VerticalGeo

Great post the other day in the ESRI Insider Blog by ESRI’s Jack Dangermond about the future of the geospatial industry.  Dangermond said:

Many industries have suffered during the current economic downturn.  So why is it that during this same period, demand for geospatial technology professionals has grown significantly?

I think that this trend is due to the growing understanding of the value of spatial information and analysis.  There are many reasons to implement GIS, but the benefits that we see driving organizations in lean times are cost savings resulting from greater efficiency.  And as we come out of this economic downturn, the efficiencies realized from GIS will become a standard way of doing business, so the need for geospatial professionals will increase even more.

Government has long been at the forefront of this movement, and there will be opportunities here for people with geospatial knowledge, most notably in the area of homeland security and in anything to do with increased transparency and accountability. But we’re now seeing a huge shift in momentum in the commercial arena.  Many of the future career opportunities for geospatial professionals will be in the private sector, as businesses increasingly realize the benefits that government has understood for some time.

The current high unemployment rate is sending a lot of experienced workers “back to school” to learn new skills more relevant for the 21st century workplace. This is one factor driving the growth of focused geospatial programs at universities and community colleges, both at the degree level and the certificate level.  These programs are doing a great service by training the geospatial workforce of tomorrow. They are also providing many opportunities for seasoned geospatial professionals to take on new roles themselves—passing on their vast knowledge by instructing and teaching the next generation of geospatial professionals.

As the reach of spatial information expands, new opportunities are created for spatial thinkers in many areas.

But the career opportunities here are not just for the people who sit in front of keyboards and “do GIS”. It’s much bigger than that.  I think that the real growth opportunity is in the area of spatial thinking.  As people in all types of positions become more familiar with the value of geography, they begin to ask more intelligent questions about the world, and they begin to make more informed decisions. The coming opportunities for spatial thinkers will be even greater than those we are seeing for geospatial technology professionals.

By Jack Dangermond

Mapbutcher has a great post on Web-Based GIS.  He makes some good observations and provides some great examples about how difficult and complicated the mapping tools have been in the past.  I appreciate what he has to say, and I have a some comments:

I think part of the frustration we have as GIS Professionals is that we sometimes fail to understand the separation between the data authoring tier of software and the data presentation tier of software in our GIS.  With the availability of cloud storage and a larger emphasis the last few years on data sharing through Service Oriented Architecture and OGC Data Standards I believe we have inserted the third tier of data sharing between the data authoring and data presentation tiers.  As a GIS Professional I hated it when advocates of Google Earth or Google Maps would talk about their system being a GIS.  Both programs are great data presentation tools, but not very good data authoring tools.  But, today I can author data using my favorite ESRI software and share it via web services so that the user can display it on their presentation tool of choice. I think the creation of the data sharing tier has helped many users have a more positive experience using geospatial data and at the same time has opened up what we do to an entirely new user base, one that loves using geospatial data, but doesn’t want the complicated data presentation tools we have used in the past.

I think we currently have a good assortment of web-based data presentation tools (ArcGIS Server, Google Maps, GeoServer, ArcGIS Online). What I would like to do next is to create a community of GIS Professionals who collaborate together to produce a great set of free open source web-based data authoring tools that we can all benefit from.

I’d love to hear your comments.  If any of you would like to discuss off-line you can reach me at rick.marshall@verticalgeo.com