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Boy, what a start to 2021. I feel like this year has hit me harder than any other year in my life, but we’re finally into February. At worst February is the shortest month so I have that going for me. Sorry for the lack of newsletters, it’s been hard to find time considering all the personal madness I’ve been dealing with but I’m alive, happy, and ready to attack February.

One thing you might have seen is that Revue, the service I use for this newsletter was acquired by Twitter. I’m not sure what this means just yet for this newsletter and how it will change, but apparently, you’ll see it in your Twitter sidebar somehow. Well enough housekeeping…

I’ve been working hard on some side projects and consulting while I’m waiting for the right job to come across my desk. The thing that makes me so happy is that there are so many different geospatial companies out there doing well. It is easy to get discouraged, segregated from co-workers, stuck on Slack, Zoom, or Teams as the only way to work together. But the work continues with so many companies and I’m honored to be working with so many good ones.

I think that is what makes spatial, special. The knowledge that during any crisis, maps and location are critically important. From the moment that John Snow threw some dots on a map, he changed how humans view crisis. That’s why geographers, spatial programmers, even sales and marketing people are so critical to helping us get through this crazy time. Maps, graphs, charts, and all those wonderful visualization tools that we use daily are part of so many people’s morning routines to keep abreast of the pandemic.

I think back to Katrina. That was one of those moments when GIS was in the right place, at the right time, with the right tools. So many people were introduced to mapping through Google Earth, Google Maps, and GIS tools from Esri and others. So many open source geospatial tools got huge influxes of developers because they saw the value in helping create such tools. I feel like the same thing is happening with COVID. I get so many people asking how they can help run analysis or help map the spread and the vaccination of the world.

I’m so very looking forward to 2021, what we’ll see at conferences such as the Esri UC, where people will share the amazing work they’ve done. I’m so hopeful and you should be too!