise portal technology is important to implement. The workshop enabled user experience discussions about Enterprise portal implementation, and addressed questions on how to incorporate existing data and procedures with Enterprise portal, which has been a daunting process to many. Recognizing this challenge to GIS leaders, the Washington Local Government GIS Leaders group (WGGL – A special interest group of WAURISA) stepped in to organize a User Summit to bring everyone together.

Several organizations volunteered to provide panelists to describe their experiences on four topics which included;

Enterprise Portal Architecture
Collaboration: Portal to Portal and Portal to AGOL
Governance, Security, and Authentication
Data Management and Metadata

Panelists represented King County, City of Seattle, Snohomish County, and the City of Kent. Representatives from Esri were also on hand to answer questions and talk about the Collaboration tools and patterns of portal.

Shane Clarke with Esri talks about Collaboration tools at the 2020 Portal User Summit

Due to a generous partnership with King County and WAURISA, the cost of the conference was affordable at only $30 each for the entire daylong session. The response to this event overwhelmed organizers and the event sold out in just a couple weeks. This highlights what a great GIS community Washington State has and how together we can share and educate ourselves in such a rapidly evolving field.

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