PLANTING THE SEEDS:   Intermountain GIS conference

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/briefings/8c30ae8b9a76487fafcc75b411596400

Elevations GeoSummit:  Planting the Seeds to Ensure that GIS Has a Future

I ask you, the GIS community, who sees GIS as

• More than just an exciting career
• More than just a set of fascinating maps and visualizations

OUR WORLD IS NOW BEING CHALLENGED

• But rather as absolutely essential to address key 21^st C global problems and issues that increasingly affect our country, states, communities, and our very own families.
• We feel connected and empowered YET we also feel vulnerable – not just from COVID, but natural hazards, and things in our own communities and families … we need each other, now more than ever.

>> How will you ensure that GIS has a future?

BARBED WIRE

Scientific and technological achievements are often celebrated as dramatic events. The first radio transmission. The first Moon steps.  The first modeled human genome.  Some inventions like Barbed wire seem so commonplace but transformed land use and entire ecoregions.  But nearly all progress that matters has seen centuries of evolution, built on the work of visionaries working individually and in teams.   I salute this community:   I know your accomplishments are not a peaceful, easy feelin’… but have been achieved through knocking on many doors, breaking down barriers, and patiently but consistently convincing others.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON

Isaac Newton famously said that if he could see farther than others, it was because he “stood on the shoulders of giants.” You all – the geospatial community, innovate in a more profoundly connected way than even Newton could have envisioned. 

CALWOOD

You are a community in all that word means – people with a shared vision, passion, and determination.

Have you ever met anyone in GIS who is closed to giving data, sharing methods, and mentoring others?  Indeed, all of us in GIS care ultimately about 2 things – the Planet, and its people.  That drives everything else that we do.

43 N 107 W

Your work arises from the deep human sense of place – we love this land! – we want to protect it – and from the analyzing, predicting, and communicating that today’s GIS makes possible.

WALLACE IDAHO

What’s not to love about a state containing a location that calls itself the Center of the Universe? I’ve have conducted F2F and online sessions for many universities and colleges in Idaho and have also visited…

INITIAL POINT IDAHO

Initial Point, Idaho.  Plus, 1 hour after I got off the airplane on Sunday,

48 NORTH 117 WEST

I got myself CENTERED where the 48^th Parallel and 117^th Meridian CROSS!   Plus,

B 52s

For 40 years, one of my favorite songs has been “you’re livin’ in your own private Idaho, livin’ in your own private Idaho, underground like a wild potato…”

SUSTAINABILITY STARTS WITH GEOGRAPHY

The more vividly we can see and assess the state of the world’s climates, forests, waters, wildlife, human settlements, the more acutely we realize the dangers to them all.

GIS ENABLES THE GEOGRAPHIC APPROACH

But the same GIS tools that serve as stark advance-warning signals also show us how—and where—we can best act to turn an ominous tide. Technology offers the tools, but success depends on all of us sharing our knowledge, considering the best alternatives.

KANSAS

Ahh!  We stand on the shoulders of giants with these new ways to see where we are now and where we are going. Your work gives us all a clearer view.  You are building the NSDI!

WYOMING

You ask the whys of where—why do the water quality measures trend this way in this area of the watershed?  Why does severe weather seem to have this trend over space and time?  Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near?  Wait, that was the Carpenters.

Given the pressing issues of our time, you may say “Joseph, of course GIS has a future, doesn’t it?”

LITTER MAP

Despite articles 20 years ago that proclaimed that GIS would be so embedded in IT workflows that it wouldn’t be a separate “thing” by the 2020s.   GIS has become embedded in—government, nonprofit, business, where many people are now empowered to use GIS at least to some extent.  In your local government, for example, we have gone FROM “oh, you need some maps or geospatial data, go see the GIS staff down the hall and to the right…” (they’re geeky but nice folks) TO many are empowered to use some GIS – parks and rec, assessors, public works, transportation, zoning.  Because with a few clicks, you can go from this to this…

PHOTO JJK AS CHILD

What brought you to this moment?   A book, a field trip, a family member, a vacation, your upbringing.  

MOTEL
In my case it was growing up in a motel that my parents owned, learning that hard work is honorable, listening to the hotel guests’ tales of places far and near, exploring the buttes and mesas of western Colorado, land of the Ute Mountain Utes, Mesa County, FIPS 08077, reading the book Last Great Auk, and…

TEENAGED MAP 1

TEENAGED MAP 2

TEENAGED PHOTOS
…making maps.   Connect with the community and what we all have in common, but treasure the uniqueness of your own journey – embrace it.   Those are strengths you bring to your organization that nobody else can!

