8:00-8:45 

8:55-9:45

Keynote Address: Technology for Local Government:  Delivering Government Services… Faster, Better, Cheaper This keynote address will highlight key areas where technology is helping local governments deliver services… faster, better, and cheaper.  Greg McNeal, Chief Technology Officer for the State of Maine, will give examples of best practices being used by local governments in many areas of government service:  finance, public safety, social services, transportation, etc.  Greg will also highlight technology being provided Statewide that local governments can benefit from, such as the Broadband initiative (ConnectME Authority) and geographic information systems initiatives coordinated through the Maine GeoLibrary Board. 

Presented by Greg McNeal, Chief Technology Officer, State of Maine

9:45-10:00

Break

Concurrent Sessions

10:00-10:45

Online Training Offerings from MMA In April 2010, MMA launched its ELearning Center in cooperation with MyPlaceToLearn, Inc. and New Horizons Computer Learning Center.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, this is the perfect opportunity to learn firsthand about the online training program.  Online learning is flexible, time efficient, cost effective and valuable!  Join us for a demonstration of the program and then head to our Virtual Classroom where you can “test drive” actual courses throughout the day.

Presented by Margaret Noel, Educational Services Manager, Maine Municipal Association

10:00-10:45

Economics of Technology and How to Justify and Plan for the Long-Term   This will be a panel discussion led by Greg McNeal, the State of Maine’s Chief Technology Officer, and others to be invited to share specific experiences with how technology has been a good return on investment.  Greg will highlight the experiences from Maine Revenue Services. The panel will discuss how these experiences can be applied to the local government setting. 

Presented by Greg McNeal, Chief Technology Officer, State of Maine

10:00-10:45

10:00-10:45

GIS 101: Basic Concepts and Uses for Local Government This session will present an overview of what is GIS, some basic concepts, and a high level summary of its uses in local government operations.  Users should expect to come away with a broad understanding of this important technology.  The concepts presented will serve as a basis for the second morning session covering specific examples of GIS usage for assessors, planners, and other local government personnel, to be presented immediately after this session.

Presented by John Cassidy,ESRI

10:00-10:45

10:45-11:00

Break

Concurrent Sessions

11:00-11:45

Liability and Security Issues Involving Personal Information – with Recommendations on Preventing Security Breaches There are many risks and legal ramifications of not securing personal information that local governments have in their possession. 

Attorney Peter Lowe will discuss the liability and legal ramifications of not securing personal information on municipal computers. Victor Chakravarty from the State of Maine’s Office of Information Technology will present recommendations on basic security measures that should be taken to protect personally identifiable information, and some recent case studies involving hacking attempts. 

Presented by Peter D. Lowe,Partner, Brann & Isaacson , B. Victor Chakravarty, Enterprise Architect, Maine Office of Information Technology

11:00-11:45

Education’s Role in Broadband Availability and Adoption Education is the central pillar to broadband adoption and growth.  Maine is building a robust outreach program from one to one beginner level assistance to the GigU powered by 37 universities and their host communities. This session will focus on new directions, applications and programs happening now, to benefit our rural and urban citizens.  

Presented by  Bob McIntire, Adult Education Team, Dept. of Education, Jeff Letourneau, Exec. Director, Networkmaine, and Janet McKenney, Director of Library Development, Maine State Library, Shannon Packard, RN, MSN, Simulation Lab Coordinator, CMMC

11:00-11:45

ESRI Intro session part 2 This session will present specific examples of uses of GIS in local government.  Demonstrations will cover topics such as GIS usage in land records management; planning; public works; and other examples.  This session will be of interest to assessors, planners, public works employees, and other municipal employees.  Users should expect to come away with an understanding of some of the specific uses of GIS in local government.  The demonstrations presented will build on the concepts presented in the preceding session entitled "GIS 101: Basic Concepts and Uses for Local Government," and those attending should ensure they have attended the first session.

Presented by Mark Scott,ESRI

11:00-11:45

Maine's Strategic Broadband Plan: An Overview In 2011, the ConnectME Authority, working with the James W. Sewall Company, completed the first comprehensive statewide broadband needs assessment and the first statewide strategic plan to increase broadband availability, reduce barriers to adoption, and increase broadband uptake. In this presentation, an overview will be given of the needs assessment's main results and the strategic plan's key recommendations.

