By Carl Olson, P.E., ASEP, Oregon ITE ITS Subcommittee Co-Chair and Oregon ITE Secretary – Treasurer Elect
On May 16, the Oregon ITE ITS Subcommittee held their first ever SensorAMA event. The event was a day filled with, you guessed it, sensors! Vendor and agency presentations were focused into three sessions; Bike/Ped, Analytics, and Safety. The one-day event was held at the David Evans & Associates corporate headquarters on the beautiful south waterfront in Portland, Oregon with more than 110 individuals in attendance!
With four vendors and four agency professionals all vying for talking time in each 75 minute session, it was imperative to use creative techniques to keep the presentations moving. Each vendor was allotted 10 minutes to discuss their device or technology, then agency professionals who had experience working with the technology would give a high-level overview of their use followed by a Q/A discussion. If anyone’s presentation exceeded their allotted time, the song “Never Going to Give You Up” from Rick Astley would begin playing. This kept the event lighthearted, moving, and fair to all in attendance. The Q/A was a perfect time for the audience to “Ask Me Anything”, a play on the SensorAMA name.
Two fantastic lunchtime speakers were on hand for the event. The first guest speaker was Rick Denney, Traffic Management Specialist from the FHWA Resource Center. Rick discussed the Every Day Counts state-based model used to identify and rapidly deploy proven but underutilized innovations. He also shared information on the upcoming model systems engineering documents for detection technology deployment.
Galen McGill, the Oregon Department of Transportation ITS Manager, was the keynote speaker for the event with a fantastic presentation on the Evolution of Transportation Data. Galen touched on a wide array of topics including the growing importance of data, data automation and visualization, and the future of transportation data.
With such an overwhelming desire to hear more about transportation sensor technologies, their use, and to have the ability to “Ask Me Anything”, another Oregon ITE ITS Subcommittee SensorAMA event next year is all but guaranteed!