UGIC 2020
What a strange year for conferences, thanks to COVID-19. UGIC was first delayed, and then delayed again and made virtual. Definitely missed seeing the local faces, and classes weren't the same without the personalities.
Being virtual, every class was pre-recorded, and hosted on YouTube. This turned out to be awesome, because if there was a class that didn't turn out to be what you thought it would be, you could move on to another one without judgement.
"The Path from GIS Manager to GIS Leader" class had some interesting points.
- I love that they pointed out that the biggest challenge of a successful GIS implementation is the people problem. This is so true.
- They say the solution to this is implementing a change management program - Change Management is the discipline that guides how we prepare, equip, and support individuals to successfully adopt change in order to drive organizational success and outcomes. They recommended monthly trainings.
- They also claim your organization will be 6-times more successful. That is a big claim.
- They talked about having focus areas: effective sponsorship, continuous communication, proactive resistance management, and workforce development/training. But theses are not without their own challenges.
- Over 50% of sponsors do not understand their role. This is VERY true. Sponsors are just as likely to create resistance to change as employees. #1 factor for a successful change is an active and visible sponsor. I would like to add that an educated sponsor is the key. Majority of sponsors are people that don't understand, do, or use GIS, so how can they properly sponsor it?
- They also pointed out that organizations are moving away from GIS titles, because it's too closely tied to map making and not all encompassing. Industry examples of job title changes from around the world include:
- Locations Intelligence Manager
- Geographic Information Officer
- Geospatial Intelligence Manager
- GeoAnalytics Information Manager
- Data, Analytics, and Visualization Services Director
- They encouraged moving away from "GIS" to "Location Intelligence"
Locally, I have seen this same thing. It appears when a GIS person's job becomes more programming than map making, they take on an IT title of sorts. My two cents - moving too far away from GIS titles will lead to so much confusion. There is already no industry standard when it comes to the hierarchy of GIS job titles; moving completely away from GIS in the name will only make things worse. People won't know what jobs to look for, or jobs to look at to compare across the industry.
The Plenary speaker was Ismael Chivite. He was a crack up. He focused his presentation on photos and maps, talking about feature layers and attachments. The attachment view map app can now show videos! He walked us through the process of submitting pics online through survey123. Photos are stored in the same place as the table.
He also demo'd the spike app and hardware. The hardware attaches to the back of your phone and will measure items in pictures. So cool!
UGIC ended with a super sweet game of geography questions on Kahoot. I haven't ever played Kahoot before. We did a practice round, four real rounds, and then a championship round. Kokopelli masks were given to the first place winners of each round, and invited to play in the championship round. I came in second place during the third round. The winner of the championship got a sweet contour tablecloth, that I must now find.
All in all, the conference was great. Not as many classes were offered as usual, but it was still nice to see some familiar faces.
Check out my first UGIC experience here.