Joe VanderMeulen: Information master

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor

You may have met local resident Joe VanderMeulen, out enjoying the beauty of the region with his wife Bronwyn Jones, or perhaps, in one of your activist endeavors you have indirectly come into contact with an organization or idea that he began. Or maybe you live in an area that was planned by the Traverse City-based Land Information Access Association (LIAA), www.liaa.org. Born in Monroe, Mich. and raised in suburban Chicago, VanderMeulen has done this area plenty of great favors.
VanderMeulen was the impetus behind the Fresh Food Partnership

VanderMeulen began in the unlikeliest of places. He started his career as a welder, a job that made him enough money to complete his degree in English and creative writing, which spring boarded him into a brief career as a journalist. During this period he found himself writing about and becoming an expert in natural resources. When confronted with the question “why should we listen to YOU?” he returned to school, got his master’s degree in earth science, and began working for the Michigan State legislature in hydrogeology (ground water studies).

Moving onward in education, VanderMeulen received a PhD in natural resources and environment policy at the University of Michigan. His thesis, “how people use information to make decisions,” is the backbone of LIAA. He hypothesized that, if given the correct tools and information, people could make better decisions. The Land Information Access Association was created as a nonprofit organization in 1993, directed by VanderMeulen and his friends for the purpose of furthering his original study. The association’s first step was to set up touch screen kiosks for public access to Geographic Information System (GIS) data for Clark Township in the state’s Upper Peninsula and 14 different local government centers in the Lower Peninsula. With the data taken from this experiment, he was able to conclude that people did indeed use the information to make decisions, but he was not able to prove whether their decisions were good or bad.

LIAA has adopted the duty to inform the public about the area in order to breed sound decisions. For example, one of the association’s duties lies in community planning and development. This involves working with local governments and civic organizations to create a sustainable plan for communities. In many cases, this service can be funded by grants and aided by an LIAA staff member and GIS, a computer-aided system that allows users to access and analyze the location of features and their characteristics over space and time.
The application and database development segment also offers a program that allows you to manage large and small databases and help LIAA in the event of any problems. Being concerned with access to information, the LIAA building has a classroom equipped with computers that can aid in the database development and in the website developing chapter of services.

In this classroom is also where you can learn about another bit of software that LIAA has to offer. Community Center ™ is a content management system designed for authorized users to be able to quickly publish up-to-date text, pictures, documents, events, news articles, databases and maps. This is all run by a series of forms that can be changed at any time. LIAA also offers tutorials and classes on how to run this system and builds websites using Community Center for other nonprofit groups and local governments, including websites for Leelanau, Antrim and Charlevoix Counties, many townships, and nonprofit groups like the Headwaters Land Conservancy, Northwest Michigan Council of Governments and the Northwest Michigan Human Services Agency.
In addition to this, LIAA offers cost-effective online maps. Having the area mapped out on a computer allows users to see the area with ease. LIAA offers basic road maps, thematic maps, aerial photography, zoom, pan, distance measure and area calculation and a search feature that makes mapping easier and more compact.

And giving the public greater access to mapping, the LIAA building, located on Munson Avenue (US-31), also serves as Hands on Geography, a joint venture with National Geographic. Hands on Geography is the place to find maps, books, globes and games that further deepen the understanding of maps and mapping for people of any age.

Apart from these tasks, the Land Information Access Association also heads up various nonprofit programs that further extend VanderMeulen’s original hypothesis. Among them is the Fresh Food Partnership — an organization that puts fresh, local foods into food pantries rather than the canned, unhealthy variety that people in need far too often expect. LIAA volunteers take food from local farms and deliver them to more than 30 food pantries, shelters and community meal programs in the area. To volunteer or learn more about the Fresh Food Partnership, visit www.freshfoodpartnership.org.
LIAA also began a program called “Listening to the River” (www.ListeningToTheRiver.org). This project, started in March 2006, used high school students to document information about the surrounding watershed using advanced sound recording technology to map out the watershed and later create an exhibit in the Great Lakes Children’s Museum. The idea behind this was to engage a younger generation in the area so that they could understand the importance and relay this information to others in a way they would understand.
Another website started by LIAA is www.YourPlaceGrandTraverse.org, funded by a grant from the Americana Foundation. This site is currently under construction, but it intends to focus on the “sense of place” specifically in the Grand Traverse area. It provides research articles, opinion pieces, nature notes and planning web logs, in addition to welcoming comments on favorite places or pictures of the area.

This year, VanderMeulen led LIAA to offer yet another community service, accepting the responsibility of operating the region’s only public access television station, Charter Cable’s Channel 2. Replacing the old TCTV 2, Up North 2 offers everyone access to a large television viewing audience covering most of seven counties in northwest lower Michigan. LIAA now lends out video cameras, lights and editing equipment to anyone willing to undergo the training; and offers a fully outfitted video recording studio in its building (www.upnorthmedia.org). The point, VanderMeulen says, is to give people an alternative place to express their views, provide information and educational programming, and celebrate local history and culture.

Most people do one good deed for the month, and they’ve washed their hands of human obligation; most organizations create one way to save the world and call it good. Joe VanderMeulen and LIAA have kept toiling behind the curtains to make this area a better place for everyone, and kept creating new ways for people to understand the beauty of the Grand Traverse region. They offer a refreshing and optimistic view of what humans can accomplish when good ideas are set into action.