ESRI EDUCATION TEAM

I serve on the team that supports GIS in all levels, all countries, all disciplines—GIS in education:  Instruction, research, and in campus facilities.  No, we don’t have an education fund, we have something much more lasting:  1.  Ensure educators have the software:  Free or low cost.  2.  That they have the curricular pieces – geoinquiries, learn lessons, books, tutorials, and other curricular pieces.  3.  Create ways to highlight the community—articles, citations, and other ways.  4.  Campus F2F visits, webinars, higher ed and K-12 monthly chats.  5.  Create apps and data sets useful to educators.  6.  Listen—to successes, challenges, and pay attention to the large univ’s to the small community colleges, to MSIs, Tribal Colleges, HBCUs, after school clubs.  7.  We will be there long term.  That’s important in education… 8. Build networks – in specific disciplines, levels of education, and in other ways – so that educators know they are not “all by myself…”   It cannot be just our little team of 15:  There are 110,000 USA schools alone and 4,000 post-secondary institutions.   We do all this in collaboration with you, the GIS community.  How can you aid with this effort? 

THE STOOL OF GEOLITERACY

Why is GIS spreading?   6 reasons:  1.  Content knowledge:  Educators seek to teach this.  Sometimes I hear “you’re just promoting the tools” – NEVER.   2.  Skills – not just geotech – communication, framing questions, problem-solving, critical thinking, spatial thinking, data fluency.  3.  Geographic perspective:  Do not forget the holistic perspective that is so needed in our world—grounded in geographic thinking, recognizing the connectedness of the spheres are connected, the atmosphere – biosphere –  lithosphere –  hydrosphere – anthroposphere.  This perspective is well grounded in Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Native Indigenous Community here in the region—the Shoshoni, Pauite, Nez Perce, and others.  Indeed, GIS has also supported ecosystem models and helped us realize that everything is related to everything else—that my actions or inactions here affect your life there, which makes the geographic approach an empathic endeavor. Geographic thinking is the ability to use interdisciplinary data to model these relationships and perform geographic analysis to show how they connect and interact. 

Fundamental to skill building is the inquiry process of asking questions, acquiring information, exploring and analyzing data and acting on knowledge gained. Fact-based worksheets are minimized; hands-on work, discussion, and communication are maximized. Inquiry includes tackling real issues–landfills, urban greenways, pros and cons of fossil fuels extraction, and implications of population growth and decline. In each case, mapping is seen as the key to understanding patterns, relationships and trends.

The perspective includes critical thinking — questioning where data come from, how to manage uncertainty, how problems are framed and the scale at which problems are addressed.

4. Workforce readiness. 5. Interdisciplinary education.   6. Inquiry—what if we ____.

BUSINESS EDUCATION
Where is GIS spreading?  In higher education, GIS has spread from GIScience, geography, and environmental science to business, civil engineering, city planning, architecture, economics, and emerging data science programs.

TEACHING MATHEMATICS

My new book for example focuses on core concepts that secondary and undergraduate mathematics instructors must teach – set theory, ratios, measurements, algebraic expressions, and shows them how they can teach those concepts with digital maps and GIS tools.

JJK QUESTION

My messages for instructors:

1. Not:  Use GIS everywhere, but:  Where in your courses/programs are you seeing less engagement, and are dissatisfied with the tools, maps, data, methods you are using? That’s where to integrate GIS.  Appeal to:  Every instructor’s goals – be more engaging, helping students to care, to want to learn, and to be + change agents in society.
2. Use GIS as a set of resources to support your instructional goals: Living Atlas apps, interactive data layers.
3. Lead with Web GIS.
4. Use GIS to teach ethics and data fluency.
5. Don’t overscript your lessons: Why?  Focus on PBL.
6. Students create professional portfolio as they work with GIS.

LAKOTA LANGUAGE

There is always a higher goal in teaching with GIS: Here, drawing attention to endangered Indigenous languages.

MY IOT ARTICLE

My own research is on the implementation and effectiveness of GIS in education.  But it’s not just me advocating this:  The National Academy of Sciences’ Learning to Think Spatially report advocated for intentional teaching of spatial thinking early and often.

