A More United World through GIS and Community
With Esri Community, we place a great deal of emphasis on the power generated by bringing people together in a space where they can collaborate in mutually beneficial ways. Eliminating silos transforms possibility into progress, exposing a huge landscape of each other’s experience, ideas, and support.
When Esri’s founder and President, Jack Dangermond, spoke to more than 20,000 attendees from the plenary stage at last week’s User Conference, the event’s theme GIS – Uniting Our World emphasized the role geography plays in taking on the world’s great challenges. Within that, Jack outlined what may be geography’s highest calling: to bring humanity into alignment as a cooperating force dedicated in our efforts to overcome those challenges. In other words, the most urgent purpose of GIS is to build community.
As in many previous years, the Esri Community team was at 2024’s User Conference playing our own part to support uniting the GIS world. We had an incredible time that was repeatedly underscored by connection between ourselves, our members, and folks now newly introduced to Esri Community. Here’s a bit of what we got up to …
Bringing Community Close
One of our team’s primary goals is to meet in-person with our members—the people who make Esri Community the digital gathering place for Esri users. Most of our year is spent virtually connecting with all of you here in this platform. User Conference gives us an opportunity to take those virtual connections and reinforce them with the tangibility of in-person meetings, face-to-face introductions, and sometimes even a hug.
Marvin Davis (L), a 2022 Esri Community Member Spotlight interviewee, and Jennings Starcher (R) stopped by the Esri Community booth to exchange hellos and work on completing their Esri Customer Benefits Program passports.
Out of the many hundreds of visitors who stopped in at the Esri Community booth over the course of three days, plenty came to learn about this free online resource for the first time. If you’re reading this and happen to be one of the numerous folks who joined Esri Community as a result of learning about it at User Conference welcome! It was such a pleasure meeting you and we’re glad to keep the conversation going here in Community!
A highlight among our in-person meet-ups was connecting with a number of our incredible Esri Community MVPs. It’s only so often that we get the opportunity to spend time with this important group of members who do so much here in our platform. We’re grateful for every minute we got with them both during a special MVP-only session with members of our Global Business Development (GBD) and UX Research teams, and again later that evening at a special sponsored dinner.
A group of Esri Community MVPs at User Conference meet with members of Esri’s Global Business Development and UX Research teams
Esri Community MVPs, Esri Community staff, and select special guests gather for an after-hours bite and friendly chit chat during a sponsored dinner in downtown San Diego.
Recognizing Members Behind Major Contributions
At the time of this article, Esri Community has nearly 400,000 active member accounts. That’s a whole lot of the world’s GIS knowledge coming together in a single gathering place to collaborate. Of those, a few members stand out from the rest of their peers for the truly significant contributions they make through their participation.
Building broad awareness around everything our MVPs do and showing them appreciation are both goals high on our list of priorities. Starting in 2023, we partnered with Esri Events staff to create a prominent wall dedicated to MVP awareness. That tradition continued and this year’s wall featured updates about collective MVP contributions, named MVPs who had produced the top contributions, and highlighted each of our newest MVPs who joined within the last year.
A wall dedicated to the Esri Community MVPs fills a high-traffic hall, seen by thousands during UC 2024
In addition to the wall, each of the three MVPs who won 1st through 3rd place in the Elite Level of our 2023 annual Esri Community Contest were announced with a message of gratitude during the event’s closing ceremony. Associated awards will be mailed to @JohannesLindner, @jcarlson, and @DanPatterson in recognition of their accomplishments here in Esri Community.
Esri Community Contest awards for MVPs Johannes Lindner, Josh Carlson, and Dan Patterson on display
Collecting Inspiring Stories
For the last several years, the Esri Community team has placed renewed emphasis on telling the stories of our members—the incredible work they do, how ArcGIS helps them do that work, and how Esri Community enables them to better use ArcGIS. Not only does this storytelling initiative bring greater depth to this large group of GIS users who may never meet each other in-person but who frequently impact each other in meaningful ways, it has the extra effect of helping us better understand the people using our platform.
Esri Conferences are the leading opportunity we turn to for coordinating interviews with folks we hope to feature in upcoming Esri Community Member Spotlights or other content. This year was no different in that we were able to conduct interviews with several members who have fascinating stories to tell. Who knows … you may just see some of them featured in future Member Spotlights here in Esri Community!
One of Esri Community’s newest MVPs, Christopher Counsell (L), and Esri Community member Dawood Al Busaidi (R) pose for headshots following their respective interviews
Collaborating with Esri Initiatives
Did you know?: the Esri Young Professionals (YPN) Network isn’t just for “young” people (also known as those lucky ducks who don’t yet know that sleeping in a funny position isn’t all that different from getting hit by a bus). Instead, it refers to those just starting their GIS journey or experienced professionals new to the field. It can even include people who’ve been in GIS for a long time but are branching out into an area new to them.
What’s more, the Esri Young Professionals Network Community is one of the most active areas in Esri Community. The YPN team has a strong presence in this platform, where they share resources, invite discussion, help answer questions, and facilitate mentorship. It’s an incredible asset to the success of developing GIS professionals and the Esri Community team collaborates with YPN to expand its impact. At User Conference, this included participating in a fireside chat event to introduce young professionals to Esri Community and the ways it can be a career-long support to them.
Head of Community, Chris Catania, demonstrates how Esri Community can support career success
and growth to a YPN booth visitor
We also continue to collaborate with Esri’s leads running this year’s GIS Day celebration, which will be the event’s 25th anniversary and take place on November 20th, 2024. GIS Day’s booth presence at User Conference is being supplemented by our own lead-up to the big day, having already begun to make its first appearance on Esri Community via the GIS Day 2024 Forum which you can learn more about in this welcome message.
.gif wishing a Happy GIS Day
User Testing to Improve Esri Community
New this year, the Esri Community team ran UX/UI testing with a selection of User Conference attendees. We’re currently on track to implement a next generation update to the Esri Community platform towards the end of 2024 and we asked testers to provide early feedback on navigation, structure, and other elements. More communication regarding this platform update will be released as the change approaches, and additional user testing is expected. If you’re an Esri Community member who would like to be considered as a future tester, feel encouraged to fill out an interest form at: Esri Community Customer Feedback Testing Interest Form
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We’ll always miss the excitement and gathering that takes place at User Conference, but our team is glad to be back to doing the daily work that we love—helping unite the GIS world to accomplish great things together!