Every Day Should Be GIS Day

This is the 21st GIS Day. Jack Dangermond was inspired by Ralph Nader to create GIS Day. GIS Day happens because the GIS community has a passion for geospatial thinking. It occurs each year on the Wednesday of Geography Awareness Week, which is the third week of November. Geography Awareness Week is a program from the National Geographic Society.

The tag line on the GIS Day website is:

Share your passion and inspire the world with GIS.

The GIS Day website goes on to suggest that you do that by:

• Celebrating your work
• Showing off the benefits of GIS
• Telling meaningful stories
• Enlightening and nurturing your community.

In a GIS Day message from Jack, he says,

For all of us involved in GIS, this day is a chance to showcase what we do as GIS professionals. For all of us, it's a day to tell our stories to others. It's an opportunity to demonstrate the value of your work, and the meaning of maps and their power.

This is an opportunity to go into schools, to have open houses, to teach kids—our next generation—what GIS and mapping technology is all about. It's an opportunity to tell others what geography, the science of our world, is all about. And to demonstrate the application of geography in very meaningful ways.

GIS Day is a great event and all of us GIS practitioners are thankful for this annual opportunity to showcase our work. As I prepared a speech for a local GIS Day event in Charlotte, NC, I started thinking about the meaning and purpose of GIS Day. Then I thought about what my work and travels have shown me about the GIS community, and it spurred an interesting question,

Why shouldn't every day be GIS Day?

In 2018 and 2019, I have visited twenty-one different professional GIS events, in eighteen states and Washington, DC, and presented to more than 700 GIS practitioners. In those presentations, I use an interactive live polling app called Swipe, so that I can ask questions of the audience, and they respond on their mobile devices, and then I share the instant results on screen. I can then download the results and analyze them. Here's what some of the statistics show:

• Are your leaders aware of the more advanced capabilities of GIS?
• Yes, some, or all, of them are aware = 50%
• No, they think of GIS as map making = 50%

• Do you document and publicize your GIS return on investment?
• Yes = 32%
• No = 47%
• Sometimes = 21%

• Do you have, and maintain, a GIS Strategic Plan?
• Yes = 36%
• No = 64%

I think we can admit that there is a lot of opportunity for GIS to provide more value to those organizations that implement the technology, and it's our job to make that happen. In order to do that, we have to address some of the issues identified by the statistics above.

First, let's move beyond the mapmaker image. Map making is a valuable and distinguished skill, but enterprise GIS can, and should, be doing more to help the business of the enterprise. One way to do that is to change your map maker image and that starts with changing your elevator pitch. When you meet someone new, and they ask you what you do for a living, don't say, "I make maps." Try something like, "I help people make better decisions with the power of location." That little change will start to morph your image into something much more valuable to the organization. As one of my Esri colleagues, Bill Meehan, so eloquently put it in this great article,

GIS should be about digital transformation.

Second, it is critical that the leaders in your organization know the value you are providing to the business. You have got to document and publicize the results of your work. You can do that by using this great GIS ROI tool available from Wade Kloos. StoryMaps are a great way to present your results. Check out this example from Pinellas Co., FL and this one from the State of Vermont. For a more detailed discussion on this and to see more examples, check out my StoryMap.

Next, you must have a GIS Strategic Plan. This recent article from McKinsey & Company, shows from survey results that,

The creation of a strategy now ranks as the number one challenge to, and reason for, companies' success at data and analytics...

If you need to convince others why the organization needs a geospatial strategy, look no further than this excellent article from Matt Lewin. For decades, Esri has been helping organizations in every industry around the globe get more value from their GIS, and we have identified a best practice for a geospatial strategy. If you'd like to learn more about it, check out this document, and contact your Esri account team for assistance on how you can create a geospatial strategy.

Another key point is that you have got to be focused on the business. The slide below from Anna Sokol, an Esri colleague, shows it so well. Start with the business goals, then identify and understand the challenges to those goals. Plan and deploy business driven GIS solutions that conquer the challenges and assist with achieving the goals. That will lead to business value of GIS. That is our job and what executives and leaders are looking for.

Lastly, it takes more than technology to support a successful enterprise GIS. In a recent report from IDC and Esri Canada called, Winning with Location Intelligence, their survey identified GIS best practices that they categorize into what they call, The Five Pillars of Location Intelligence:

• Strategy
• Organization
• Technology & Data
• Culture
• Literacy

If you want a truly successful enterprise GIS, you have got to spend your time working on all five of these. You cannot let the technology and data consume all of your efforts.

There are lots of opportunities out there for all of us to help our organizations do more with GIS, and simultaneously positively affect our personal professional development and success. If we are going to get there, we've got to harness our passion for all things geospatial and turn every day into GIS Day. Why should we only let others know the value of GIS once a year? We've got work to do, so make these actions part of your daily routine. So enjoy GIS Day today, but try to keep that passion going every day by following the suggestions above. There's a difference between having a job and building a career. If you want to build a career, the suggestions in this article can help. HAPPY GIS DAY!