STRATEGIES FOR GIS INSTRUCTION

Example:   Week 1:  ArcGIS Survey123 of the class, examine ArcGIS Living Atlas apps.  Week 2:  Litter mapping:  Symbology, classification, filtering, light analysis.   Week 3:   ArcGIS Survey123 – map every tree on campus. Dashboard and story map that professor set up.  Week 4:  Set up your own survey on something you care about, each student must participate in the survey of at least 2 other students; > Map > Dashboard > story map > present results.  All of this in ArcGIS Online:  Nothing to install.  Some activities without even signing in!  Projections, building geodatabase, more rigorous analysis, coding (starting with simple expressions) can come later.  Goal:  Get them excited and wanting to learn more.

WENDY BERELSON
Also important in education is the use of GIS in administration—campus facility management, campus safety, managing alumni networks, and more:  From getting people into and out of the football stadium safely, to taking care of all of the trees on campus, to managing the campus electrical and fiber optic grid.  GIS helps a campus save energy and costs and become a sustainable and safe place for all.

15 REASONS:  WHERE SHOULD GIS SPREAD?

Where SHOULDN’T it spread?  New Mexico State University contacted me:   Story Maps in Fine Arts Department, leading to more advanced inquiry. 

FIRE AGOL MAP

Given the relevance of GIS to the UN SDGs and current events – the February wildfire in Texas:  Why is the pace of adopting GIS still sluggish?  1.  GIS is still rather misunderstood.  You and me making maps, sometimes it feels like you and me making maps…  “Why do maps still matter in  21st Century schools and universities?” and “Golly gee, haven’t all the maps been made?”, or “Why do we need GIS training for my staff when I have Google Maps on my phone?”

PHONE
2.  Perhaps because maps are so well embedded in our easily accessible weather apps, in the ways we navigate across campus or the public library, in our fitness apps, package tracking, and in our ride-share apps that that are BTW built on addressing that YOU ALL BUILT – but some do not associate the mapping technologies they use day-to-day with a discipline.  Perhaps it is because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature and the applicability of GIS that makes it hard to “find a single home” in educational institutions—it’s like the sand in a conglomerate that binds the cobbles of recognized disciplines together.  

BORED STUDENTS

3. The sluggish pace could be because we have not purposefully, rigorously taught spatial thinking in our primary and secondary schools:  Geography?  Yep, I had that in 7^th  Perhaps because some geography is still taught as “memorizing place names, imports, and exports”.  Or all of those reasons.  Thus I encourage you to be ready to articulate “why where matters” and the value of GIS to anyone you meet at a moment’s notice.  In your workplace, you will be required to articulate this, so be prepared!

CONNECTED YET VULNERABLE

4. The sluggish pace also is I believe due to competing voices exist in education and society, and often these voices drown out our consistent but admittedly gentle “you need to consider the spatial aspects…”—maybe we are sometimes too gentle. Specializing is time well spent. 

ZAGROS MOUNTAINS

GIS is a disruptive technology—created to look across and through barriers.  That’s what we need, for the energy, water, land cover, soil, biodiversity, and other problems we face do not stop at political boundaries—city, county, state, national—they transcend them.  Nor do they stop at physical boundaries—ridges, watersheds, clifftops, ecoregions—they transcend them.  Nor do they stop at disciplinary boundaries—economics, engineering, geography, history, language arts, biology, sociology—they transcend them!  

As much as we celebrate the innovators in our world, they disrupt the status quo; at times they are marginalized, and/or forced out.  I have known educators who are told by their principal—you’re a science teacher, why are you working with the social studies teachers on this GIS stuff?  You are in parks, why are you working with community planning?  In education, we have segmented K-12 mostly into subjects, and in departments and schools in higher education—GIS and spatial thinking as a bridge between these is often a square peg in a round hole. 

All of you who face these challenges—continue to be visionary:  It may be that you need to move your organization into a forward thinking one.  It may be that you need to move to a different organization to keep yourself moving forward. 

MY PATHWAY
Because as my own pathway shows, (1) you don’t need to stay at the same organization your whole career, and (2) spatial thinking and geotechnologies will be valuable to you no matter where you go.  And to be sure, despite my prior statements, there ARE workplaces who will value your interdisciplinary out of the box thinking!   It is a journey – wheel in the sky keeps on turning….

5 FORCES

5 societal forces bring us to a key time in our field:  These forces are debatable and somewhat subjective but arise from the 350 schools and 450 universities I have visited over the past 30 years across 20 countries and through 300 conferences and events. 

Geo-awareness:  The world faces complex challenges that are global in nature but also increasingly affect individuals’ everyday lives. Not a few hours pass without the impact of natural hazards on human populations.  Energy, health, political instability are issues that impact the politics and economics of nations and the social fabric of local communities. Sustaining agriculture and fisheries are critical to food supplies. Water quality and quantity are fundamental to the existence of humanity.

