Special Section GIS Day Every Day During the plenary, Esri announced a new program to improve geographic knowledge at the grassroots level. The GeoMentoring program teams GIS professionals with educators at all levels in an ongoing, supportive relationship. What an individual GeoMentor does will depend on an educator's needs. (For more information on this program, see "Can You Do It?—The challenge to improve geographic awareness" on page 62 of this issue.) Brevity Is a Virtue Be brief and brilliant (and gone)—these were the instructions given to the participants of a new event at the User Conference—Lightning Talks. These five-minute informal talks demonstrated compelling Web or mobile applications that were delivered in the Map Gallery during the first evening of the conference. Topics ranged from an agricultural monitoring project in Iraq to a public safety application for first responders. Recognition The User Conference has always been an opportunity to highlight exceptional work and honor organizations and individuals for their contributions to the GIS industry. MapAction, a nonprofit, charitable organization based in the United Kingdom, and its founder, Andrew Douglas-Bate, received the first GIS Humanitarian Award. This award recognizes the role GIS is beginning to play in humanitarian relief activity. MapAction's volunteers remove Continued on page 36 www.esri.com ArcUser Fall 2009 35