Land surveying is a fascinating and challenging field. It's one of the few professions that involves the need to have a good understanding of a wide variety of topics. In one day, the surveyor is expected to juggle history, document and business management, searches of legal records, tree and plant identification, land development, drainage, investigative skills, dog and other animal avoidance, fence jumping, extreme weather, manual labor, understanding of property law, operation of technical equipment, geometry and trigonometry, and CAD/GIS. And this list could go on. What other profession demands such a wide variety of knowledge and skill?
I have to admit, because of these challenges, land surveying has always intrigued me. Since I first started working in this field as a surveying technician, I always dreamed of being a land surveyor. But even though I worked for many years in land surveying and even managed to get licensed as a surveyor in training, I reached a point where my opportunities were primarily in the civil engineering field. So I chose the professional engineer license instead. But land surveying has never failed to interest me, and many of my responsibilities still involve issues related to land surveying.
Fortunately there are some groups and resources online where I can still learn and stay current with the land surveying profession. The one group I would like to highlight today is the Land Surveyors United online group at http://landsurveyorsunited.com. This group was started up a few years ago using the Ning platform. Today I noticed they have a brand new look on their site. And based on an email I received from Justin Farrow, the group's creator, it looks like he is planning to add even more awesome features in the future such as:
- Full-fledged Iphone/Android App
- Some further performance enhancing platform enhancements for speed and features
- Online training and certifications
- Multilingual Sitewide versions of LSU dedicated to several languages other than English
So, if you're like me and are totally into land surveying, I would definitely recommend checking out this site and joining up as a member (it's free!).