00:01This presentation I'm going to go through is really not going to be a lot of technical talk.

00:05It's going to be really down and basic and really straightforward and what have you.

00:10And what we're going to do is we're going to go through the ideas of what GIS is, and how you implement it...

00:17...and how you go through the process.

00:22So, what we're going to cover is what is GIS, how does it work, what are the benefits of using it...

00:31...why is GIS unique, and how do I learn more about GIS?

00:35Because it's a continued education, right?

00:38The more you do it... How many of you are from government?

00:42How many of you are from commercial?

00:46Other, education, lots of different...

00:49So what you can see there is there's a lot of different types of people that get involved with GIS.

00:54So, let me tell you a little bit about myself and why I'm here.

00:57This is actually my 25th User Conference.

01:01I know I don't look that old, but the guy that comes in and presents with me, you'll see he's really old.

01:07So, the key is that, I've actually been, I was one of the first users of Esri technology.

01:13I was actually customer number 95.

01:16And, I actually spent half my career as a user and half my career at Esri.

01:22And I came to Esri from the perspective of I wanted to change everything that frustrated the heck out of me...

01:28...and wanted to kind of move it forward.

01:30And, you know, I've seen a lot of things change, and I've seen a lot of things stay the same.

01:34And so, what my perspective is, is everything that I went through trying to tell everybody else what this was.

01:42And I actually got to a fork in the road at some point whether I had the choice of staying as an urban planner or going into GIS.

01:52And I took one path, and that's where I am today.

01:55So, a little bit about my background, just to give you a perspective.

01:58I was actually one of the first people in the United States to put GIS on the Internet.

02:02First to use 3D statistics through modeling, and what I'll say is I didn't do it, I had some guys that did that for me...

02:10... and some women that did that for me.

02:12But the concept was I understood how to ask the questions to get what I needed out.

02:19There's a reason I don't do demos. And that's the thing that I always try to work with people just so they understand the basics.

02:26So, I like to start off by reading slides, this slide, because I hate it when other people read their slides.

02:33But I think this is important.

02:35What's the formal definition of a GIS?

02:37So I'll read it with you.

02:38"An organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel designed to...

02:44...effectively capture, store, manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information."

02:49This is in every textbook I've ever picked up and I still don't know what it means.

02:56And so therein lies part of the problem, is you've got into this new field, it's called GIS, and you kind of know what it is...

03:03...and this is what you're relying on, and you're going to hand this to your people you want to use it...

03:09...and the people that you're trying to get to buy into it.

03:13And so what I learned over the years is that GIS means something different to everybody.

03:19You've got to kind of pick what the definition is.

03:21And let me kind of share with you a little story.

03:24When I first got into GIS, I would come in and I worked for a planning director...

03:29...and she always referred to me as the computer guy.

03:33And I really don't know that much about computers.

03:38I do, because I work for a software company; it's weird, through osmosis...

03:41...I've learned the language, but don't ask me to come over and fix your Internet setup; I can't do it.

03:46So, what I learned is, everybody I talked to, I had to have a different explanation.

03:52And you have to work on your explanation of what this is.

03:55So how many of you have gone to your holiday gift party or holiday party...

03:59...and somebody walks up to you and says, what do you do?

04:05Okay, I'm going to tie two pieces together - what you do and starting a conversation with people are two very common things.

04:12So I would find myself with Grandma or Mom or whomever, and they'd say, what do you do?

04:16And I'd say, well, I do GIS.

04:18And then they'd sit there and they'd say, well, what is that?

04:20And I'd say, well, it's an organized collection of...

04:23And they would just... I had no friends at the end of this, right?

04:26It was like being an Amway salesman.

04:29So when we went through this whole process, I learned I had to explain it to people differently.

04:34And I learned that I had to change my definition whether I was talking to Mom, whether I was talking to...

04:39...my manager, I was talking to a person that I was trying to get the tool to use.

04:44I told you he was going to be a lot older than me.

04:46So, what does GIS mean for you?

04:51So, a trick I kind of started to learn, I go to a lot of shows where there's a lot of elected officials...

04:56...and a lot of city managers and what have you, and what I found was they'd come up to the booth...

05:02...or whatever we were doing and they'd say, oh, yep, love that GIS stuff.

05:06All I know is, and they'd go off. And I'd say, what I realized is their perspective of what GIS was...

05:13...was limited based on what the person in the back office was telling them.

05:18And so with that came this idea; I'd just walk up and I'd say to somebody, let me ask you a question.

05:26Have you been using it to do revenue auditing?

05:30They'd just look at me.

05:32Have you been using it to reroute your trash trucks?

05:36They'd just stare at me.

05:37Because they didn't have a full definition of what this thing called GIS was.

05:42And so when you take a look at the different things that you do, I'm used to this.

05:47So when you get to this stuff, what you do is you start to come up with your own definition.

05:50So I just kind of started working on an idea, trying to explain to people what in the world this GIS was.

05:56And so my point is - and this is not my driver's license in any shape or form.

06:01[Audience participation] That's your pay stub.

06:04We actually are friends, don't worry about it.