Presented by James H. Page,PhD, Senior Consultant, James W. Sewall Company

10:45-12:00

Mail Merge with Word 2010 This session will describe the use and benefits of Word 2010’s Mail Merge capabilities.  It will lay out the basic purposes and components of a mail merge operation.  The instructor will show the students how to construct a template document and discuss what kinds of sources can be used to obtain the data to be merged into the template document.  Then the students will practice both the automated mechanism available in 2010 for constructing a mail merge project and how each of the components can be created separately on a manual basis if needed.

Presented by Jason Christie, Senior Instructor, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers

12:00-1:30

Luncheon

Luncheon Speaker: Community Mapping Projects and GIS Implementation This address will examine community mapping projects conducted at the University of Maine at Fort Kent and other member schools of the Maine Geospatial Education Consortium. This will be followed by a discussion of ways budget-strapped communities can complete mapping needs and begin to implement GIS.

Presented by Dave Hobbins,Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies, University of Maine at Fort Kent

Concurrent Sessions

1:45-2:30

Tools for Transparency - How to Find Success Using Facebook
This workshop will educate participants about how to use Facebook to communicate more efficiently. Discussed will be the different capabilities between a personal page and a business page, explain how to better engage your residents and how to manage and utilize the social media site.

Presented by Greg Glynnfrom Nancy Marshall Communications

1:45-2:30

Economic Development and Innovation Why is broadband critical to rural communities? What best practices exist for economic models and modeling? How is innovation being fueled through broadband? This session will discuss the public-private partnership between municipalities and providers with funding and use of broadband as a focus.

Presented by Josh Broder, President, Tilson Technology,  Melinda Poore, VP of Government Relations, Time Warner Cable, Deb Neuman, Deputy Commissioner at DECD,  Tom Murray, Manager of State Govt. Affairs, TDS, and Mike Reed, President,  FairPoint Communications

1:45-2:30

Maine GeoLibrary Adopts Land Use Codes and Using Stakeholders to Develop a Watershed-Scale Land Use Suitability Model

Dan Walters,Geospatial Liaison for Maine, USGS, will present: The GeoLibrary has awarded grants to towns for projects that digitize or improve town’s parcels maps for GIS.  A land use code is part of the attribute table for each parcel.  Unfortunately, Maine does not have a widely accepted standard for land use codes.  The Board set up a committee to study the problem and recommend a solution.  The presentation will describe the process leading to the new land use codes and provide an overview of the codes and how they can be applied.

Spencer Meyer,Ph.D. Fellow, Sustainability Solutions Initiative at University of Maine will present: The Lower Penobscot River Watershed (LPRW) is home to a significant regional interface between small, connected communities and the vast, undeveloped expanses of the forested Maine landscape. Parts of the LPRW have been identified as nationally significant areas that will likely experience further forest fragmentation in the coming years (White and Mazza 2008). Since 2000, 77% of Maine's population growth has occurred outside of traditional town centers (Brookings 2006). The intrinsic land suitability for the often-competing land uses of development, forestry, conservation and agriculture is not well understood. This project used stakeholder-derived models for land suitability to assess areas of conflict between land uses and areas of opportunity for conservation collaborations (McCloskey et al. 2011). In this presentation we examine the development of stakeholder-driven land use models to integrate stakeholder values with empirical spatial data. Our findings include: 1) land use suitability models focused on forestry, conservation, agriculture, and development; 2) identification of areas of conflict or complementary attributes; and 3) lessons learned from co-development of the models. This project places an emphasis on developing a flexible modeling tool that: 1) may be used by scientists and planners for community and regional visioning; and 2) may be applied to other regions nationally and globally, using local expert knowledge and publicly available data.

1:45-2:30

Flood Inundation Mapping in Fort Kent, ME and Flood Plain
Flood inundation maps developed for Fort Kent, Maine depict estimates of the areal extent and depth of flooding corresponding to selected water levels (gage heights) at two USGS stream gages in Fort Kent.  Forecasted peak-gage-height information, available from the National Weather Service at these gages may be used in conjunction with these maps to show predicted areas of flood inundation. Flood inundation maps give Emergency Workers the ability to forecast the extent and timing of flood waters in the mapped area, and a Google map interface makes these maps readily available to the public during floods.

