Community Blog

Without any formal training in GIS, Brandon Adcock became its champion at the California Department of Public Health's Food and Drug branch, where he's investigated foodborne illnesses for over a decade in its Emergency Response Unit. In this Esri Community Member Spotlight learn how, with resources mostly found in Esri Community, Brandon taught himself ArcGIS and brought his vision for a more geospatially informed response against foodborne pathogens to life.

Find out how you can participate in the 2023 Esri Community Contest.

The NIFC Org is an online component of the National Interagency Fire Center (NICF), a location in Boise, Idaho where eight federal and state agencies coordinate their work in wildland fire management. ArcGIS tools play an increasing role in those fire response efforts in recent years, with Esri Community additionally providing a place for NIFC's Wildfire Response GIS User Group—a private group where individuals involved in wildland fire go for key updates, resource sharing, and other needs as part of their work. Learn from Sean Triplett, Katie Hansen, and Skip Edel as they present NIFC's important work and how ArcGIS and Esri Community advantage it.

Brian Colson is a Senior GIS Administrator at the Salt River Project (SRP), a non-profit utility that supplies power and water to more than 2 million Arizona residents. Brian and his team began migrating to ArcGIS Pro in 2018, beginning a years-long process of getting their gravity-fed irrigation systems running in a new utility network where they'll benefit from greater efficiencies and an expanded dataset. Esri Community has been a key resource during this process, including serving as a public location for a prototype Utility Network that Esri’s ArcGIS Solutions team published in collaboration with SRP and another irrigation district. Learn more about SRP's rich history and how Esri Community is supporting the work of Brian and his team …

By the end of 2022, nearly 4,300 of the 321,000 Esri Community accounts (just 1.3% of the total) belonged to Esri staff members. Without mentioning articles authored, customer Ideas responded on, or other important forms of contribution, this comparatively modest group of staff created 40% of all posts marked as Accepted Solutions in the same year. The role they play here in Esri Community is as crucial as it is meaningful, and we've assembled the top contributors in this article to give them some much-deserved recognition ...

So much was accomplished in Esri Community during 2022 and it's time to celebrate! We've rounded up some of the biggest achievements, member stories, and news of note in an ArcGIS StoryMap that centers on Esri Community members — the heart and soul of this platform ...

With the end of 2022 just behind, so have we crossed the finish line in our annual Esri Community Contest! Meet the nine winners who stood out among their peers to earn top spots in each of the three categories of competition: Elite Level, Rising Star, and Newcomer of the Year ... 

It's difficult to fully express how grateful we are to the Esri Community MVPs who do so much for everyone here on this platform. They're a small group of 53 members who, brimming with generosity, lift many times their weight when it comes to answering questions and making meaningful contributions. Our team wants to say thank you in this heartfelt letter right at the beginning of this new year ... 

As Head of GIS for a company breaking fresh ground in location products, Krishna Murthy and his team have had to build up a suite of resources that bring support to initial research stages, through syncing yet-undeveloped ArcGIS features with their product roadmaps, and beyond. Learn how Esri Community has been a critical piece of Krishna's framework from the beginning ...

Meet Marvin. As the sole GIS practitioner in his workplace for the City of Morgantown, WV, Marvin knows how important virtual opportunities to connect with peers and industry experts can be. The free resources afforded in Esri Community have seen to that need going back the better part of a decade, including during the last several years as he's worked with the city to improve municipal voting for the local public and election officials through the use of ArcGIS products. Hear from Marvin as he explains how Esri Community serves his needs on multiple levels, including its assurance that when GIS challenges arise he isn't alone ...