In the GIS (Geographic Information System) world, July carries the excitement of the ESRI User Conference, where thousands descend on San Diego, California to celebrate the last year of work, learn about what is coming next, and come together to connect with like-minded individuals.
This year, MBS (Managed Business Solutions) sent Summers Cleary and I to the conference where we not only attended but presented our work with and for the National Park Service (NPS). In our presentation named “Enhancing Conservation Data Communication & Visualization with ArcGIS & Power BI” we discussed how we are combining data formats to provide deeper insights, opportunities for better decision making, and efficient communication for multiple audience groups.
As someone who does not specialize in GIS, the conference was a nearly overwhelming whirlwind of new information and insights into the work of the GIS community. The conference opens with a series of plenary meetings that include the highlights of product innovation by ESRI, user presentations, and keynote speakers. The conference kept rolling throughout the week with more user presentations, technical sessions, and special interest group summits. While Summers was off polishing and upgrading her GIS toolbox of skills, I spent my time learning how ESRI is expanding and retooling their platform to connect with other platforms like Microsoft, AWS, and offer data collection options offline.
We attended the Native Nations Summit, where we saw how different tribal groups are working together using GIS to preserve important and sacred sites, combat the ongoing Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) crisis, and support sustainable growth on and of tribal lands. I had the opportunity to eat lunch with an amazing group of women from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska who are working on sustainability and the preservation of tribal lands in the face of climate change and rising sea levels. Their work was punctuated in the second half of the summit where the presentations focused on natural disaster response plans to tsunamis, hurricanes, and flooding on tribal lands and community sustainability through renewable energy in remote tribal locations.
Presenting at the conference was an amazing experience. We presented to a full room, which included fellow MBS team members and several of our partners at NPS as well as members of other DOI agencies. The presentation was followed by a Q&A session that included insightful follow up questions and gave us the opportunity to showcase how we, as MBS, help our clients take action on their data and upskill their teams.