Presented by Pam Lombard,USGS Maine Water Center

Flood Plain This session will focus on the availability of digital floodplain maps in Maine and FEMA's plans to upgrade current paper maps to digital products. It will cover using the free software such as Google Earth to view digital maps and the use of FEMA Digital data to use in association with commercial Geographic Information Systems software. It will provide an overview of FEMA mapping service center and free data access. The discussion will provide the user with a basic understanding of where to access and acquire FEMA floodplain data including web link information. At the end of the session the user should be able to determine what sources of data are best for them, what they need to access the data, how to use it and limitations of the data.

Presented by Joe Youngand Janet Parker, Maine State Planning Office

1:45-2:45

Importing Excel Data into PowerPoint 2010  This session will focus on the integration capabilities between PowerPoint 2010 and other Microsoft Office applications.  Specifically, the students will learn to bring data into a PowerPoint slide show which is either currently available in an Excel workbook or can be easily or quickly created and or formatted in an Excel workbook.  The students will learn how to place both data tables and charts into a PowerPoint slide.  The students will also learn how once that Excel “object” is present in the slide; it can be linked back to the source workbook so that any changes or updates to the original data will automatically be reflected in the PowerPoint slide.

Presented by Jason Christie, Senior Instructor, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers

2:30-2:45

Break

Concurrent Sessions

2:45-3:30

E-mail Archiving and Records Retention Since passage of the Freedom of Access Act (FOAA), both State and local governments have received requests from citizens and the media for information that they hold.  Some of these requests have asked for specific documents, and other requests have been broad-spanning, asking for a mass amount of e-mails or other electronic documents.  This workshop will start with a quick overview of FOAA, using the frequently asked questions (FAQ) section of the State’s website.  The majority of the time will be a hands-on tutorial on how to archive e-mail using Microsoft Outlook.  The tutorial will include demonstration of tips for searching those archive files for responding to FOAA requests.  As a take-away for workshop attendees to share with others in their local government offices, a 9-minute video and tutorial will be previewed.  Leading the workshop/ tutorial will be Eric Stout from the State of Maine’s Office of Information Technology.  One of Eric’s duties is to be FOAA coordinator, helping State agencies in doing electronic searches in response to FOAA requests. 

2:45-3:30

Health Information Technology Real life experiences in implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems and the exchange of health care data and results and telehealth:  the advantages and challenges, and opportunities for improved efficiency and health care outcomes.   The session will begin with the big picture view of Maine’s Health Information Technology initiative including federal and State policies and available funding , to a local provider leveraging a ConnectME Authority grant and then to the hands on implementation of utilizing the technologies.

Presented by  Dawn Gallagher, Social Service Program Manager, DHHS, Mary McCarthy, Manager of Tele-Medicine, EMMC, and Ralph Johnson, CIO, Franklin Community Health Network

2:45-3:30

NextGen 9-1-1 for Maine This session will provide an overview of the NG9-1-1 system that Maine will be deploying in 2013. This new technology uses GIS data to locate, route and identify appropriate responders when requests are made for emergency services. Current GIS layers will need to be reviewed, enhanced, and upgraded. The need for several new data layers have also been identified and will need to be created. MEGIS 9-1-1 staff are currently revamping the current maintenance system and new tools and processes will be deployed
this winter.

Presented by Bob White,Spatial Database Manager for the Maine E-911

2:45-3:30

2:45-4:00

Formulas in Excel 2010  This session will focus on the basics of how Excel uses mathematical formulas to calculate various mathematical values.  The students will learn how to enter basic data and then use cell references to construct a formula to produce the desired result.  It will cover the differences between relative and absolute cell references and students will learn how to use each in constructing formulas.  Students will then learn how to use Excel’s extensive library of Functions which are preconstructed formulas designed to make creating more complex mathematical equations faster and easier. 

Presented by Jason Christie, Senior Instructor, New Horizons Computer Learning Centers

3:30-3:45

Networking Opportunities/Break

3:45-4:30

Understanding Maine’s Broadband Landscape This session provides an overview of the ConnectME Authority’s ARRA Mapping and Planning projects.  Methods and tools utilized for tracking and mapping the impact of broadband over time with households and industry sectors will be highlighted.  The capability of technically integrating planning results into the existing mapping project should be a very powerful tool for long-term development of Maine’s broadband needs.

Presented by Clarence Young, Sr. Project Manager, James W. Sewall Co. and Randy Claar, Project Manager, James W. Sewall Co.

3:45-4:00