GIS Leadership User Group

As the 2026 Esri GIS Leadership Summit approaches, this reflection looks back at how a grassroots gathering of GIS managers grew into a global leadership community. From its attendee-driven beginnings in 2010 to the launch of new frameworks, solutions, networking opportunities, and year-round community engagement, the Summit’s history illustrates the enduring power of GIS professionals learning from one another, sharing challenges, and advancing the practice of geospatial leadership together.

Insider tip – The GIS Leadership Summit is close to maximum capacity, and registration may close early!

This is a story about a GIS professional that shared advice with the community, to help others, and how that led to an opportunity to present these ideas and more to hundreds of people at a live GIS leadership event.

Other than my incredible colleagues at Esri, and our distributors and partners, here are 16 amazing reasons to attend the 2026 Esri GIS Leadership Summit. These are the remarkable speakers that will be sharing their 300+ years of knowledge and guidance with a select number of attendees.

from Adam Carnow –
Just over a month ago, over 450 GIS leaders from 51 countries and 54 industries got together in San Diego, California, for a day of inspiration and empowerment.  426 attendees, 11 panelists and presenters, and dozens of Esri staff gathered on July 12, 2025 for the 13th annual GIS Managers Summit, the day before Esri’s User Conference kicked into full gear.

The 12th annual State of the Cities report identifies the unique challenges and opportunities facing cities, towns and villages across the United States, offering a comprehensive analysis of community priorities in 2025.   This is essential information if you work in municipal GIS. It is critical that you align your work to support the priorities of executives and elected officials. This report helps document those priorities.

https://www.nlc.org/resource/state-of-the-cities-2025/

The 2025 Esri Senior Executive Summit videos are online. These are great ways to show execs the benefits & potential of GIS, so be sure to share them. You can never have enough executive sponsorship...

https://mediaspace.esri.com/channel/2025%2BEsri%2BSenior%2BExecutive%2BSummit/382857813

We're counting down to the GIS Managers Summit, with previews of the content your peers will be sharing...

Strategies - how do you put yours to work?

Yes, that’s right – building on the success of last year’s Summit, the 13th GIS Managers Summit is new and improved for 2025. Get ready for one of the best single-day, GIS events on the planet. Join 500+ of your peers, from across the US and abroad, to discover best practices and learn practical leadership tips from some of the foremost leaders and SMEs in the industry. This event is for current and future GIS Managers/Leaders, as well as others interested in learning more about the business of enterprise GIS and how to follow The Path to Geospatial Excellence.

At the GIS Managers Summit in July, attendees were able to submit questions for our live panel. While we had some great answers, there were dozens of questions we didn’t have time for, so we’re going to answer them here!

At the Summit, @PaulGiroux1, @IzabelaMiller1 , and Alina Shematova talked about GIS maturity, and shared about the SlimGim maturity model.  

Here are some of your questions answered, and if you have more questions, please post them here-