06:06Anyway, so what we did is... I realize is, you carry around a GIS database each and every day.

06:14It's called a driver's license.

06:16So here's the reality. What is GIS?

06:20It's a way of organizing information.

06:24So if I told you, you carry around a driver's license, and you walk around out there with it...

06:30...the IT world would look at some of the items and organize it this way.

06:36They might say, well, I'm going to organize you by driver's license number.

06:40Well, okay, I could do that, I guess.

06:42That's the same as a social security number, a business license number, a customer number on your bill.

06:47Well, that's a way to organize.

06:48But what if you want to start exchanging data from this part of the country to that part of the country...

06:52...and they don't use the same naming, the same numbering system?

06:57I can't use it.

06:58But then they said, okay, well, I'll organize everything by your name.

07:01Well, as unique as I think I am...

07:04...Chris Thomas is about as common as John Smith, Tracey Jones. There's millions.

07:10So that's not a good way to do it.

07:12But when you look at your driver's license...

07:14...you have the driver's license number and you have the person's name, what's the next line?

07:20The address; the street address.

07:23What's the second line?

07:25The city; I've just given you two geographies.

07:28What's the third line?

07:29The state; I've just given you the third.

07:32The fourth, the ZIP Code.

07:33Aren't those all geographic tags?

07:36So now I can start taking a look.

07:38What's the first three digits of a phone number?

07:42An area code.

07:43So the point is, in all this data that we have out there, there's all these identifiers that are geographically referenced.

07:49So you carry around a GIS database, each and every day.

07:53You just didn't know it.

07:55You didn't think of it in that context before.

08:00So, let me kind of share with you this little story.

08:03I worked for a city, and it was times much like these, and the economy was terrible.

08:07And we were in a meeting, and we basically thought that we should start looking...

08:13...to figure out ways to generate more revenue for the organization.

08:15And if you're in the commercial world, I would think that that's the same process, right?

08:18How do I keep my revenue streams coming.

08:20So we were at a big meeting and I was sitting there, and I ended up from urban planning to the IT department...

08:26...because they had nowhere else to put this and because the other departments were already fighting over it.

08:31So, we were sitting in the meeting and I worked in the department that was IT...

08:34...the administrative services, the finance department, the budget department, and...you get the idea.

08:38It was just a whole collection of different departments.

08:41And so we're in the meeting and the finance director says, let's go ahead and try to find...

08:46...some escaped revenues and, well, use those GIS guys; maybe they can help you.

08:52Vote of confidence, right?

08:55So when I came in, we sat down, I sat down with the business license manager, and I said...

08:59...so Dennis, you're into technology, what do you think we should be doing here?

09:04And he says, well, you know, Chris, what I thought we would do is we'd look for unlicensed businesses in the city.

09:08And I said, well, how are we going to do that, Dennis?

09:09And he said, well, I'm going to go and we're going to drive the entire city...

09:12...and try to match a list of businesses to what we have in the system, and then verify that it's there or not there.

09:19He was talking about sending people out.

09:22And his idea was, I could give him a map.

09:25Isn't that what everybody thinks about GIS, I'm just going to give you a map?

09:28I could give him a map and I could map out where the land uses were, and it would cause...

09:32...him only to drive the streets that we thought businesses were at.

09:36Now, theoretically, that would have saved a lot of time and energy.

09:39But I looked at Dennis and I said, what if we did this, and we never left the building?

09:45He says, what are you talking about? I'm game, but what are you talking about?

09:47I said okay, Dennis, pull up your GIS database.

09:51He said, I don't have one.

09:52I said, sure you do.

09:55I said, pull up your business license database.

09:58He had a system that maintained all the people that had business licenses.

10:01So I pulled it up and I said, so there it is.

10:04He said, no, I don't have a business license...this is not a GIS.

10:06I said, what's the first thing in there, Dennis?

10:09He said, it's the business license number.

10:11Driver's license number.

10:12What's the second item, Dennis?

10:14The business name. Driver's license name.

10:17What's the third thing in the database?

10:21The address. There's the billing address, the headquarter address, the location, it's all address.

10:26I said, what we're going to do, Dennis, is I'm going to take a file over into...

10:29...planning department that we've collected all the information.

10:32It says it's a house, it says it's a vacant field, it says it's a commercial building.

10:36We're going to take that database and match the geography on that...

10:39...and we're going to match it against the geography in the business license file.

10:44And we'll see what comes out of it.

10:46So, taking two different geographic reference databases from two departments that...

10:50...already had data, but not necessarily a mapping system.

10:55So, what we did is we ended up creating a mailing list directory out of it...

10:58...and we sent out all these people notice that said I think you're operating a business without a license.

11:04And what happened, by spending 16 man-hours, we recovered $156,000 in escaped revenue and never left the building.

11:11Not bad for a day's work, and I really didn't do anything.

11:15So, the point of it was, we said, well, that was just on a test area, just to see, show him we could do this.

11:21So, we kind of showed the results of what was going on and we went through the process and...

11:26...we showed it at a meeting with all the department heads.

11:29And the city engineer looked at it and said, well, you idiot...

