00:01My name is Michael Gould, and I was a university GIS professor for nearly 20 years before I came to Esri...

00:06...and began leading the education industry solutions group.

00:09Our group's been fortunate over the years to have helped thousands of educators and students to be successful with GIS.

00:16If you think back a few years, many years in some cases, where you first encountered GIS.

00:22In many cases, it was at the university.

00:25But I'm not here to talk about GIS in the classroom.

00:28We're here to talk about business today.

00:30So let me talk a little bit about the business of education.

00:33To do that, I'd like to tell a story.

00:36In fact, along the way, I'll show you how they use this multifunctional tool.

00:41This is a story about 900 unknown cities that you're perhaps not familiar with, but you'll find out why they're important.

00:50These 900 cities could be utilizing GIS technology for typical city GIS applications or projects...

00:58...things such as improving facilities, connecting citizens, and managing safety.

01:08But you notice I said could be utilizing GIS technology.

01:11Curiously, many of these 900 unknown cities have GIS technology...

01:17...but they are currently not applying the technology for some of these key or critical GIS projects.

01:29So you may be asking, where are these unknown cities?

01:32Give me a clue, Mike.

01:33Well, we've seen a few dot maps today.

01:36Here's another one.

01:38These cities are everywhere.

01:40They're in your backyard.

01:41They've been hiding in plain sight.

01:44In fact, here we're just looking at a small subset.

01:46We're looking at some of the 900 unknown cities in North America.

01:52Actually, there are other regions around the world where this collection of cities is growing much faster.

01:56Places like India, China, and Brazil.

02:00But, as you've heard a few people say today, this is not merely a dot map.

02:05In my case, what we're looking at is what?

02:07It's a treasure map. So you're going to want to grab this tool, you're going to want to get one of these...

02:10...and you're going to want to go here.

02:13You're going to want to start digging.

02:17There's some treasure there.

02:18These are GIS projects just waiting to happen.

02:20You notice this tool, this multifunctional tool, can also be a low-tech pointing device.

02:26In fact, another thing it's good at is keeping people awake if you think they're not paying attention...

02:31...and it's got a radius of about six feet, but I don't recommend that.

02:34So, you want to be digging here in these cities.

02:41Some of you may have already figured out, since I'm the education guy, that the cities I'm talking about are universities.

02:47I think it shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you to imagine universities being very much like small cities in many respects.

02:54It turns out that we've got 900 universities around the world that have signed Esri campus site licenses...

03:03...the equivalent of an educational ELA.

03:04This means that these universities all have unlimited use of the software on campus.

03:10However, in many cases, they're not utilizing this software for the typical types of GIS projects that I mentioned...

03:17...such as safety, security, facilities management.

03:23So this opens up some interesting opportunities for some of the people here in the audience.

03:28Some of you may be already thinking, great.

03:30I think we've got a solution we can apply to universities.

03:32Others of you may be thinking, I guess we're left out.

03:35We didn't offer an educational solution.

03:39Well, I recommend that you consider taking the solutions you've created for cities, especially small cities...

03:44...and you apply them to the case of the university campus.

03:49Now once you've accepted the premise that the campus is similar to a small city...

03:55...you may consider other campus-like entities such as military bases, amusement parks, or port complexes...

04:04...large installations that share again many characteristics to small cities.

04:11So I hope in my short story here, I've been able to convince you that you need to start digging.

04:19You need to grab one of these, and you need to start digging for a gold mine of campus GIS projects...

04:28...GIS projects on campuses which are very similar to those which would be implemented in small cities.

04:36Our education team is here to lend a hand or a shovel.