Every year, when the leaves start to change from green to yellow to red, and the air carries a startling briskness, and the beer and coffee and bread all begin to emerge with that most unnatural, orange-food-colored, mildly-reminiscent “pumpkin spice” label, I get to thinking of one thing…

MLB PLAYOFFS BABY!

…Just kidding. Anyone who knows me knows I basically hate baseball – with a tip of the hat to my friends in the St. Louis area; you know who you are.

But I do think about the Esri Electric & Gas GIS Conference, colloquially known, of course, as EGUG.

I think I can quite fairly call this the most important conference in the utility GIS industry, what with the hundreds of attendees and the GIS software market leader name right there in the title. It’s a big conference. And for us, this year is special, because one of our longest-tenured clients is hosting, Memphis Light Gas & Water. We have worked for MLGW in some respect for over five years and have a lot of relationships there we cherish.

So it is with great excitement that I share with you what SSP will be up to at this year’s conference. Without further ado:

Presentations

This year SSP will play a role in six user presentations. Please join us for at least one or two – we try to give energetic and informative talks alongside our clients, and we always aim to cover topics that many others will find interesting.

Here are the details:

Disaster Recovery Infrastructure for OMS Application | Tuesday, 11AM-12PM CT | Mississippi

The OMS environment at Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation (MTEMC) is considered a mission-critical application and requires both 24×7 high availability as well as catastrophic disaster recovery. Using a combination of ESRI replication, SQL Server Clustering, and Transaction Log Shipping, they have achieved both requirements. This presentation will describe MTEMC’s architecture, including hardware and software configuration, network topology, and workflows.

Ryan Miller – MTEMC and Jeff Buturff – SSP Innovations

This presentation is slated to be the second of two in this slot.

Learning Lessons the Hard Way: A Large Utility’s Experience Upgrading from 9 to 10 | Tuesday, 11AM-12PM CT | River Bluff

We review some of the lessons learned from the NiSource upgrade. This was a challenging effort made better by a solid project management team, regular communication, and strict adherence to an aggressive schedule. But there were challenges too: a difficult integration to Maximo; the need to install Esri and Schneider QIPs post go-live, stability problems with the six instances of Citrix, several third party applications that were not version compatible; and the large number of customizations.

Terry Iffland – NiSource and Matt Stuart – SSP Innovations

This presentation is slated to be the second of two in this slot.

MLGW Upgrade Case Study | Tuesday, 2:30PM-4:10PM CT | River Bluff

This is a case study of upgrading MLG&W from ArcGIS / ArcFM™ 9.3.1 to 10.1. MLG&W manages GIS data for their Electric, Downtown Network Electric, Gas, and Water utilities, as well as their Telecom data and the Land and Mapping data and address assignment for Shelby County, TN. In addition to Esri’s ArcGIS for Desktop and ArcGIS for Server software, MLG&W also utilizes Schneider Electric’s ArcFM™ and custom software developed by SSP Innovations. Upgrades to all of these systems are discussed.

Steve Veltman – MLGW and Scot Twining – SSP Innovations

This presentation is slated to be the first of three in this slot.

Transformer Loading: Driving Enterprise Decisions with ArcGIS Online at MTEMC | Tuesday, 2:30PM-4:10 PM CT | Sultana

In the past, MTEMC has oversized their transformers across the utility due to a lack of consumption data in GIS. MTEMC joined SSP Innovations to auto-load SAP consumption data, perform aggregation for peak usage, and to visualize the data in ArcGIS Online via a thematic map. Field troubleshooters use Collector for ArcGIS to view the load profile for any transformer showing peak usage against the transformer size. This results in cost savings and has generated drivers for many other uses of the data and of ArcGIS Online.

Nathaniel Everett – MTEMC and Skye Perry – SSP Innovations

This presentation is slated to be the third of three in this slot.

Using ArcGIS Online for Meter Replacement Project at Memphis Light Gas & Water | Wednesday, 11AM-12:30 PM CT | Chickasaw

MLGW began a project to replace their electric, gas, and water meters throughout the service territory. Operations wanted to gather data about the new meters as they were installed to enable other processes throughout the organization. MLGW partnered with SSP Innovations to roll out an ArcGIS Online solution to allow the field crews to collect the data in the field. In this session we will cover the business drivers for the project, the architecture of the solution, and show a demo on an iPhone!

Andrew Jack – MLGW and Skye Perry – SSP Innovations

This presentation is slated to be the third of three in this slot.

Using Intelligent AutoUpdaters to Maintain Data Integrity | Wednesday, 11AM-12:30PM CT | Rm 201/202

We all know how difficult it is to maintain good data in our GIS systems. To solve this problem, MLGW and SSP Innovations worked together to develop a number of algorithms that apply a set of business rules while users are editing spatial data. This included spatial searches, network traces, object queries and validation techniques to intelligently verify, update or insert data. By applying custom AutoUpdaters on a geodatabase, the GIS solution ran efficiently and free of erroneous data.

Andrew McColgan – MLGW and John Coleman – SSP Innovations

This presentation is slated to be the second of three in this slot.

Booth

As usual, you can find SSP on the exhibition floor. This year we’ll be in booth #301. We’re to your left as you come in the main entrance, directly across from our friends at Schneider Electric.

Here’s a map showing our location:

SSP Clients and Friends Reception

Monday night SSP will host a reception dinner event for our clients, prospective clients and friends. If you haven’t yet received an invite but are interested in attending to learn more about SSP or get to know our clients, please contact me using the contact us page (I will receive it).

If you just want some free dinner, I can direct you one of many local soup kitchens in the area. 

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That about covers it. We will have a record eight SSP personnel in attendance this year, so when (not if) you see one of us at the social, or on a break, or in the expo hall, please stop and say hello – especially if we don’t know each other yet.

That’s our favorite part.