GIS Manager's Group

I’m thrilled to announce that the GIS Managers Summit is now the GIS Leadership Summit! This new name reflects the event’s expanded focus and the evolving role of GIS professionals as leaders and innovators. Along with the rebranding, there are exciting changes to the event itself—new opportunities for learning, collaboration, and networking that will make this year’s summit more valuable and inspiring than ever before.

After being involved with the Esri GIS Leadership Summit for the past 15 years, I’ve seen firsthand how this event brings together the best minds in GIS. Each year has offered something new, but this year, I’m especially excited about the changes coming to the summit in San Diego on July 12, 2026.

from Matt Lewin – At this year’s GIS Manager’s Summit, I was fortunate to host a panel titled Enabling Innovation where we discussed how embracing innovation is crucial for GIS teams to stay relevant and impactful in their organizations.

from Andrew Sandifer – 

I was honored to host an inspirational panel of GIS professionals at the 2025 GIS Manager Summit in July, on a discussion about leading without a title.

from Adam Carnow – It’s hard to believe it’s been a month since the GIS Managers Summit!   It was a day of powerful presentations, discussions, and networking – more to come later – but first, I wanted to recap the panel I was honored to host.

To recap, or if you couldn’t make the summit this year, myself and three great GIS leaders got together on stage to talk about transitioning from manager to leader.

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.

Always an item of interest...the most important job skills in 2025. Take note that what are traditionally known as "soft skills" but more recently are known as "essential skills" dominate the list. Technical, or hard skills are fewer and lower down on the list. Programming is #23 on the list. Bottom line: you want to move up? Work on your essential skills. Much harder to master, and much harder to find...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-most-important-job-skills-in-2025/

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

At the GIS Managers Summit at UC, we unveiled a new survey to do a quick assessment of the status of your GIS program, and a dashboard to see how you stand up against your peers.

Hundreds of people are providing their assessment and checking out the dashboard during UC, and you can do the same...

Thanks to the over 450 people who joined us at the 2025 GIS Managers Summit!

Here is the content from the day and some additional resources...