11:31...you're probably sending notices to vacant buildings.

11:35Again, we had taken the address file in one department, the file of the planning department...

11:40...and we took the file, the business license file, and we matched these together.

11:45I said, well, that's interesting, you might be right.

11:47So what did we do? We took the water billing, and we found that the meter database had...

11:51...the customer number, the address, and it was on or off; it was irrigation or it was...and we stripped them all together.

11:59We just matched all the geographies together.

12:02Lo and behold, we found $256,000 in escaped revenues.

12:08And we used existing data.

12:10The idea is organizing things by the geography, and not looking at the systems...

12:15...as independent and new things.

12:17So, we ended up spending only 32 man-hours on the whole thing, and we ended up having something unique.

12:25Remember all those buildings that I might have been sending a notice to, that might have been vacant...

12:29...but I had it as a register?

12:30I now had an inventory of vacant buildings that I could post on a website as vacant properties...

12:36...that might be available for economic development purposes.

12:38I had an inventory of vacant buildings in the city.

12:41I now created a new GIS database out of combining four others.

12:47So, the idea is that the data that you create and the stuff that you put together begets something else.

12:52And guess what, we never created a map. Not once.

12:59So, the idea is that we want you to go through this process and we want you to redefine your view of what GIS is.

13:05We want you to stop today and go through all that stuff you saw but start thinking about the real-world context...

13:10...of how you develop and how do you explain to people what it is you do.

13:16And so, what you find out is we do maps, we do modeling, we have websites with executive dashboards...

13:22...that have widgets that move and do really neat things that get people intrigued.

13:25We can do layering, we can do financial auditing.

13:30But the definition is depending on who you talk to.

13:33If I talk to a revenue manager, do I want to talk to him about buying a GIS or using a GIS...

13:38...or do I want to talk to him about a revenue auditing system?

13:41Isn't that what I just described to you?

13:44So how...if I describe to a police department, a decision support tool.

13:49Or maybe I would describe GIS as a way to increase accountability on transparency...

13:56...or way to increase productivity.

13:58That's a much different definition of what GIS is than the first one I showed you.

14:04So when somebody says what do you do, it's I use maps and data to improve services...

14:10...and there's a whole laundry list of these things.

14:13That's a much easier way to communicate.

14:14But I'm going to help you with your business processes.

14:20So, what does it take to build a GIS system?

14:23Well, this is the core. It's software; data, and you got it right, it can be existing data; hardware...

14:30...can't do it without hardware; even if it's in the cloud, there's hardware somewhere; I'm going to have some applications...

14:36...I'm going to have training; and I need some staff.

14:38Now when it gets to staff, do I need a whole GIS team?

14:43Possibly, but I want you to understand one thing. There's a differentiation between a GIS professional...

14:51...a lot of the people here that understand how to build data, how to put things in...

14:55...how to run algorithms; that's a GIS professional.

14:58How to make the system network together.

15:01But there's also a thing called a professional that uses GIS, and there's the differentiator.

15:07So, if I'm a crime analyst, I'm a crime analyst.

15:10If I use GIS to analyze crime, I'm a professional that uses GIS; I didn't need to turn that person into a GIS professional.

15:21And so what you have here is the two most important things that you need in a GIS.

15:25I'd love to tell you it's the software, and I know a lot of people would like to tell you it's the hardware...

15:29...but it's the data and the people.

15:33Those are the two elements that you cannot build a system without.

15:38So, I'm starting, I get the idea with GIS, and I got to sit down, and I want to start organizing the information I have.

15:46And it would be interesting to find that this is where everybody starts to fight.

15:50They decide they're going to apply GIS to a project just to get it going.

15:55And they usually pick the project that's going to take too long.

15:59But the idea here is really pretty simple; this idea of layering that you kept hearing.

16:03I'm going to take this layer and put it over that layer; you heard the term mashups a hundred times yesterday.

16:08That just means I'm going to take some data over here, I'm going to take some data over here...

16:11...and I'm going to put it together, and then it's going to be something new.

16:15Now I see some older people here; not... But who remembers the encyclopedias...

16:20...when they were in a book form? Right, right.

16:24So my favorite volume always was the human body one, right?

16:30Remember it had the clear acetates in it, and you would pull the acetates and you could see the circulatory system and network.

16:36I could see the brain, I could see the muscles.

16:39That's what layering is; it's just laying one thing over the top.

16:43I pull back some, I see a little bit more.

16:45I put some more, I see a different picture. Right?

16:50And that's what layering and all these concepts are.

16:52So what this idea is, it's just stacking things on top of it. That's the terminology.

16:56But when you start a GIS, what you want to do is you want to find the data everybody uses.

17:03That's what you want to build as your foundation, not applying it necessarily to the one project.

17:07Because the project data that you had may not allow you to go to the next project.

17:12So the easiest way to do this is really simple - get people in a room that might or may not be users.

17:21What do I mean by that?

17:22You get in a room, says, okay, when you do your work, how do you do your work?

17:26Remember, I told you the best thing to ask people is to get a dialog of what they do?

17:32I mean, when you go up at a party, what do you do for a living?

