Member Spotlight: Christian Patton
This series of member spotlights features you and your peers here in Esri Community—the people playing a role in finding solutions, sharing ideas, and collaborating to solve problems with GIS. We’re doing this to recognize amazing user contributions, to model how Esri Community’s purpose is being brought to life, and to bring depth to this group of incredible people who may never meet in person, but who benefit from each other’s generous expertise.
Watch Christian's video interview in Kaltura
Better Business Decisions through GEO Jobe Solutions
Smart organizations know that good business decisions are the children of good information. Clear data presented through well-appointed tools brings all the right points into focus, illuminating stumbling blocks and stepping stones alike. And, thanks to being singularly suited to this task, GIS has emerged as an all-but-necessary tool for securing the high degree of awareness that businesses need for charting an optimal course to their goals.
It's no wonder that a rising number of organizations around the world have become serious about making GIS a key component of their business. Of those, more than 10,000 have turned to Esri Partner GEO Jobe for help since it first launched in 1999.
Explore case studies showing how GEO Jobe solutions with Esri products improve client outcomes.
Gibson County Utility District | State of Oregon, Oregon DOT | Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport
Christian Patton (@cpatton_geojobe) is Director of Professional Services at GEO Jobe, one of several divisions that together assist clients in tailoring ArcGIS solutions to fit their organizations’ unique needs. Christian joined the company in 2021 as a developer and rapidly advanced, earning several promotions to where he now manages GEO Jobe’s GIS Services and Software Services teams.
Christian describes his role, “My day-to-day typically involves working with our solution engineers and software developers to ensure we're utilizing ArcGIS Pro or ArcPy — or any tools that we need for our necessary workflows — in the most efficient and ideal way for clients.”
GEO Jobe clients represent virtually every business sector—from those managing natural gas pipelines all the way through to some of the top accounting firms in the world. Bringing extensive ArcGIS product knowledge to bear and being capable of solving a broad spectrum of challenges are base line requirements for success in Christian’s line of work. The facts on the ground, though, make clear that task is anything but simple: The breadth of changing information and its frequent complexity, in addition to the numerous differences between one application versus another, humble any one person’s, or even any one team’s, ability to operate in a silo.
That’s why Christian has been a regular user of Esri Community going back to his time as a developer. He’s not the only one.
Community-Fueled Support for a Whole Organization
“Everybody across the board is using Esri Community,” Christian describes of the GEO Jobe team. “I can guarantee that. There are a lot of situations where I work with our solution engineers to figure out why a tool isn’t working. Sure enough, we’re able to find a thread on Esri Community that has the answer.”
“We’re seeing it even support our products division.”
The easily accessed peer-to-peer support available on Esri Community represents just a portion of the value Christian and his team get out of the platform. He cites the presence of Esri staff who use Community to distribute useful information, like upcoming release details or solution fix notifications, as providing additional resources the GEO Jobe team often turns to. And with their U.S.-based support team having recently doubled in size, Christian notes that they’re expanding the number of people who use Esri Community every day.
“ Everybody across the board is using Esri Community. I can guarantee that. ”
And, Christian notes, if he can’t find an exact solution for the challenge he’s trying to solve, Esri Community often provides important pieces he can pair with other resources to craft something that’s custom fit.
“Oftentimes, I can look in Esri Community and piece [information there] with some forum I came across on another thread in Esri Community. Based off of that, I can conceptualize some solutions and work with some of our team members to figure out some solutions.”
Finding the Thread of Connection
Christian grins while reflecting on the sense of connection he’s gotten out of Esri Community. He explains by recounting a time he found himself searching Community for help with an issue and came across a post that he responded to with a solution. While there, he noticed that another member of the GEO Jobe team had also added to the conversation in that same thread a couple of months prior.
“I realized right then and there how easy it is to cross pollinate across even your own organization, for that thread itself and also when solving the same issues that everybody comes across.”
Christian notes that involvement in the platform has also revealed itself to be a beneficial link between himself and other GIS professionals he networks with. He explains by sharing that he’ll often encounter people at conferences who bring their shared use of Esri Community into a conversation.
When asked what he would say to other Esri users and partners to encourage them to get involved in Esri Community, his reply is quick: “I’d be surprised if they aren’t.”
“I’d definitely encourage it because you can spend so much time resources trying to figure out an issue when there’s a solution out there a lot of times.”
Christian describes the inspiration and impact Esri Community continues to have on his work: “Esri Community has empowered me just from seeing the sheer support we have in the GIS community.”
Christian Patton is Director of Professional Services at GEO Jobe, an Esri Platinum Partner. There, he manages both the GIS Services and Software Services teams to develop ArcGIS-based solutions on behalf of GEO Jobe’s worldwide clientele of over 10,000 organizations.