embracing your By Christopher Thomas, Esri State and Local Government Industry Manager I wrote this column for those of you who see It began as a county initiative to revolutionize GIS as your passion. Like many people, I was the automation of mapping projects. This undrawn to technology. In the mid-1980s, I was dertaking piqued my curiosity. On two floors in my first job out of college. It was an okay of the county building, dozens of draftspersons job, but I was looking for something more. The were manually drawing maps. Eventually, I company I worked for decided to use comput- used the software to build statistical informaers to improve their business, and in the corner tion for the pilot project. of my office was a single "shared" HP comAfter a short time, I left that county job and puter that was hardly ever used. began to work for a Southern California city as This computer kept taunting me. One a demographic planner. Primarily I worked on day when no one was looking, I turned it on. long-range planning, supported preliminary A blank screen with a single blinking DOS work for the 1990 Census, and helped estabprompt greeted me—and dared me. Next to lish the city's computer mapping system. Once the computer was a stack of VHS tapes labeled again, in a corner of the office sat a lonely "Learn dBASE." I took the tapes home and be- computer that was hardly ever used. It was the gan teaching myself how to use a computer. city's attempt to move into the computer age. Finding corporate America It was the only computer in unfulfilling, I left that job a the department, and it was "...it's a calling year later—but now I was all mine. intrigued with technology Once again, a collection with a mission to and what it had to offer. of software program disks After some soul searchmake the world a were accumulating dust in ing, I decided I was desa pile next to the computer. tined to work in governbetter place with This time there were more ment. I wasn't quite sure of gadgets including an eleca technology like trostatic plotter for printing the particulars, but I knew it was the right thing to do. maps (a big piece of furno other." I began applying for govniture no one ever turned ernment jobs and landed on) and a digitizing table. one in the planning department of Riverside I learned that we also had a machine called a County, California. On my first day, I looked minicomputer that was as large as two foldin the corner of the office and saw a computer ing tables, and it ran just one piece of software and that familiar DOS prompt taunting me. called ArcInfo. Next to the computer were several software Finally, here was a mapping system that boxes: dBASE and Symphony. A suite of looked just like the pilot project I had worked products, including a word processing pack- on at the county. All this stuff was calling to age, an electronic spreadsheet, and some other me. I began exploring the software and equipapplications, was at my disposal along with ment. I applied these technologies to the work some floppy disks containing 1980 decennial on the preliminary 1990 Census that I was census data. hired to do. I had to determine how to canvass I was lucky to have a boss who encour- more than 48 square miles by myself and reaged me to use this computer. It was the only port errors to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the personal computer in an agency of more than end, I figured out how to use the computer 300 employees. I worked with it whenever I mapping system to identify discrepancies that could. My boss was heading an initiative that would eventually bring $2 million back into was simply referred to as "the pilot project." the city through federal funds. passion for gis I had found my calling in what I eventually learned was a geographic information system or GIS. Of all the technological paths I could have followed, GIS was the one that kept drawing me. It solidified my love of government work and kept me looking for problems that I could solve using GIS. Do You See Yourself? By now, many of you may recognize yourselves in this story. The places, times, and projects might be different, but you were intrigued by GIS. Information technology got under your skin. Instinctively, you knew you could make a difference in people's lives with this software. You may be one of the unsung heroes— those who produce GIS events for schools and the ones who get a glimmer in their eyes when they share what they know about GIS technology. You are the ones who cannot wait for GIS Day or the next opportunity to get together with like-minded individuals. You are the people who make a difference in delivering better government daily—and you wonder if the world knows you even exist. Today, GIS technology is more prevalent. There is a computer on every desk in the workplace. ArcInfo runs concurrently with many other programs on much smaller, more powerful machines. Yet it still takes a local GIS hero to recognize that GIS is a tool that can solve many problems. In the midst of a recession, opportunity knocks. GIS technology can and will help governments deal with reduced resources and the need to deliver the services constituents demand. You will figure out how to do more with less using GIS technology. You'll learn how to add to revenue streams in your jurisdiction, increase productivity and efficiency, and evolve business processes with GIS technology. Those of you who see yourselves in this article know that this is an opportunity to showcase your skills. You have acknowledged that this isn't just a job; it's a calling with a mission to make the world a better place with a technology like no other. Illustration by Fred Estrada, Esri You know who you are. You know what can be done. Let's keep government moving with GIS! www.esri.com ArcUser