00:01Music playing.

00:06To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

00:16Those words were inscribed on the memorial for Captain Robert Scott and his men after their journey to the South Pole in 1912.

00:24I read those words some 80 years later, when GIS was first brought to Antarctica.

00:30Our technology in one of the remotest regions on earth, carried by that same mandate carved out eight decades earlier.

00:40Hello and good morning, and welcome. My name is John Calkins. I'm an engineer.

00:47Many of you know me and have seen me up here each year, helping to steer us through this remarkable day...

00:53...as we show how technology allows us to reimagine what maps can achieve.

00:59For several days, I've thought about some profound words to say about maps.

01:05Memorable words--big, giant, weighty, poetic words about maps. Someone slipped me a quote.

01:12It says the most profound thing of all in just a few harmless words. It comes from the writer Robert Louis Stevenson.

01:20He said, "I'm told there are people who do not care for maps. And I find it hard to believe."

01:28So do I. I suppose if people don't care for maps, it's because they haven't fully seen one yet.

01:36They haven't see a map perform. They haven't seen a map avert a fire or clean a city's drinking water...

01:42...report a pothole that needs repairing, fight crime, hold government accountable, affirm climate change, stop a war...

01:49...rouse people, or move people. Or run a business. All the stuff you do. You have seen to it that maps do all of these things.

02:02You're using GIS to transform how people interact with their immediate world.

02:08How they anticipate problems, how they identify problems, how they solve problems.

02:14You're changing how people do the most fundamental and necessary things--make decisions and get things done.

02:22GIS is becoming as pervasive in people's daily routines as e-mail, and inherent like IT technology.

02:31But are there still people that don't care for maps? I believe there are, but I suspect they'll come around.

02:39In the meantime, the world does not wait. The next transformation in GIS is already under way.

02:47All that we know about spatial analysis is merging with what we've learned about mobile devices and cloud computing...

02:53...to drive us further ahead in how we make decisions, how we participate in our world...

02:59...our understanding of our circumstances, and the stories we're able to reveal.

03:05So for the moment, you're here, interested in exploring what's next. Next is the milestone a bit further down the way.

03:16It's an insistent call to the future. Are we there yet? No, but we're closing in. We have the technology...

03:25...we have the knowledge, and beyond that, we have the ambition. We'll get there, because it's what we do.