I attended the Society for Conservation GIS (SCGIS) conference at the UNEP HQ in Gigiri, Nairobi. GIS (i.e. mapping) is something I have been wanting to get back into after attending an extensive 15 week long course at Stony Brook in 1998. The technical side of mapping has changed over the years and become so much more advanced; that it was like beginning all over again.
We were in for a treat; the conference was opened by Nobel Laureate winner Wangari Maathai. Her talk was interesting and fun to listen to. She emphasized the need for communication, and data and resource sharing amongst all conservationists in Kenya. Following her talk, there were a number of talks by other conservationists who displayed ways in how GIS has helped conservation, and how it can be used as an effective tool for species conservation. I attended a couple of other workshops on GIS and mapping techniques. It was an intense few days as I tried to grasp all these various concepts of mapping.
Luckily, I had been accepted on a training course the following week at the Resource Mapping Centre in Kasarani. Here we were taught ArcGis 9.2 and this enabled me to make sense of everything I had heard the previous week at the conference. The facilitators of the course, John and Patty from Juniper Services USA, and Leslie from SCGIS USA, were fantastic, and all the concepts of ArcGIS 9.2 were crammed into a 2-day session. I was overwhelmed by the training!
I definitely gained a lot from this conference and got back into the world of GIS. I realize the need to practice this and use ArcGis since this is something that can easily be forgotten if not used. I intend to use this for mapping in the Ewaso Lion Project and hope to acquire a PC soon to be able to install ArcGis (thanks to Save the Elephants) and start making some maps!
NB: I currently use a Mac now but GIS on a Mac is very new and slow.I have been advised to get a PC laptop for this purpose.
