Esri Education User Conference – Day 1

A month or so ago, I submitted a research poster to Esri UK to compete for the Jack Dangermond Young Scholars Award and the chance to represent the United Kingdom at the Esri Education User Conference and the Esri User Conference in San Diego, California. I was absolutely thrilled to find out that I’d won and would be going to the biggest gathering of experts from my industry. This also enabled me to confirm two presentations I was slated to give – one on my research on Teaching GIS to Interdisciplinary Researchers (with GIS Lessons for You) and another on the work Challenging RISK is doing.

The conference kicked off yesterday with, none other than, David DiBiase providing the opener. I have to admit that I was a bit star struck and nervous, as my work is critiquing the fine work him and his team did to establish the Geographic Information Science & Technology Body of Knowledge (it’s a great initiative, but I want to try and improve its suitability and application to interdisciplinary research initiatives that use GIS). The main speakers at the plenary were Ola Ahlqvist (Ohio State University [Go Buckeyes!] [as a native Ohioan, I have to give a shout out]) who discussed GIS Service-Learning (where community needs and classroom activities come together to create positive impact), Stacy Stark (University of Minnesota Duluth) who shared her experience with using GIS to engage Undergraduates, Stephanie Gibeau (one of Stacy’s graduates) who went on to quickly get employment in our industry, Robert Cheetham (Azavea) who promoted the good work of Benefit Corporations (B-Corps [which I think is the same our Social Enterprises in the UK]) using GIS to address community needs, and finally Madison Vorva who started the campaign to get palm oil that comes from unsustainable sources out of Girl Scout cookies and other products (eventually using maps to show who cares where, again, showing impact). All these stories were inspiring and really drove the message home that 1) our industry is in demand and 2) we can make amazing positive impacts on the world around us.

After the opening and lunch was the session I was scheduled to talk in (Frontiers of GIS Education), which I was a bit nervous for, as 1) I’d be giving a lightning talk (short and fast paced [never done one before]) and 2) also in my session speaking was Karen Kemp (University of Southern California) who is someone whose work I’ve quoted quite a bit and would be listening what I had to say. My talk felt like a blur (thankfully I stuck to time and hopefully I was able to get my research across) and at the end, none other than Karen actually asked me a question (or rather gave me a helpful comment on a GIS concept I should look into further). If you’d like to check out my presentation, it’s online here. The other speakers discussed great stuff: Patrick Kennelly (LIU Post) on the journal – Cartographic Perspectives, Bill Hamm (University of Waterloo) on his findings on the multidisciplinary background of his students, David Webb (VWCC) on what you can do (as well as the troubles of) using UAVs for imagery creation, David Goldberg (Texas A&M) who data mined LinkedIn to understand what skills employers were looking for from GIS grads (30% want Python), Karen Kemp on the potentials of CyberGIS (big data, big compute) and a complimentary Education compendium that allows you to search for materials based on various factors (level, Bloom’s Taxonomy, etc. [fascinating!]), and Paul Hunt (University of Nebraska Omaha) on using web based map quizzes to assess geographic understanding.

For the afternoon session, I sat in on GIS and Science Education (to get some ideas for the project proposal with the Institute of Education [mentioned in the previous post]) and very much enjoyed the presentation by Kristin Bott (Reed College) who presented on her interdisciplinary education work with undergraduates assessing thermal efficiency of houses in Portland, Oregon.

The evening marked the first of a number of social events scheduled for the various winners of the Young Scholar’s Award from around the world. We had the chance to meet and greet each other and then check out the expo of GIS professionals being held. Everyone’s done such amazing work that I’m honoured to be able to be considered amongst them and am looking forward to further events with them and during the rest of the conference.

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