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Presidential Message, 2022

TNGIC! Wow – what a great feeling to be back in person. The board agrees and we hope you do too… that was a smashing success. First, the energy was excellent. There was not a dull moment the entire time, as folks chatted with one another and caught up on all things GIS! The presentations were interesting and informative. The venue successfully protected us from some crazy storms! No one got pooped on by a hawk, despite its best efforts…

TNGIC is nearing its 30th year and this is entire due to the passion of the leaders that have come before us and the strength and camaraderie shared by our membership. Our membership is now roughly 450 members strong!

So how do we sustain this success moving forward?

We presented on our priorities and actions for the next year, with an opportunity for the membership to react and provide feedback with the panel discussion. That proved fruitful and we received some excellent suggestions that we plan to evaluate and carry forward.

  • Expand Our Membership Base

While we have strength in numbers, most of our membership work in government or private consulting. This will likely always be the case, but as GIS technology has become more ubiquitous, we need to begin reaching out to industries where GIS professionals may be embedded. Healthcare, Airports, and the Entertainment industry all come to mind. The benefit will be that we begin creating a community that can look at how GIS technology is applied in vastly different ways and inspire one another with new ideas and applications.





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Staying Sharp

I occasionally hear someone – or myself, for that matter – bemoan the idea that we don’t have time for training and professional development. We often get so caught up in keeping all the day-to-day plates spinning that we often miss the value or importance of keeping up with the industry trends and technology and planning for the future of our organizations. In the very popular book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, the late Dr. Stephen R. Covey broke down tasks into four quadrants based on 2 axes – Urgency and Importance. Training and professional development, for most of us, falls into Quadrant II – Not Urgent, but Important. Thus, the reason many don’t make time for it.

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GIS Career Path

GIS Career Path

While attending primary school, geography meant that students learned basic geography, which included US states and capitals, continents, and other fun facts. The class lasted for a year. I never really thought about geography again and how it would eventually play a larger role in my day-to-day life and decisions I would make as an adult.

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Making Connections

Making Connections

TNGIC is all about making connections and networking….  Right? “But I hate networking.” The term networking gets a bad rap and I think most of the time people are turned off when they hear it. I certainly have a prejudged perception of an event or meeting when I hear the term. I have visions of forced participation and ice breaker conversations.  Huzzah.  

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Data Detectives

Data Detectives

I'm a longtime listener of podcasts and some of my favorite series are by an economist named Tim Harford. His series 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy is great, especially his episodes on clocks and how they eventually led to GPS. His most recent series, Cautionary Tales, is an excellent case study in how people make bad decisions (his most recent episode is all about Florence Nightingale's data visualizations). Tim has a new book out titled The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. I listened to an excerpt on a recent podcast episode and decided it was worth a read. Seeing as how we all act as data detectives in our geospatial work, I think it's worth sharing just a few of the 10 rules Tim outlines in his book.

Rule 1

 Take a moment and read the headline from the news story below.

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