Linda Rockwood, owner of Mohawk Valley GIS, specializes in applying technology to meet customers’ needs. Her consulting business provides spatial technology training and custom mapping solutions to municipalities, educational institutions, businesses and non-profit organizations and agencies throughout Central New York.
Initial exposure in 1997 to the world of Geographic Information Systems
(GIS), global positioning system (GPS) equipment and remotely sensed (RS)
imagery peaked Linda’s interest as a cool, innovative way to solve
problems with technology. By now established as a well-organized and effective
technology instructor in the business and education worlds, Linda returned
to school part time in 2000 to complete substantial coursework in geography
and spatial technologies, while continuing to run her technology integration
business. Already working with K-12 teachers to incorporate educational
software and websites into the curriculum, it was a simple transition
to include helping teachers and students use GPS receivers and GIS software
for project-based learning.
Linda’s technology career began with 12 years experience working
as a systems designer and analyst for Eastman Kodak Co. and for W. R.
Grace. A temporary assignment preparing and teaching technology workshops
developed into a new passion, that of making technology less intimidating
for “non-techies”. Motherhood, combined with this new expertise,
led Linda to become an independent sales representative for BrightIdeas,
a Massachusetts-based distributor of high-quality educational software.
When Addison-Wesley purchased BrightIdeas and subsequently shut them down
a year later, Linda used the “opportunity” to found NCTI in
1998, her technology integration consulting firm in the North Country
region of New Hampshire. Her latest schooling and a one-year internship
at a NH regional planning commission solidified Linda’s geographic
information systems skills. Projects involving community planning and
both economic and tourism development fueled the excitement of using GIS
as a powerful analysis and communication tool. She has been an active
promoter of spatial technologies ever since, by instructing and mapmaking,
serving on program development committees, organizing a regional GIS Day
celebration and forming a regional GIS user group in New Hampshire.
Linda looks forward to sharing her spatial technology passion within the
Central New York region, her new home since the summer of 2003.
