GIS Day Communications - How are we doing?
While one goal of GIS Day is to educate those can attend events on or around that day, another is to simply to get the term and some sense of its meaning/role into day to day parlance. How are we doing based on online content?
The Plainfield Sun (suburban Chicago) offers an event notification, but with the headline “Event to spotlight new technology.” There’s no real discussion of what GIS is, in fact the acronym is not written out. Still, the nature of the topics suggests something about what it’s role; the event covers “how the village uses the technology to improve services by demonstrating some of the applications including collecting field data utilizing GPS, the village’s addressing process, crime mapping and Web GIS.” I am surprised by “new” in the headline. It suggests to me that either GIS is “new” (we know it’s pretty old…) or new to the area (if it is, that’s not clear and based on the above discussion, it’s pretty entrenched there).
The Sherwood Voice (Arkansas) notes its event and the keynote speaker from the National Weather Service who will speak on GIS and its use in tracking tornadoes that hit the area in February. Cool speaker! Again, GIS is not written out or defined. The article does note local and national sponsors, which is nice and may help those new to GIS figure something about it.
The University of New Hampshire already held its event, its 10th and the student newspaper not only wrote out what GIS stands for but profiled the types of people (700) who attended. Alas, it too stayed away from defining GIS is. I’ve attended the UNH event in past years; it’s terrific!
Camp Pendleton is only to “it’s [sic] 2nd annual” Geographic Information Systems day according the the Pendleton Scout and also doesn’t describe GIS in detail. I do appreciate the goal, which does not include younger students: “The program was designed to encourage Marines, sailors and civilians to learn about the importance of geography and GIS technology.”
What should we take away from these examples?
One could argue you need not write out or define GIS because everyone knows what it is. I wouldn’t go that far, because if that were so, we’d not need GIS Day, now would we?
Is it possible the communications resources for GIS Day are not sufficient for the press to explain what GIS is? There’s lots of content (GIS Day website) and the ESRI press release template including this language: “A GIS is a computer-based mapping tool that takes information from a database about a location, such as streets, buildings, water features, and terrain, and turns it into visual layers. The ability to see geographic features on a map gives users a better understanding of a particular location, enabling planners, analysts, and others to make informed decisions about their communities.” Perhaps the reporters didn’t find or use those resources?
It’s very nice that in these examples there are no vendors mentioned (save ESRI as a sponsor), though a reference too Google Maps, Google Earth, Virtual Earth, Yahoo Maps might help give readers confirmation of their hunches about what GIS is…
I am a believer in Geography Awareness and GIS Day. And, I think knowledge of what GIS is grows month to month and year to year in part because of these events. I just want to point out that I think we may do a disservice by not including a clear statement of what GIS is in our communications about the event.
