The city’s online tour of St. Albert’s public art is set to be featured in a nationally-distributed calendar this year.
Michael Mitchell, web co-ordinator for the city, did the development work for the Art in Public Places online map that allows the curious to take a tour of St. Albert’s public art collection without ever leaving their desk.
The online map was developed with products from Esri Canada, a company that provides geographic information systems software. The project was released in spring 2013.
The innovative use of one of Esri’s products caught the company’s eye, Mitchell said, and it has been used in presentations to show off how the templates can be customized.
“We just saw some of the potential with those tools,” he said.
Every year the company holds a contest and features the winners in a calendar that’s distributed nationally.
“I didn’t even know it’d been submitted for the calendar,” Mitchell said.
He found out in early December it’d been sent in for consideration, and about a week before Christmas he found out it was one of the 12 winners.
“It’s all been kind of surprising, I guess,” Mitchell said.
His colleagues at the City of St. Albert have been impressed with the national recognition, he said.
“It’s something we can build on,” Mitchell said.
The St. Albert project was picked from more than 60 submitted map and application submissions from a wide-range of organizations in various industries, said a spokesperson from Esri Canada in an e-mail.
“To be selected for the calendar, we look for interesting content, beautiful cartographic rendering, wide regional representation and impact. The City of St. Albert’s Art in Public Places app scored high in these areas,” said Marianne Kupina, marketing director for Esri Canada.
The calendar is sent to about 8,000 different customers and geographic information systems enthusiasts across the country.
According to a blog from the company, the St. Albert entry will be featured in April.
