Community Blog

Meet Hussam Al Jabri, a GIS Lead working on the electric distribution tier of a large city building infrastructure company in Saudi Arabia. Hussam has been recognized with multiple prestigious awards from Esri in recent years, in addition to being recognized as an Esri Community Rookie of the Year in 2020. In this interview and article, Hussam discusses the role Esri Community has played in his career and why he believes he'll be in Esri Community for his entire life.

Peter Knoop is a research consultant at the University of Michigan, where he and a small number of colleagues support the school’s roughly 10,000 registered ArcGIS system users. He’s there to help when questions come up about using the software. But with such a large group and more than 100+ Esri products any given user might be working with, he sometimes has to supplement his expertise by turning to Esri Community for insights. Read this Member Spotlight to learn how the resources in Esri Community provide Peter not just a place to find answers to questions, but also help him collaborate with other support staff in higher education to advance their shared product Idea priorities, and enable knowledge sharing in ways that lighten his workload.

The list of properties Johns Hopkins University owns has grown exponentially since it first opened in 1876. Keeping track of them all is no small task. Jonathan Dandois PhD, GISP is the GIS Manager for Facilities & Real Estate at the University. He manages the department's ArcGIS Enterprise products—the foundation that makes staying on top of construction, planning, and architecture related to all those properties possible. As with any complex task or tools, challenges arise that may not be easily solved alone. Without on-site GIS peers to collaborate with in such moments, Jonathan often turns to his virtual group of peers in Esri Community for help. In this article, learn why Jonathan thinks of Esri Community as the perfect middle ground between product documentation and Technical Support, and why he spends time investing his own expertise back into the Community ... 

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.

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 …

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 ...

Meet Luiza, a Developer on the Environment Consult Team at Arcadis. She and five of her colleagues designed a map that has the potential to connect homeless and vulnerable populations with one of their most needed resources, starting in São Paulo. Learn more in this article and video interview ...

Meet Josh Carlson in this first article and video interview in our new Esri Community Member Spotlight series! Josh is a GIS Analyst for Kendall County, Illinois who joined the ranks of Esri Community MVPs in 2021. In our interview, Josh sheds light on his journey to becoming so active within Esri Community, how he's using this space's resources in his own work, and he answers our question: "What advice do you have for other members?" ...