I was lucky enough to be in attendance at the Esri Partner conference earlier this month.
First, huge congratulations to Esri. The plenary session was the best I’ve seen at any conference I’ve ever attended, bar none. Esri pulled out all the stops, and delivered an incredibly high-energy day packed with valuable information and insights.
As Chris mentioned in his recent post, there was an impromptu side-tracking from the planned agenda, when Jack Dangermond and Clint Brown stirred up the audience with some interesting ideas about GIS and maps in the world.
One of the key thoughts from that very interesting ad hoc segment -- the notion of a disconnect between GIS departments and decision makers, executives, users -- was echoed later in the afternoon, by Lars Backhans, the Managing Director of Esri Sweden. Lars made a very compelling case about how GIS must get “out of its comfort zone”, and learn to speak a whole new language, because the biggest growth areas for GIS are not in areas that are typically considered “GEO”.
Why? Because maps are everywhere. Maps are the most popular app on Android, and the second most popular on both iPhone and Google. And the new generation of business consumers is going to demand that maps start playing a part in their business lives – what Gartner has long called the “consumerization of IT”.
Why else? Because large organizations allocate a lot of IT budget to big-ticket items other than “GEO” initiatives. They spend on ERP, on CRM, on Content Management, on Business Intelligence and Analytics.
The problem is: how does one communicate “GEO” to IT groups that do not necessarily understand the language of “GEO”? How does a GEO-centric IT group sell the value of maps and spatial analysis to its IT peers in other units that have different mandates, managers, budgets, and priorities?
Clearly GIS is learning to speak that new language. We see it more and more, as maps and spatial analysis make inroads into not just BI (which is of course where we live and breathe every day), but into virtually every major IT initiative.
How could the spatial lens GIS provides improve your business initiatives?