These challenges, long fundamental to what the GIS community studied, have now become a part of the public consciousness and everyday conversation—I hear this on airport shuttles, in stairwells, in public libraries. A heightened awareness exists that these issues are serious, affect individuals’ everyday lives and need to be solved. There is also growing realization that they occur somewhere, at multiple scales, with specific spatial distributions, patterns, temporal components and linkages.

Geo-enablement:   Everything in everyday life is geo-enabled. Webcams recording traffic, bird counts or parking spaces, from Earth-imaging satellites to sensors recording water quality, weather feeds, tracking packages or ride shares, our fitness apps.  As geo-enabling extends to home thermostats and appliances, the Internet of Things and smart cities are built. As these measurements become mapped, they become,  a “nervous system” for the planet.

LIVING ATLAS APPS

Geotechnologies:  Until recently, geospatial data and related tools, methods and data were used largely by those in GIS and scientific fields. Today, millions of maps and satellite images are viewed hourly. Great to have docs in the cloud.  Wonderful to have music in the cloud.  I submit that it is even more wonderful to have GIS in a cloud-based as a Service platform. Why?  Not just to share data, but workflows, methods, results, so we can collaborate.

BACK TO 5 FORCES

Citizen Science:  The largest part of the Internet of Things’ sensor network is not the electronic sensors but the 8 billion strong public, providing information about the planet about everything from birds to pine beetle infestations to traffic snarls.

Storytelling:  For centuries, maps have been valued because they provide a large amount of detail in a small amount of space (China maps on silk, Babylonian clay tablets, Al Idrisi’s map on silver), and because of their capacity for telling a story. Any person with a device can use maps to tell their own multimedia-enriched story. This has enormous implications for data quality.  There are already over 4 million story maps, alone!

Will these 5 forces occurring today be enough to generate and sustain the interest of the general public, policymakers and educational administrators? Will this enable geospatial to become a fundamental, funded, respected subject throughout education and in decision-making throughout society?

GTCM
Evidence points to increased attention and funding for geoliteracy, such as the community college GeoTech Center, which resulted in the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM). The GTCM is clear that successful use of geospatial technologies relies not only on software skills, but upon personal effectiveness competencies (I love these – are you ethical?  Organized?  Can you deal with data?), academic competencies, and workplace competencies (teamwork, creative thinking, problem solving, working with technology, and business fundamentals).  Use the GTCM periodically for assessing your gaps—and then consider how you can fill those gaps.

TRENDS IN GIS
3D:  We live in a 3D world so it makes sense that we should have 3D analytics.  For many years we had 3D visualization, but being able to analyze in 3D is transformational and insightful.  ArcGIS Reality.

The joining of BIM-CAD-GIS.   This is essential that we map things inside and outside of structures to build resiliency models for a community, a campus, a medical center.  

IoT enabled real time data:  People want to, need to, map things in real time or as close to real time as possible.  We live on a dynamic planet, where real property, lands, and lives are at stake.  Web GIS:  I mentioned this earlier – last year, raster analysis in ArcGIS Online.  Enterprise GIS:  System of Systems.  1000 AI tools in ArcGIS on the way.  Now:  Feature extraction tools.  Gen AI Survey123.

VISUALIZE NEW 3D DEVELOPMENT:  IS ALL TECH GOOD?

Would you let AI design your new community project?  Your bridge?

GIS HAS CHANGED

GIS has not only endured every major hardware, societal, and software change, but it has THRIVED and ADVANCED through each of them.  What are the  implications of these 5 trends for education?  What must we teach, when must we teach it? 

ACCIDENTS

3D Hex Bins.   What could we do before with GIS vs what we can do now. 

AR – GIS  The future is now!

IDAHO HIGHLIGHTS

Idaho is the perfect place in which to move the frontiers of GIS forward.  Why?  There are real leaders in Idaho:  ALL Y’ALL!  USTEDES!  VOUS!  The Idaho Next Generation 911 (NG9-1-1) initiative brings together disparate jurisdictions that have previously acted independently – sheriff’s offices, city police departments, volunteer fire departments, emergency medical response units, tribal governments. The effort requires a mindset shift to work across jurisdictional boundaries to create one source for core data sets across jurisdictions. 