17:36And that other person doesn't shut up for the next 25 minutes, right?

17:39It's kind of like asking about their kids or grandkids.

17:42The point is, is to get them talking about what they do for a living.

17:47Not to ask them, if I got a GIS system, what would I do with it?

17:49Because the answer is oh, it's endless, there's all kinds of things we could be doing.

17:54But what you want to do is you want to apply the GIS to something in what they already do to improve the processes.

18:01So if somebody comes in and you had five different departments, - say it was police, fire, planning, elections, say okay...

18:07...how many of you use streets?

18:11How many of you guys could use right-of-ways?

18:15How many of you need parcels?

18:18Well, so you kind of go into a list.

18:20How many could use hazardous zones? Oh, a handful of people.

18:24The point is, where would you start? Where everybody has a common need.

18:30I might start with streets if I'm a city.

18:31I might start with something different if it's a different...but the idea is look at the common thread.

18:37And then the second question is, how much detail do you need?

18:40A person in public works needs more detail and more accuracy than the person who happens to drive down it.

18:46They're not as concerned with the lane striping, whether it's red curbs, whether there's a divider.

18:52They don't care.

18:54And so you start to ask the questions how to build it, and this is how you build a foundation for your GIS, is by looking at that.

19:01And sometimes, as I started to point out in my story, sometimes you don't necessarily have to build it.

19:07Sometimes it's doing an inventory of what you have in place and seeing if I can extract and pull that in.

19:13And that's how you build your GIS system 10 times faster.

19:18So, the idea behind GIS is really simple.

19:20I'm taking the database behind the scenes; it could be a spreadsheet, it could be a high-end database, it could be anything.

19:27You're just basically taking words and pictures and mapping those together.

19:33You're putting two things.

19:35I kind of know where something is, so if I clicked on that, what would I want to come up behind it?

19:41What you end up with is this digital database, and what you start to learn is that not only are these simple...

19:46...databases fair game, everything's fair game.

19:50I take a picture with my iPhone, it gives you a geotag, that's fair game.

19:56A video that goes down a sewer pipe, fair game.

19:59A camera on a traffic signal, fair game.

20:02Deeds in a recorder's office?

20:04What does that deed have on it?

20:06About 20 references to geography.

20:09Everything is fair game into a GIS system, because what you're doing is you're organizing everything by the geography.

20:15And that's the idea is that everything that you use allows you to build a GIS.

20:21So, what I'm getting towards is that everybody just expects you to go in and say, print maps, and this map just comes out.

20:29What you have to explain to people, and I just had a conversation with a research group in Texas...

20:35...they were mad because our GIS system didn't come with all these maps.

20:41I'm like, well, what kind of maps you looking for?

20:43They said, well, I want parcel maps.

20:44I said, well, so does everybody else.

20:46That's the holy grail, right?

20:48What GIS does is you do one thing that just does the analysis, but part of it is to build a map...

20:51...and so what you're doing is you need to set expectations of people of what you're going to get out of this thing.

21:00You just don't click a button and it just makes a map.

21:03I know that people go to these mapping websites and it says...but somebody had to create that somewhere.

21:09And that's where a lot of you come in, where you will build this data and this information.

21:13So, the other thing is when you're starting to look at data is everybody has different definitions of data.

21:21So I noticed that if I was working with the housing bureaus or the census bureaus, what is a hotel or a motel?

21:29It's transient housing.

21:31If I go talk to a commercial venture or an economic development department, what's a hotel or a motel?

21:36It's a business.

21:38People have different definitions of the most simplest things.

21:41And so I got into this habit of really trying to get into people's minds as to what they wanted to do...

21:45...with the technology, and always starting forth with the question, what do you do, not what do you want to do.

21:55Because that other part will come.

21:57And I would go around as a GIS manager and people, they'd say, hey, I need to use stuff, give me a list of your data.

22:02And I kept saying, but what is it you want to do?

22:05And we'd go back and forth and back and forth, and this is what I learned.

22:10I learned that people would have different databases, so I went to the business license department...

22:16...and the guy was telling me he could not use me.

22:18And I said, well, why not?

22:20He said, because you don't have our dust control moratorium area.

22:25That's the big deal? The dust control moratorium area?

22:29And basically, he had a hand-drawn map on the wall and he said, that right there.

22:33You don't even have it.

22:34And literally, it divided the city in two.

22:38That's all it was, it was a line.

22:39I said, can I borrow that for a minute?

22:40So I went downstairs, I looked at something, and I noticed that the dust control moratorium area for...

22:49...the planning department looked just like the wind control district for the helicopter unit, which looked...

22:56...just like the soil control zone for the planning department.

22:59They were the identical geographies.

23:01But had I called it out as one or the other, the assumption was I didn't have what they needed.

23:09So I had to go through an education process of educating them on what we could do, is constantly...

23:14...asking the dialog, what's your next project?

23:17What will you be working on? What's the hot buttons?

23:20And that way I got an understanding of what data existed, or what data didn't exist, so I can either pull or create...

23:26...whichever I needed.

23:29And so, much like that other idea is that what you have is this foundation, is what's used in one department...

