Greetings fellow spatially oriented colleagues. Before I begin blogging about various subjects related to the G in GIS I wanted to introduce myself. My name is Mike Popoloski and I am currently president of Mapco Mapping & Positioning Company Inc. I am a New York state licensed land surveyor and a certified GPS mapping instructor.

I started my location-based career about (23) years ago quite by accident. About (1) year out of high school I was working as a mechanical drafter/designer at a local military contractor and I had quickly figured out that I was not cut-out for sitting behind a desk every day. While I was trying to figure out what to try next I bumped into my old guidance counselor from high school. He suggested that I apply for an entry-level land surveying position that had recently opened up in the area.

I had no idea what land surveying was but he said I would be outside much of the time. I have always enjoyed outdoor activities so that sounded good to me. I won the job and started on the ground-floor as a rodman. Over the next few years I learned the value of a good pair of boots, clear and accurate field notes, proper clothing, fully charged batteries, and a sharp machete.

Regardless of most weather conditions we spent each day measuring and recording the locations of everything from natural features such as trees, wetlands, and topography to man-made features such as property markers, buildings, roads, fences, utilities, etc. At that time the terms GIS and GPS were not in our vocabulary, or almost anyone else’s for that matter, but the work we were doing established a great foundation for my acceptance and understanding of these technologies that were to come.

Small-town surveyors like us were mainly working in assumed coordinate systems that we created for each job. But there were a few occasions when we had to establish geodetic values for a large project. We would often spend days on these projects running latitude/longitude and/or NAVD-29 elevations from a local National Geodetic Survey benchmark or baseline to our site.

Well in 1990 the company I was working for acquired the new "magic-box". A Global Positioning System receiver that utilized satellite signals to calculate latitude, longitude, and elevation in minutes instead of days. My boss put the box on my desk and I was tasked with testing this new technology to see if it was telling the "truth". As a licensed surveyor he wanted to make sure we really knew what the accuracy of this new technology was before he affixed his name and personal liability to the project.

This was the beginning of my path on GPS testing, measurement analysis, coordinate quality reporting, and GIS data collection. Since then I have evaluated dozens of different devices, located tens of thousands of GIS features, conducted hundreds of classes and seminars, and set hundreds of high accuracy geodetic control points.

It is my hope that I can contribute to this blog by sharing my land surveying perspective as it relates to the "G" in GIS. If anyone has general questions related to these subjects feel free to share them. I expect to make my first post shortly on the topic of GIS data accuracy.