The City of Nampa successfully implemented Esri’s lead line service inventory solution, helping the city meet the EPA’s proposed rule changes aimed at reducing lead levels in drinking water. This allowed the city staff to focus on the areas with the highest likelihood of needing to be replaced, saving time and money.  City of Nampa GIS (arcgis.com)

Valley County Idaho was an early adopter of the Web GIS concept, and leveraged the value of GIS to mitigate resource constraints- Several examples of this can be found in their ArcGIS Hub site:

https://gis-portal-valleycounty.hub.arcgis.com/  They also make it easy for the public to provide feedback with Survey 123 forms on the site.

Perfect examples of you all helping people see the world and solutions in new ways. 

KERMIT:  TECH CHANGES US
Did you think 20 years ago that you would spend so much time looking at a device about the size of a deck of cards?  Or – if I walk around the block 1 more time, I could get 1000 more steps according to my fitness app!  Technology changes us.  Let’s be thoughtful about how we let it change us.

8 KB BOARD:  WE DON’T GET TO GO BACK

Imagine this choice running a GIS process:  Click here to run this analysis in ArcInfo version 7.  Or – using scribecoat and peelcoat.  We don’t get to go back.  Hence we must be thoughtful not only about which tools we will use, but we the geospatial leaders, how we will apply the tools – to be thoughtful about their use.

ETHICS:  SPATIAL RESERVES

Today, everyone is a mapmaker—not just NOAA, UNEP, NatGeo, state of Idaho DNR.  This has enormous implications for data quality.  Maps have always been seen as authoritative.  They tend to be believed.  We must be vigilant about being critical consumers of data.

My book and blog is about 3 things:  GO TO SPATIAL RESERVES:  Where can I find spatial data? How do I know if it is any good?  Societal Issues:   How do I know if I can trust that map?  Location privacy, copyright, and more.  What should I share? What should I not share?  That is the focus of this data blog and book, Spatial Reserves. 

KUALA LUMPUR:  SLOW DOWN?

I sometimes get asked, “Joseph, can you please slow down the development of the technology so we can “catch up?”  Meanwhile the wastewater, the land use, the transportation, the utility, the energy professionals, ask us to develop this tool they specifically need.

GEOTECHNOLOGIES:  ESSENTIAL FOR LEARNING, ESSENTIAL FOR THE PLANET
Why should you care about GIS education?

Why should you, the busy GIS professional that you are, care about what is happening in GIS education and why should you support it? 

• You have kids, or you know people with kids, and you care about them.
• You were a kid once and you remember what frustrations and triumphs you had in your own school journey.
• You have an alma mater university, tribal or community college, or school that you care about.
• You have a neighborhood school that you are interested in partnering with.
• You care about getting passionate and wonderful employees hired at your organization.
• You care about the future of the geospatial industry and the people in it.
• You care about the future of our planet!

GIS has existed for nearly 60 years.  Within a span of 2 years you had:  The Canadian Land Inventory – eh! – Roger Tomlinson and the birth of GIS.  Woodstock (The NY State Thruway is closed, man!).  The founding of a company with $1200 by 2 college kids named Jack and Laura Dangermond – Esri. 

CLASSROOM

Since the inception of GIS, people have wanted to learn more about it.  The development of educational resources—lessons, tutorials, books, and other means to learn about GIS, has been occurring for 60 years.   Educational institutions (schools, community, technical, and tribal colleges, and universities) have long partnered with GIS software companies, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, and government agencies to advance the teaching and learning surrounding GIS.  Beginning in the 1980s, GIS has advanced at all levels —Today, GIS is taught in nearly every university and college in the world–courses, certificate programs, degree programs, and in hybrid, face-to-face, and fully online environments.  It is used as a key research tool and in campus administration. 

GIS FOR SCIENCE: 

GIS underlies ALL SCIENCE.

US K12

Even primary school instructors are using the interactive maps in ArcGIS Online in such accessible and engaging tools as the National Geographic MapMaker to teach about biomes, population change, landforms, and weather.  

UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING
The world of Education is changing:  I think the days of thinking “this university has been here for 150 years & it always will be” are over.  Some geography departments have closed –example:  Vancouver Island University.  Some entire colleges have closed; I visit 35 campuses a year and 1 I visited last year is  down from 17,000 in 2015 to 10,000 today.  Teaching is hard – teaching inquiry is harder; teaching with a professional tool such as GIS is harder still – though I believe, infinitely worth it.  Longstanding tension exists between higher educators who say “we are not here to provide tech training”, we are here to create thinkers and literate citizens” vs University Administrators wanting to increase enrollment and secure outside funding.

