Latest Contributions by DawnWright

It’s a pleasure to write for this series on a topic that I feel has huge implications for building more impactful mentor relationships, both formal and informal, as well as making and keeping connections that will dramatically build your professional network. The topic is about being as responsive as possible to emails or any other types of direct messages that you receive from your colleagues, clients, customers, or collaborators. My name is Dawn Wright and I am the Chief Scientist of Esri. Over the last 15 years I’ve been responsible for helping Esri to better understand and liaise more effectively with the scientific community. This has included the mentoring of some of our closer Esri customers and collaborators, as well as Esri staff. On the broader topic of approaching mentorship, there is no better primer, in my view, than what Lisa Berry provided as the first blog in this series. Please check it out if you missed it, or review it once again. Esri Chief Scientist Dawn Wright pictured with her dog Riley. I would like to focus here on the singular skill and discipline of responding… to emails, professional texts, professional direct messages, chats, or even tags on platforms such as MS Teams, Esri Community or wherever you have corporate social media accounts. I’m referring here to your professional life, although I try to hold true to these principles with friends and family in personal correspondence as well. I am truly shocked by how many colleagues, clients, collaborators and the like “drop the ball” or  “go dark” on a regular basis. This is also referred to as “ghosting.” One true-life example from a colleague: Sorry that I did not get you linked to <name of customer/user> earlier.  With thousands of emails in my inbox ­ I do miss whole threads at times (a sad reality)! Please don’t ever let this be you! A mantra that I hold to is that a person is successful to the degree that he/she/they are able to handle their email (or other professional correspondence). This is a vital professional discipline to master. Responsiveness leads to reputation. And as I’ve told so many mentees, you need to guard your professional reputation (and that of the organization you represent) like your life. For me, this comes in part from hard-learned lessons over 17 additional years as a college professor, with hundreds of students depending on me each term. It is certainly important for our geospatial industry and our workplaces, especially with how quickly technologies evolve, along with the people creating and using them. As Chief Scientist, Dawn works as a 'team of one,' serving across all divisions of Esri, and as requested by certain distributors, pictured here with Esri Germany at their headquarters. 3 Mains Reasons Why This is Important Lost Access to Opportunities: Networking requires two-way communication, often including professional opportunities of many kinds. But opportunities rarely come to those who cannot be reached, and will certainly go to others if the opportunity is competitive. When someone “goes dark,” that person may automatically be removed from consideration for future networking, partnerships, or job opportunities. This can be a significant momentum killer, affecting not only yourself but your colleagues’ ability to move forward and/or upward on a project or deliverable. You may in fact be hindering them from doing their job. Erosion of Trust and Credibility: Professional success relies on teamwork, which in turn relies on trust. “Going dark” erodes that trust because, again, it essentially stymies collaboration and momentum, not to mention signaling a lack of accountability and respect. Even if "going dark" is caused by stress or being busy, others may misinterpret it as apathy, low accountability, or an inability to properly manage and deliver on the demands of our profession. Ineffective Conflict Management: Many who “go dark,” may do so to avoid uncomfortable conversations or conflict. However, this creates more problems than it solves, leading to misunderstandings, stalling resolution, and perhaps leading to long-term professional consequences. And by failing to respond in uncomfortable situations, or even straightforward ones such as a job offer, or outreach from a recruiter, people may be burning bridges that might be needed later in their careers (back to item 1). Who knows? The person ignored today could be a key decision-maker or your manager of tomorrow. Tips for Success The tips below have served me well over my 40-plus-year career, and a career in which I’ve never had a dedicated administrative assistant! If you have an assistant, please buy that person chocolate immediately! If the issue of responsiveness is not a problem for you, congratulations and keep up the great work! But if not… Always seek to answer within 24 hours on business days. Always use an auto-reply when out of the office, whenever possible. Never let an Inbox of any type grow into the double digits, much less triple digits, much less quadruple digits. Once answered or handled, ALWAYS file responses in appropriate folders. You’d be surprised how much valuable “history” is lost when email trails disappear because someone cannot retrieve the important background context, let alone recall. We are only human. Let the technology help you, including with appropriate AI organizing tools that flag missed messages or label ones needing more urgent attention from key senders. Consider giving a short response, as a first response. For example: “Swamped right now but I’ve seen your message and will get back to you as soon I can, hopefully within a week. Thanks for your patience.” This acknowledges that the person’s request is seen and valued, while allaying any fear or frustration at not receiving an immediate answer. For social media, I use Chrome where it is easiest to have all of my social media accounts in different tabs within one window. In this way, I can easily go from account to account in order to quickly respond to direct messages or tags. Having said all of this, don’t forget to BE RESPONSIVE TO YOURSELF. Taking the time away from the rat race helps you to recharge, gives you great new ideas, and helps you to just plain feel better. This will hopefully lead to more eagerness on your part to get back to responding to every appropriate message that comes your way from managers, colleagues, clients, users, impressionable students, GIS career hopefuls, community members, and more. Final Thoughts In a professional, relation-driven world that is heavily dependent on networking, the ability to consistently and reliably respond to communication is considered a vital skill and its absence is seen as unprofessional, unreliable and discourteous. Occasional delays due to "digital overload," are certainly to be expected as we all struggle with this. But people who habitually "go dark,” are truly risking the health of their careers, as this behavior creates long-term barriers to opportunities, destroys trust, and stymies conflict resolution. Sadly, it can ruin your reputation. So to help build the best reputation that you can, and that of your company, organization or agency... RESPOND! ... View more

