GIS professionals sometimes are too fixated to find ways to distinguish themselves and differentiate their talents from other technology and science disciplines. As a practitioner for the past nine years, perhaps we should focus our strategy outside our practice in order to effectively mature/distinguish our own discipline. Let's demonstrate ways we can transform other sciences and convincingly showcase how the geospatial discipline will advance other industries. Perhaps we, as geospatial practitioners, need to immerse ourselves in other complementary disciplines. Perhaps it is time to stop thinking our sandbox is unique and everyone should play with us. It is time to bring the message to a broader audience and demonstrate why geospatial is relevant and unique to other mature disciplines.

Let’s face it, we are the new kid on the block when you consider how long surveyors, engineers, chemists, and other distinguished practices have been around. We often find ourselves competing for attention to promote our discipline with other well established sciences. In order to prove our relevance, we need to demonstrate how our willingness advance these other established sciences. This will provide us a platform and a receptive audience allowing others to take a second look at the young kid next door - the geospatial practitioner has something to say - but is the neighbor ready to listen? We need to craft our message accordingly.