23:36...can be used by multiple departments.

23:38So, I might get that the water lines were really important to the department I started working with...

23:42...maybe it's water, maybe it's engineering department, or public works.

23:46So they put the water lines, but who else could use that?

23:50Remember the story I told you about the water meters?

23:54Well, guess what, the business license department could use it.

23:56I could use it to do things like routing services and trying to send out workers to specific locations.

24:02I could use it to do unfunded mandates, like finding assets.

24:05I can go through and what's a big thing when doing economic development?

24:08Is there infrastructure to it?

24:12So one data layer that you select has multiple applications, and so what you want to do is constantly be thinking forward.

24:20And so when you do these things, the data creation, is just keep in mind that you're knocking down...

24:26...the next department.

24:27What my advice to you would be is, when you start a GIS program, don't always begin to work with the department...

24:34...you start...you think is the most logical.

24:36When I was in government, the two most logical departments were planning and engineering.

24:40I don't know if anybody here is a planner or engineer, but they don't necessarily see eye to eye on things.

24:45Police and firemen don't either.

24:47And what my goal was always to do is always anticipate who would be using the technology.

24:52And what that did is it helped me minimize the impact of the internal fighting that would happen...

24:57...is who would get priority on things.

25:00So when I started my GIS system, I invited the librarian.

25:04That doesn't sound right. The librarian?

25:06And she said the same thing.

25:07I said, hey, Sue, would you like to come to my GIS steering committee for managers?

25:12And she said sure; and she goes, but why?

25:13I said, well, you're into technology; I get my...you're calling me all the time, my books are overdue...

25:18...you scan my books as well; you're into technology.

25:20All I need is a neutral party to look at what people are saying and be the tie breaker so I don't have to.

25:27So she would go to all the meetings and we'd go through the process and, you know, there's a joke...

25:31...if you left engineers to draw the maps, you'd never be finished because they have such a high accuracy requirement...

25:36...and if you left it to urban planning, which I was one, all the maps would look like cartoon characters.

25:41Right? You can't use it.

25:43What I did was we started going down this path and we started using this idea of reaching out to the public...

25:48...by offering services at a terminal based on things like CDBG grants or just finding their zoning...

25:53...where people can go to the terminal at the library, this is free Internet, and what I was selling her...

25:57...on is the library was the conduit to deliver GIS applications.

26:03Because she was in all the meetings I didn't have to go reeducate her.

26:07So when I went to her and said, hey, Sue, what do you think about putting GIS in the public library...

26:10...to give citizens access to some of this information they call for all the time, you know what her answer was?

26:16Yes. We had already educated her. She knew what was coming.

26:20And so the idea is, always look at what might be the opportunities, because that shortens your time frame in the implementation.

26:28And so when you look at those things, you want to leverage your investment, in that picture what GIS is?

26:32It's not always about that paper map.

26:34You've got things for mapping and reporting, you've got an Internet site; you might be doing logistics.

26:40So, when you get that package overnight?

26:44How do they do that?

26:47That's a GIS system.

26:49It calculates where you live, they put in your address, they scan it, there's a GPS receiver, it goes into a database...

26:54...they figure out how to take your package to put it to the next location.

26:57They triangulate, they send your package there, then it ships to another truck.

27:01That's all being done by GIS.

27:04And so what you have here is you have logistics, you have the visualization.

27:07How many people have maps on their phones now, right?

27:11So when you're thinking about what are the applications and how am I going to do this, you want to go through...

27:15...the whole enterprise.

27:17How will I be using this, what are the opportunities?

27:20Because I still to this day talk to GIS people, I'll say, how many of you have an enterprise GIS in your organization?

27:25All that means is organization-wide.

27:28And all the hands go up. I'll say, oh, so are you doing mobile? Well, no.

27:33Well, do you have a logistics site that you're doing routing? Well, no.

27:37Well, isn't this the way people work?

27:40If somebody calls in and wants a building inspection, what's the second thing they do after they call?

27:45They go out with the data on the property and write on it and put it back into a database somewhere.

27:49In other words, connect the pieces.

27:53And so, when you're looking for your applications of what GIS can do, people have a tendency to go after...

28:00...the low-hanging fruit, what's going to be the easy win.

28:04Or they pick something that's just going to take forever, because it's politically sensitive, there's just not the right resources.

28:12So if you look at this, I've got to just, people want to do property notifications all the time.

28:17That's if you're going to build a building, and you need to notify your neighbors you're building a building...

28:20...so they're not mad at you later, that was like one of the biggest applications.

28:24You know what the return on investment for that is?

28:26Pretty much nothing.

28:29But that one over here in the far left that I talked to you about was using simple databases on a street file...

28:35...the business license auto on the far left?

28:37Minimal time, minimal data requirements, and a big fiscal impact for the organization.

28:44So my point is, is look at all the different things so that when you're selling people on ideas of the value proposition...

28:48...which GIS brings, you understand that there's different values and time and lengths to each project...

28:53...that you do based on what they need, what the data is, what the process they're going to need to go through...

28:59...and what the end results are that they're trying to achieve.