Competition is fierce:   You can take the Penn State or Utrecht or other programs from anywhere, anytime.  Hence:  FOCUS your GIS program. There are budget constraints and competing voices.  We still structure higher education by departments which runs counter to GIS as an interdisciplinary force.  Hence, challenges exist, but challenges but often foster innovation.  A course at the University of Jacksonville is entitled:  Beautiful Maps.  I co-founded a University of Denver course called “Digital Earth” – the goal is to enable people to think of maps as only reference documents to > analytical tools.

THE GEOGRAPHIC APPROACH
The only way GIS will grow is to embed it into other programs, so they will see it as indispensable:  The fastest educational growth today in GIS is across an increasing diversity of disciplines:  business, earth and environmental science, geography, economics, mathematics, civil engineering, computer science, health, planning, others.  It is infused in university and college programs on sustainability, climate, resiliency, and data science.  Instructors recognize the systems thinking and holistic perspectives that GIS gives students in increasingly interdisciplinary campus initiatives such as the ATLAS institute at the University of Colorado and the data science program at the UNC Charlotte.  Nearly every university highlights data literacy and data visualization in their mission statements.

DATA SCIENCE

Most people using GIS in the future are not going to come from geo/enviro/GISc, but from IT, computer science, data science.  Here is where you as the GIS community will have the opportunity to show some real leadership, providing this new wave of GIS people some context, place & space, and foundations.

CONNECTING TO EDUCATION:  GIS FOR SCIENCE:  WHAT CAN THE COMMUNITY DO?

What can you do to support what is happening and should happen in GIS in education?

• Talk about how it underlies all science and decision making.
• Serve as a “geomentor” to your local school or alma mater, where you put together a web map of data layers for an educator, or help them when they get “stuck”.
• Host a face-to-face or virtual GIS Day event (www.gisday.com).  GIS Day, so good to me… 
• Join academic organizations, find your own calling, build your confidence in speaking to others about the value of GIS.
• Become a YPN Ambassador to enhance your leadership skills.
• Have your 30-second to 2-minute elevator speech ready to go, while on the airplane, in a conference, or in an actual elevator, articulating what GIS is, why it matters, and why we need to be teaching with it and about it.  Use my set of elevator speeches here for some inspiration but make it your own voice, making it authentic by charting your own journey to your story.

SKILLS TO FOCUS ON IN GIS:   ARCGIS PRODUCTS

• First, how to keep current? You can’t:   70 ArcGIS products alone!  We need each other.  Decide what to build skills in each year.  Be OK with your pace.   Well we’ve mapped faraway places and we mapped some that were near, still mapping after all these years…

WYOMING VIDEO

What are the key skills needed in the modern GIS workforce?  1.  Be curious.  Ask questions.   Ask questions that your professor is not asking you!  When you are in the workplace, you will be asking questions that your supervisor is not even asking you.  These are the valued employees.

ZEBRA MUSSELS
2.  Be able to work with data.  Now more than ever!  Who created it, why, how, when, how often is it updated.  Remember the Spatial Reserves data book and blog.

3. Know your geospatial foundations. Where are your gaps?  Use the GTCM to identify them.  Fill the gaps with:  Work with some GIS every week.  Make a map every week in a GIS.   Review the “what’s new in__ “ blogs.   Pursue certification Esri and/or GISCI, take Esri MOOCs and univ-college courses.   

IKIGAI
4.  Be adaptable and flexible.  Strive to be at the center of the IKIGAI diagram. 

DOORSTOP COMPUTER

Don’t over-focus on version x of software y.  Focus on the most important tool of all–YOUR BRAIN.  Inquiry:   GIS has always been a thinkers tool. 

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box:  You all know about John Snow.  Maybe you don’t know that after pinpointing cholera to a water-borne disease, and even identifying which pump was responsible, he  wasn’t an immediate hero:  It took the Big Stink and another cholera epidemic to change people’s minds.  Stay the course, even when the naysayers are vocalizing. 

5. Read. What are your favorite geo-GIS books?  Mine are:   The MapMakers Wife, the Map that Changed the World, and Longitude.  But–read even outside of your own discipline:  Nonfiction, novels, poetry.   

ELEVATOR

6. Foster good communication skills. Why? You will be called upon to articulate what is the value that GIS brings to the organization and even why they need to fund your position!

WHEATLAND SCENE

The world needs you.  Stay the course, everyone!  You picked a fine time to make maps Lucille.

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