New Ideas for GIS Day 2024
After a quarter century after GIS Day began in 1999, GIS Day is still here. In fact, GIS is more important than ever to our society because of (1) local-to-global challenges our communities and societies face, including natural hazards, energy, water, population pressure, human health, natural resource demand, public safety, education, and much more, and (2) the subsequent need for data-driven, thoughtful decisions made with the spatial and holistic perspective offered by the use of GIS tools and spatial data. The contents of this essay are also available in this video.
GIS is used in the daily lives of people all over the world--as they check today's weather, plan a ride share or when to take the next bus or light rail, tracking a package delivery, recording their walk or cycle ride on their fitness app, plan their trip to the public library or to a friend's house, plan today's dinner (supply chain management enabling food to be grown, processed, packaged, and shipped), or read by electric light (the utility companies using GIS to manage their lines and services). All around them, people use GIS to plan the next urban greenspace, where to plant crops in which fields, set up wildfire watch announcements, schedule the needed repair to a water main, and ship needed medical supplies. Yet in these and dozens of other ways in which GIS is used in everyday lives and in daily decisions, GIS still remains relatively unknown by the general public--even by one's own co-workers, friends, and colleagues. This is where GIS Day can help. How?
GIS Day is a day set aside each November to help people understand the value of spatial thinking, mapping, and spatial analysis to their community and to society as a whole. Given the changes our world has experienced since that first GIS Day in 1999, GIS is more important than ever. Since that time, a global pandemic, significant natural hazards, supply chain disruptions, and other events have raised global awareness of the relevance of GIS as a decision making toolset that enables people to build healthy communities, resilient cities, and a more sustainable, equitable, and resilient planet. Thus, GIS can be justifiably celebrated as never before, as an essential technology for applying geography and spatial thinking. One of the ways to celebrate GIS is through hosting or participating in a GIS Day event. This could be a hands-on workshop, tour of your facility, presentation, fun for all ages family event, video, contest, or another way you and your organization could highlight what you do with GIS, and the positive impacts it has to the people and land that you serve. You could do this face-to-face, online, or in a hybrid setting.
View the essay below and this video and the GIS Day website for ideas on how to have a successful GIS Day event. This year, GIS Day will be held on Wednesday 20 November 2024, although you are certainly free to choose another day that meets your organization's needs in scheduling a GIS Day event.
Use this GIS Day opportunity to go big! Think creatively about how to highlight the good people in your organization, how you use GIS, and the positive difference it is making to your community, and hence why it will matter to your audience. The presentations you create could serve double-duty: They could also serve to highlight what your department or organization does, that could be important the next time your budget cycle is renewed, or when your CEO, city manager, or others ask you about what you do and the impact you are having. Again, I think this is even more important given the often behind-the-scenes "hidden" work that GIS so frequently is.
Consider using engaging tools such as ArcGIS Hub, the ArcGIS Experience Builder, or a story maps collection as the front page for your event!
Highlights of GIS Day events around the world showing some of the creative possibilities.
Because GIS is a visual technology, consider conducting a hands-on workshop or presentation! Focus on a tool that you are excited about, or perhaps a data set that your organization is proud to have created. Need additional ideas? Try this GIS Day story map from Esri, or my own story map, here. Consider starting with the Esri National Geographic MapMaker, here. It's easy to use, fast, fun, and engaging, with dozens of layers about climate, population, river systems, biomes, and much more, in 2D and 3D. Show off some of your favorite maps and apps in the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. I guarantee that nobody looking at the MapMaker or the Living Atlas maps and apps will say "that's boring!"
The Mapping Hour is a series of hour-long videos that my team created that you could use as is, or for ideas on tools and approaches to teach and instructional guidelines. Each Mapping Hour video focuses on how to use an aspect of the ArcGIS platform, such as ArcGIS Survey123 or ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, in teaching and learning. GeoInquiries and Learn ArcGIS lessons provide additional content.
Make it spatial! See these stories here and here that I compiled from a few of the thousands of GIS Day events over the past years from all over the world to discover what people have done to make this day engaging, fun, and informative.
Make it interactive! Create a map-based quiz, or use the existing ones that I created such as Name That Place from satellite images, Name That Place from ground photographs, Sounds of Planet Earth, or Weird Earth. I created each of these using the capabilities of ArcGIS Online, such as Instant Apps. Some are in story map form, such as this Wyoming Map Quiz. Oh, what's not to love? Place and space!
Try this Pioneers of Geography and GIS treasure hunt story map quiz that I created with the help of our Esri development team for GIS Day: https://esri.github.io/treasure-hunt-app/?edition=pioneers-geo-and-GIS
Solve a series of questions--each focuses on a geography or GIS pioneer and hints at a location somewhere in the world where the pioneer was born or worked. To answer the question, frame the solution within the viewfinder using the map's pan/zoom functions. You could use it for an icebreaker, a contest, or as a fun break in between longer presentations. The answers to the 25 questions include Aryabhata, Zheng He, Dawn Wright, Roger Tomlinson, and … oh, I’m not going to give you any more answers! You need to take the quiz yourself! For a graphic, see below. If you’re stumped you can skip the guessing. For more, see this collection of thematic Treasure Hunts. You could even use Kahoot or another fun online quiz format in conjunction with maps and images.
GIS Day pioneers of geography treasure hunt quiz.
Put your GIS skills to the test with my GIS-themed crossword puzzle. Consider these clues: 16 Across: A spatial term denoting features that overlay, or ‘cross’ each other. 40 Across: Type of thematic map in which areas are symbolized in proportion to a variable that represents a summary of a geographic characteristic within each area. 69 Down: University of Kansas cartographer George, who devised the natural breaks classification. 295 Down: The standard deviation of the residuals (prediction errors). How are you doing so far? Use this crossword in your event as a contest, awarding kudos to the person or team to get the most clues in, say, 5 minutes.
GIS crossword puzzle--hundreds of clues from easy to difficult are included to test your GIS expertise!
The resources pages on the GIS Day site provide additional lessons, posters, videos, and other items you could use.
Need more inspiration? OK, how about 101 more ideas including sending a thank-you note to a GIS or geography teacher and producing a GIS Day song. But definitely do not watch any of my own off-key geo-GIS songs!
Once you've gathered your team, and planned what you will do, register your event on the GIS Day site. Now you need to publicize your event! Will your event be only for internal employees, or for the wider community? If the latter, consider your city or regional GIS community's web pages or listservs or social media to post. Also consider posting to your regional chapter of the Esri Young Professionals Network (https://www.esri.com/en-us/about/ypn/overview). But don't stop at the GIS community--reach those who have never heard of GIS, too! Via your local school board, public library, city hall, arts district, or other community groups.
If you don't want to host an event, no problem! You could use the web map on the GIS Day site to find an event of interest to you, and join that event!
Stay tuned, follow us on Twitter/X, and visit the GIS Day website often to hear more about opportunities for the global GIS Day community to come together to celebrate GIS Day this year.
What will you do to host a your virtual or face-to-face GIS Day event or attend an event this year?