Hard Work Always Pays Off: My GIS Journey
"I am a believer in the saying "Hard work always pays off." Study, learn, and work as hard as you can on your goals, and success will be no accident."
Hi, my name is Mohamed El-Saket, and I am a geographic information system (GIS) solution engineer at ESRI North Africa. I am ESRI certified in ArcGIS Pro Foundation 2101 and Enterprise Geodata Management Professional 2201. I would like to share my GIS story with you, along with what I learned, how I met challenges, and my best advice for you.
How I Started in GIS
In 2016, I found my passion for geography and maps, so I applied to study in the GIS department in the Faculty of Arts at Mansoura University. I learned about the earth and about disasters, climate, sustainability, humans, and the impact of each of them on our world. Then I studied GIS technology, and I mixed the science I learned from books with computer technology. This combination helped me to find the hidden patterns, trends, and relationships that emerge when we visualize and analyze data on a map to solve our most complex problems.
Notable GIS Accomplishments
In 2019, I entered a scientific paper in the GIS Day competition held by Esri North Africa in cooperation with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The topic of the paper was "The Role and Importance of GIS in Smart Cities," and despite my young age and being a student, I won first place, outperforming older experts in the field.
As I mentioned, I started my journey with GIS and mapmaking in 2016. But in 2020, I completed a scientific research project as a graduation project for my bachelor's degree, which I considered the beginning of my achievements in GIS. This project focused on following the changes that occurred on the coastline of the city of Damietta in Egypt from 1980 to 2015, based on the Landsat satellite series and using Esri technology, especially ArcGIS Desktop (ArcMap) with the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) add-in developed by the US Geological Survey (USGS) team. In addition, the project predicted future shoreline change for the years 2025 and 2035. The project was admired by the department council, and I received the degree of distinction.
Some of the other achievements related to the work were providing technical support and consulting to many clients of Esri North Africa. In addition, I delivered Esri course training to hundreds of people in the government and private sectors and helped them to learn what GIS is and what Esri does.
Esri Certification Creates a Lasting Impact
Completing two Esri certifications gave me more credibility among my colleagues, and my friendly attitude encouraged them to seek help when they had difficult questions or faced problems. These positive encounters and approachability qualified me to give a motivational speech to a large audience for GIS Day.
I worked to receive two Esri certificates: ArcGIS Pro Foundation 2101 and Enterprise Geodata Management Professional 2201. I aim to become a utilities industry lead, and to achieve this, I began a master's degree in this area and am planning to obtain related Esri certification, such as ArcGIS Utility Network 20-001, Enterprise Administration Professional 2201, and Enterprise System Design Professional 2201.
In April 2021, I was honored by the assistant minister of Housing, Utilities & Urban Communities, Dr. Waleed Abbas, as a representative of Esri North Africa (Esri NA) for the efforts made by Esri NA team in technical support and delivering training for hundreds of New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) engineers.
Overcoming GIS Challenges
During my second year of college, I encountered the problem of not being satisfied with the subjects in my courses; I wanted to learn more. At the same time, I wasn't aware of online learning, but I opened my laptop and typed "GIS courses." The first search result that came up was ESRI's course catalog, along with some other sources like Coursera, which offers a diploma consisting of five training courses from the University of California, Davis, in partnership with Esri. From here, I started my journey.
In my graduation year, I was worried about getting a job in the field of GIS. But also, I wasn't aware of the different jobs or titles until I found an Esri resource about GIS careers that helped me understand common core jobs in GIS.
Sharing Knowledge with the GIS Community
I wanted to share the knowledge I had accumulated in addition to growing experiences with the GIS community. So, I established a YouTube channel and have shared it on social media for wider exposure, with more than 4,000 followers. The content is focused on technical updates and working tips about ArcGIS and is in Arabic to cater to professionals in the Middle East and North Africa region.
GIS Training I Recommend to Others
For undergraduates, especially those in the Middle East, I am aware of your struggles and aspirations for powerful and useful learning resources. I strongly advise you to start by registering for a free account on the Esri website and exploring the Getting Started section of the Esri course catalog page, which contains great resources for learning. Focus on the most important GIS software required in the field of GIS, ArcGIS Pro, which will help you to a large extent in obtaining a job. See my explanatory video in Arabic about this resource.
Whether you are a student, recent graduate, junior employee, team leader, or in any other position, each of us at some point needs help or support, or we may need to provide support to others. With ESRI Community, we can raise a banner: "No more errors." Through this wonderful site, which I have personally used a lot, you can make a post about a problem you are facing, and you will receive solutions from the Esri team or from people in the community. Not only that, but you can also submit an idea or suggestion for a new tool that you would like to be included in the upcoming releases of any software, and Esri will consider it—or may already provide it, as has happened with many others.
It is wonderful that Esri is the leader in GIS by providing technology, modern software, technical support, and more. But the most amazing thing is that it provides a full explanation of all the software, tools, and extensions that it provides through Esri online help. So if you need to know everything about anything in any of the software provided by Esri, I highly recommend that you open a browser and type "esri" with your required software/extension.
My Advice to Young Professionals: Hard Work Always Pays Off
I believe the best advice for young professionals is that hard work always pays off. Study, learn, and work as hard as you can on your goals: success is no accident. One of the most powerful resources, which helps me a lot, is Esri—including its online documentation, online training, YouTube channel, and ESRI Community.
Try not to neglect your university studies—despite the limited academic content that I was receiving, I worked hard, graduated with an excellent grade, and ranked second among my colleagues. At the same time, I was working on my own from the technical side using the resources that I mentioned above.
Every year, set goals to achieve, and review your progress every month. Try to surround yourself with optimistic people to encourage each other's achievements, and always take the initiative to help others.