Meeting Members at Esri FedGIS 2024
Esri Federal GIS 2024 has come and gone, but its central theme endures: Creating the World You Want to See. In a culminating moment of the conference plenary, Esri Founder and CEO, Jack Dangermond asked the audience to take a quiet moment to reflect on their own vision for the planet we share. As practitioners in a field capable of facilitating enormous change, what kind of world did they want to help transition us toward? One that’s more secure, connected, and biodiverse? Perhaps one with systems that better ensure equity and justice? Almost certainly, we collectively hope for an earth that doesn’t just sustain life but promises prosperity for generations to come.
The Esri Community team takes a supportive position in the framework of this unfolding future. We empower GIS professionals by connecting them with a global network of peers and expansive industry knowledge—people working together to help each other succeed while simultaneously accelerating the advancement of GIS through their shared ideas, solutions, and feedback.
L-to-R: Tari Martin, Director National and Federal at National Alliance for Public Safety GIS | Matt Edrich, Field Product Manager at FieldSync | Christian Patton, Director of Professional Services at GEO Jobe
This year at Esri FedGIS, the Esri Community team had the opportunity to directly connect and converse with Community members in attendance. For some, we conducted formal interviews to learn more about the important work they’re doing, how Esri products enable that work, and how Esri Community empowers their use of Esri products.
We don’t keep these stories to ourselves. As in the past, our team will often develop these recorded conversations into outreach and awareness-building materials, such as the Esri Community Member Spotlight series. Through these features, we illuminate the often-hidden connections between Esri users around the globe and bring depth to people behind the many thousands of virtual interactions taking place in Esri Community every year—interactions that can profoundly impact individuals in their daily work or even ladder up to larger goals, including creating the world you want to see.
“One of the great things about the Community is that you do build up this network, and it's particularly important for public safety GIS folks to have that network during blue skies. Right now, I am a part of a community of public safety GIS to support states and I've seen how great it's been to pull [from]. Even at the state level, you might have one person who is the state GIS person for their emergency management and so [Esri Community has] immediately built out their network. Now they have 50 plus people who are all in the same boat as they are, who have the same questions. I've seen folks post on there about: ‘How do I get help during a disaster?’ Folks would chime in and say, ‘Well I've used the EMAC, the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.’ So, people have reached out and said: this is how I did it, this is how I got help—because as I mentioned, they're a one-person shop and if you're in a disaster and you're activated for at least a week, you really need to get some depth.”
—Tari Martin on ways Esri Community supports public safety professionals
Throughout 2024, expect more connection-building stories from Esri Community members like those we met at Esri Federal GIS; from Tari Martin, the Director of National and Federal at National Alliance for Public Safety GIS; to Matt Edrich, the Field Product Manager for Esri Partner FieldSync; and Christian Patton, the Director of Professional Services at Esri Partner GEO Jobe.
If you have a meaningful story about how Esri Community is better enabling you to create the world you want to see, we’d love to hear. Reach out to our team at esricommunity@esri.com to tell us about it. Members of our team will be present at the 2024 Esri Developers Summit and the Esri User Conference, where we’ll be recording interviews and stories, or we’re equipped to conduct virtual interviews as well.