29:05So, having talked about all this data and trying to move into applications, people build data and go find applications.

29:14It's a website, it's an iPhone application, it's whatever it is.

29:19But the reality is, data should meet the applications at all times.

29:23You should always be thinking about what is it you want the end result to be?

29:29So, what I see happen oftentimes is when people ask, what can GIS do...

29:34...they look at these things and they go, oh, we can do maps and record things, we can issue permits...

29:40...we can route people; we can do...we can map the elections results.

29:46What do you do when you do that?

29:48Well, I do a study, I do an analysis, I do a route, I review in compliance.

29:51My point is, where does GIS fit?

29:53It's not the driver for things you do.

29:56It does the things like the studies and the output.

29:59You were going to pick up the trash already.

30:03You were going to do a permit already.

30:06So where the GIS applies is back to the process and the outputs of what you need people to do.

30:13So when you look at the workflow, and this is where GIS got this biggest uptake is in this area...

30:18...which is the idea of looking at the entire work chain.

30:20So when I look at this line, I say okay, I want to put a database of service requests.

30:24It could be permitting. It could be almost anything. Solid waste.

30:27Okay, I'm going to create GIS and I'm going to put it there, and there will be a database repository.

30:33A geodatabase.

30:35Okay. I'm going to create a system that creates work orders.

30:39Well, I need the work orders; I need a foundation to know when somebody comes in that when I type in their address...

30:44...I can validate where that is and where it's going, so I can put GIS there.

30:49Well, now I want to generate schedules because I want somebody to be able to dial in, call, tap on a map...

30:53...or call me, and I want to be able to put it in.

30:55Well, people would stop there, but what's the next step?

30:57Again, it's then they would route.

31:00And so now I'm out in the field.

31:01I didn't have all my maps and data with me, so I take the data with me on a phone that's tied to the Internet.

31:06I can download this stuff back and forth, I can route myself; I've got a call, I can change that.

31:11The idea is to look at all the different things that GIS can do for you, and if you're kind of looking at me right now...

31:16...thinking, where is this guy going with this?

31:18I firmly believe GIS can solve almost every single problem.

31:23You cannot throw a problem at me that I cannot figure out how to apply GIS to.

31:27So I'm driving down the road, and my wife hates me because I'm driving down and I'll hear "Mickey Thompson's ...

31:32...off-road racing! Be there!"

31:34My mind begins to think about how you can control the traffic, how I'm going to market the event...

31:38...to old people that want to go to drag racing, I go to...my mind starts working.

31:44I go to the movies and I'm watching The American President and that was with Annette Benning, and I'm sitting there...

31:49...everybody's crying and I'm going, hey, there's GIS in the background.

31:52It's used for elections.

31:54And I see GIS in each and every thing we do.

31:57And so what I hope that you get is this sensation that you will start to understand that GIS actually can ...

32:04...impact actually all the work activities that you do in a very positive way.

32:11So, I want to play a little game with you.

32:13How many of you went to the map exhibit gallery last night?

32:17So you saw a lot of pretty maps, right?

32:19The problem with the map exhibit gallery, a little bit with me is, that's the impression people leave...

32:24...because that's what you're always showing them.

32:27So pretend you're on a...you've decided that you want to be an engaged citizen. Could you do that?

32:32And you tell me that, they tell you they're going to come in, they want a park committee ...

32:36...to come and define where some new parks are.

32:39And they tell you that they're going to locate this facility and they've got a couple of things that they want to do.

32:43They want to go through and they want to find between 25 and 30 acres; they want it to be on city property...

32:56...they'd like it to be near a neighborhood, so do you guys have a picture in mind?

33:01You don't have to raise your hand, but you've got one, right?

33:03And this is what you go through, right?

33:06This is how people began to use GIS.

33:10So, the next thing that GIS does, it cannot take that flat world and put it into real context.

33:15So what if I told you I just oriented that same map?

33:18Is the parcel that you were thinking the right one now?

33:22If you were picking the one over there that's kind of sloping down with all of them...

33:26...it would be kind of hard to get that basketball when it gets away from you, right?

33:30The idea is that GIS starts to give you a decision support tool that's different, where you can...

33:34...take the data and present it back in the real world.

33:38That flat map, while it was interesting, on the surface was a useful tool, I can now begin to bring it back into a context...

33:44...so people start to see what it is I'm talking about.

33:49So, in this case as I'll go through this, is this is the foreclosure activity in Moreno Valley, California...

33:55...which was a big foreclosure area here in Southern California.

33:58One of the highest in the nation.

34:00And they were using a lot of maps to understand delinquencies, where funding could go, where they could put officers...

34:05...because the houses were being foreclosed on; people were going in [unintelligible]

34:09And on the surface this tells a really interesting story.

34:12It tells me where my foreclosure hot spots are.

34:17But this is interesting; you can time stamp and animate data.

34:21I don't have to take a static screen shot.

34:24So what we're going to do is we're going to run this little animation here that comes part of the core of the technology.

34:29And this is showing foreclosures and changes in property values over the last couple of years.

34:35And what it's telling you is things change.