Many know of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) as one of the world’s most well-respected Earth science scholarly organizations. Its annual fall meeting usually dwarfs the Esri UC by well over 10,000 attendees. Last year, AGU followed the lead of many other organizations in holding its meeting completely online, while extending the length of the conference from 7 days to 17. Last year's event attracted 25,482 attendees from more than 100 countries, maintaining its status as the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world. This year's conference (#AGU21) will feature a hybrid experience over the course of just one week, with both in-person and virtual presentations in oral and poster sessions, in-person and virtual eLightning sessions, and an in-person exhibitor showcase. Esri is once again a PREMIUM-level exhibitor with an on-site booth presence under the theme of Next Generation Science Entails WHERE. The 3-main topic pillars/stations at the booth will be Sustainable Future, Climate Change Initiatives, and Open Science. There will be a bevy of rich content, messaging and demos under these topics, including on multidimensional scientific data and analysis, imagery, big data geoanalytics, raster analytics, The Living Atlas of the World, ArcGIS Pro, R and Python integration, ArcGIS Hubs, GeoPlanner, Insights, ArcGIS StoryMaps, Learn ArcGIS, MOOCs, World [Terrestrial] Ecosystems (aka Ecological Land Units), Ecological Marine Units, Ecological Coastal Units, the entire web GIS pattern, our commitment to open/interoperable, and more. Throughout the entire conference, Esri will have booth staff available each day should any AGU attendee have questions, wish to speak with Esri experts, or request a science demo. Free books, the famous "Globey" Esri stressballs, and other giveaways will be part of the action too! In addition, a variety of science books from Esri Press will be available to AGU attendees at significant discount. Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity by visiting https://go.esri.com/AGUbooks. Many thanks to Esri Earth Sciences Solution Director Lorraine Tighe for coordinating the participation of 5 booth staff in this important scientific conference.  Beyond the booth, we are also pleased to share the lineup of presentations that will be made by Esri staff at the 2021 AGU Fall Meeting in a virtual mode. AGU is striving to make as much content live for virtual attendees, as well as on-demand, with pre-recorded oral presentations and virtual posters available for attendees to view even outside the scheduled live Q&A sessions during the meeting. You’ll see in the list below of scientific papers, posters, and entire sessions that Esri is leading or contributing on a wide variety of interesting and important projects. Many of these are in collaboration with our federal partners at NASA, NOAA, US Forest Service, Department of Energy, EPA, and the USGS, as well as several universities and national laboratories. This showcases how Esri not only enables great understanding of the world with our products and services, but also performs good science, and contributes well as a member of the scientific community, sharing and inspiring others as to The Science of Where. AGU PRESENTATIONS and SESSIONS with Esri Co-Authors (where B = Biogeosciences, ED = Education, EP = Earth and Planetary Surface Processes, IN = Earth and Space Science Informatics, GC = Global Environmental Change, GH = Global Health, SY = Science and Society; 5-character codes are entire sessions) B11A-03Ecological Settings of Earth's Coastlines ED34A-12UnstableGround: An Interactive Website to Visualize and Communicate How the Arctic is Changing. EP12C - Proven AI/ML applications in the Earth Sciences I Oral EP15H - Proven AI/ML Applications in the Earth Sciences II Poster GC43C-05A Spatial Approach for Predicting Future Climate-Induced Shifts in Agriculture Using Machine Learning GH21A-06A Generalized Linear Elastic Net Regression to Model Impacts of Environmental and Demographic Factors on Childhood Academic Performance IN15A-02Beyond Raw Data: CF-netCDF as the Foundation for Advanced Spatial Analysis IN51A-02Collaborative Sea-Level Science on NASA’s Science Managed Cloud Environment: Toward an Earth Information System SY14A-02Building a Digital Twin of the Dangermond Preserve – the Last Coastal Wilderness in Southern California Dawn Wright was also a committee member behind the AGU Town Hall: TH45LJustice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Earth and Space Sciences: Conversation on Issues and Opportunities With the AGU Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee SELECTED AGU PRESENTATIONS or SESSIONS by OUR USERS  (where ED = Education, G = Geodesy, H = Hydrology, IN = Earth and Space Science Informatics, NH = Natural Hazards, NS = Near Surface Geophysics; 5-character codes are entire sessions) ED12A-02Adopt-a-Pixel 3km: Facilitating Collaborative Science through NASA Tools, Imagery, and Resources ED34A-08Using ESRI Story Maps to Support Student Research in the Research Experience for Undergraduates on Sustainable Land and Water Resources ED45D-0752An Educational Program for Engaging Rural Students for Agricultural in situ Data Collection EP25A-06Utilizing ArcGIS Pro for the Analysis of Source-to-Sink Sediment Flux during the Last Glacial Maximum G35C-0304A Cloud-based Operational Surface Water Extent Mapping Service from Sentinel-1 SAR H14F-01Operational Near-real Time Drought Monitoring Using Global Satellite Precipitation Products (CMORPH) and In-situ Datasets (NClimGrid) H25D-1088Probabilistic determination of Hurricane effects over the Georgia Coast in the Changing Climate with HAZUS-MH model customization & remedial decision support system development H41I-01Using Random Forest to Predict 1,2,3-Trichloropropane Contamination from Legacy Non-Point Source Pollution of Groundwater in California’s San Joaquin Valley H54I-06Trend Analysis of Streamflow Data for the Upper Brazos River IN14B - Advances in Earth and Space Science Informatics II eLightning IN33B-04GES DISC’s ArcGIS Image Service with Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement (IMERG) data IN44A - Advances in Earth and Space Science Informatics I Oral IN45C - Advances in Earth and Space Science Informatics III Poster IN45G-0514Building ArcGIS Services in AWS for NASA GES DISC Data NH25A-0535Analysis of Flood Risk Changes in Semarang, Indonesia NS15A-0364Investigating Rock Glaciers in the Eastern Sierra Nevada with Ground-Penetrating Radar: Internal Structure, Composition, and Hydrologic Role in a Changing Climate ... 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