I’ve decided that this week could very well be considered the calm before the storm.
Since this was the week of the 4th of July, our team decided to sit down and start talking about some of our major plans moving forwards into mid summer and early fall. Some of the major plans on the horizon – the NY State Fair! Where folks and youth from all counties in the NY state area come together to display some of the fruits of their labor to their fellow statesmen. Whether it be livestock shows, creative food stands, various forms of entertainment, or even a 4-H GIS pop-up which shows everybody all the cool stuff that can be done with maps, the state fair certainly has it! Naturally, one of the major parts of the planning this week was to figure out when I’d be able to drive up to the fair and see what our team was bringing to the table, and maybe even engage in the festivities later on in the week. 
In addition to that was discussion about the upcoming Esri User’s Conference (starting next week!) which the members of the National GG Lead team (myself included) will be attending to further hone their skills with GIS Software. This conference looks pretty exciting! -it’s filled to the brim with all sorts of awesome seminars and information that could be extremely useful for ANY map aficionado- However, there is one sad bit about the conference: it typically takes place in San Diego, California, in person, but of course due to COVID-19 and the difficulty it posed to planning events, it will be held over zoom this year. The real difficulty in this, which Kelly explained, was that in order to cover the most ground in the conference, the National GG Lead team would typically have meetings in the evenings to discuss the topics that really stuck out from the seminars everyone attended. Over Zoom, this might prove more difficult, BUT there might be a solution. We discussed potentially using FlipGrid, an interface which allows people to record short video responses to prompts, the hope is that by using FlipGrid, the team should be able to maintain the flexibility of taking a verbal approach to some basic questions in the more disconnected environment of a digital medium (fingers crossed it’ll work well!). 
Some of our final discussion points were regarding my assignments for the weekend: doing some drafting of the Fluorescence curriculum that I had mentioned previously, which I’m currently set to do a bit of presenting on this coming Thursday, the 8th of July, as well as doing a recap of the Career Explorations Closing ceremony! I had my work cut out for me, so I got right to work. I was anticipating being more of an observer in the closing ceremony, but to my surprise, I was asked to participate in a few of the small breakout rooms, got to speak with some of the people who designed the program, and I got to hear about the campers’ experiences. All in all, I’m a bit jealous, the programs looked like so much fun! It made me wish I had attended something similar when I was younger.
As for the Fluorescence drafting, I’ve got an outline of what the day exploring Fluorescence and GIS could look like, as well as some ideas on what could be added to the day, as well as a list of resources that we’d need to have tracked down before camp starts. My current goal in the drafting process has been to blend both education and interactivity to create a day that is both full of information and a lot of fun for everyone who’ll be attending.
That more or less wraps up whats in-the-works with our team, I hope y’all had a fantastic 4th of July and I’ll see you next week!
-Rob