34:39Some areas have hot spots, things grow.

34:42And so I move from a flat dynamic series of maps to trying to communicate property values and how it's...

34:51...actually shifting in real time so that if you're actually trying to do programs, whether it be revenue...

34:56...whether it be assessment, whether it be law enforcement, code enforcement, doesn't matter what it is, I can alter my plan...

35:05...I can change the way I work, and not live within a static environment.

35:10And so, to me, you might not do this right off the bat, but this is the way to begin to think of what GIS can do for you.

35:17All right, Bill. It should be able to run. Let's let this run through. We're almost to the end.

35:23So to me, the best way to tell people what GIS is, is to relate it back to personal life.

35:32Things you do.

35:33You all have hobbies, your kids do things, you have things that people do, and if you can understand...

35:39...how you have been impacted by GIS each and every day, then you can start to understand...

35:43...how it can impact the work you do and then communicate to others, so...

35:47Here's a couple things.

35:50You can explain to people that when you go out there and you see a water main bust, I can take this...

35:58...and I can engage this with a work order management system, I can put this...

36:01...into permitting, it's an executive dashboard, it could be a mobile application.

36:05So we're kind of already realizing that, that data for maps on a phone had to come from something.

36:14So when you start to go, many of your newspapers use GIS.

36:20So, remember red states/blue states and how you watch on election night how people are changing...

36:25...you can see which county is voting the way and what have you?

36:28What is that mapping software on the television? It's GIS.

36:32When you see the weather patterns behind the map, what is that?

36:38When you see a map of the Gulf and what's going on, look in the bottom left corner next to the AP...

36:43...you're going to see source, Esri.

36:47That map, investigative journalism.

36:52You're going to find it in government and a lot of application areas from police and fire.

36:55So when they call 9-1-1, and they pull up your phone number, remember the area code?

37:00And it stops on a map.

37:01Or you're driving around with the cell phone because it has a GPS receiver.

37:05How do they know where you are?

37:08All your 9-1-1 systems have a GIS in it, so you now start to see how it impacts you personally.

37:14So in government it's used for land use and it's used for circulation models.

37:18Tax appraising. So when you go to your tax bill, how is that calculated?

37:25It's in a database somewhere and they put it through for you.

37:28It's used in urban planning.

37:36But it's used on a lot of the websites; you've got law enforcement so...

37:39...if you want to do crime statistics, it's used for everything from the back-office person who's doing the crime statistics...

37:43...to sending a map to the officer for routing, to enforcing the public.

37:48So, a Megan's Law viewer, where are the sex offenders in my neighborhood? It's GIS.

37:53Economic development.

37:54So if I want to go out into a real estate site and I want to look for homes...

38:00...I can go on there; what are you probably dialing into? A GIS system.

38:04But I'm really more interested not in just the home but I'd like to know a little about the area...

38:07...what's the male to female ratio? What is the entertainment? Where is the entertainment?

38:11So now I start adding value by adding the right questions of the way people would want to find a home or a business.

38:19It's mobile application, so when you see that meter reader person out there, with that little device doing this?

38:24There's a little GPS receiver in it.

38:26And that GPS receiver ties back into a database and you plug it back in, set it in a cradle...

38:31...and it populates all the locations of where things are.

38:34That way you could start to begin to look at collecting information, looking at how good a job that person's doing that day.

38:40It's used in police helicopters, it's in code enforcement.

38:46But, in economic development, it's used in customer analysis so we have a product that's called Business Analyst Online.

38:52You can actually look at the opportunities for whether or not a business will make it or not.

38:58So it's used in education.

38:59So how they figure out how to do bus routes.

39:03Where the line is so you go to that school versus that school.

39:09No Child Left Behind, or educational attainment sites, that's all GIS.

39:14It's used in disaster relief, so when Haiti was happening, all the information that you were...

39:19...going to websites to see the maps and everything.

39:20You know, when you go to... Have you guys heard about the pipeline explosion down in the Gulf?

39:26Have you seen all the maps that are associated with that?

39:29That's Esri technology behind the scenes.

39:31It's used to figure out, on a disaster, how to get the right people there.

39:35So they take things like Tapestry data, which is called psychographic data, the way...

39:39...people do things, the types of patterns they buy.

39:42So they know that if they bring in the Red Cross or the Humane Society, whether they need to bring in...

39:47...big trailers for horses or dog kennels for Fifi, based on the types of products people buy.

39:57They look at languages spoken in specific geographies, so that when you wanted to file your insurance claim...

40:02...you know the type of people to send in the areas.

40:05They need to have this type of language, they have to have this type of skill set, and you can deploy people.

40:09Most of your insurance companies use GIS.

40:14It's used in facilities management, so it's not just what's on the ground, but it's also related to the buildings.

40:19So, if I'm FedEx or one of these types of people, I need to know it's in Bin A at this location, I pull it off so...

40:26...it's inside the building, so I could actually use GIS to figure out which of the rooms...

40:31...have people in it, shut on and [off] things.

40:36When you're looking at things like the Olympics and GIS is managing all those activities and events.

40:44So it's used for alternative energy.

40:47So, you can sit there and you can take wind propellers and you can figure out where you can put them...

40:51...and what they've learned, it's not where you put it, it's how high you put it.

40:54You can put it almost anywhere.

40:55But it's looking for analysis on where to put solar panels.

40:59It's public-awareness sites.

41:06So, now I can model with GIS.

41:12So, remember on 9/11, watch this analysis.

41:16See how it started over here, and then went back, and went off to the coast?

41:25So I'm animating. So remember when everybody was running around on 9/11 with masks on and stuff like that?

41:33It was raining, and the wind had picked up.

41:36And remember there was all this asbestos and stuff in the buildings.

41:39What does this show you?

41:40It shows you that all the asbestos, fluorocarbons, and all this stuff went off the coast, came back in...

41:45...ended up in Philadelphia.

41:46What does that do for you?

41:47I start to understand the long-term impacts for children that are being exposed to these toxins that...

41:54...started here and are going to go here.

41:55Go to the next slide then.

42:00It's used in business, and it's used in business by a lot.

42:02Most businesses use it.

42:03So when you ever go to a place and they ask you, can I have your phone number starting with the...

42:08[Audience participation] Area code.

42:10...or they ask you for your ZIP Code, what is that person doing?

42:15They're collecting information about you to figure out where you come from and where a better store would be.

42:23So, a lot of your stores use it for allocation and trying to figure out where to put new businesses.

42:29You'll find it on real estate sites.

42:31You know the On-Star system, because you locked yourself out of the car?

42:34How does it know where your car is?

42:38It's GIS, right?

42:39So you're impacted by all these each and every day

42:42When you pick up and somebody... How many are familiar with Sears?

42:46So when Sears, you call up Sears and you say you want a delivery or a repair and they give you a four-hour...

42:52...time window, guess what they use to figure out where you are in relationship to all their deliveries?

42:58They are using GIS.

43:01How many of you have ever gone to a AAA map site, or a travel site?

43:06The map that gets printed, that's GIS.

43:09How many of you have ever used a Thomas Bros., Rand McNally, or any printed map book in the last 15, 20 years?

43:14Guess what they make that in?

43:17That's GIS.

43:19They created that using GIS technology.

43:21The outside of it, the stuff that's on the web and in your car, guess what that is.

43:27When you see NAVTEQ or Tele Atlas on all these mapping sites you go to, they created that information...

43:32...and that routing in GIS.

43:36It's used for marketing.

43:37So, when you look at it, the billboard companies?

43:40They actually figure out where to put billboards and market it to companies based on who drives by each day.

43:47So they take in traffic counts, who is in the neighborhood.

43:50I don't know why they think my neighborhood likes beautiful women that...but they do.

43:59Do you know that the casinos use this?

44:02They actually analyze where traffic is, going in and out of the casinos, again, back to the inside of the building.

44:08And they take and they move winning slots machines based on where they want to move people.

44:14So, they would use it to market, they use it to get...

44:16Your direct mail, most of that's all figured out by using GIS technology.

44:22It's used in defense; of course the military will use this.

44:25They use it in everything from trying to figure out the terrain for a tank to go through to a convoy...

44:31...to figuring out exactly the coordinates to take out an enemy.

44:36We don't talk about this a lot, but it's probably one of the biggest areas where you'll find a lot of GIS technology.

44:42And it's even used for simple things, something that's both in the military and in local government.

44:45Do you know how many times they lose trash bins?

44:49So there's a little RFB or a little tag underneath your trash bins, and that's to tell them where that is and they can...

44:55...track it by its location, because what will happen, to give you an example, somebody will go on a commercial site...

45:00...they want to build, they put a bin on, the bin comes on, it's left there, somebody comes in and says...

45:03...I just started a new business; they put a new bin in.

45:06You ever gone to a site and there's four bins sitting outside the...

45:10They actually use the GIS to try to figure out where things are, and City of Los Angeles is just saving millions of...

45:16...dollars a year just in figuring out where their trash bins are so they can go back through and analyze.

45:21The Indian nations are some of our biggest and strongest users.

45:26They do it for looking at natural resources, to preserve archaeological sites and guess what?

45:32To get you to Indian bingo.

45:36They use it for the marketing, for the economic development in their communities.

45:39They use it in health and human services, and Bill will speak to this, but all your health surveillance.

45:44If I were to go out and I was to try to track West Nile, and people want to report dead birds or standing water...

45:53...that's being put into a database that people can kind of take a look at.

45:56So your health is impacted each day.

45:58As you start to go through each enact of these activities, you can probably not think of a company...

46:03...you deal with that's not using this in some form or another.

46:08So the idea is if I'm in commercial government, how do I make the equation back and forth?

46:11It's used in the oil spills for everything from the monitoring to the cleanup to the response.

46:18It's used in utilities.

46:19Have you ever heard of Call Before You Dig?

46:22See that sign? What is that?

46:24It's GIS.

46:25You call, you tell me where you are, they pull you up on a map.

46:30You're impacted.

46:31It does network tracing, it does sewer line breaks.

46:34There's a new thing called BroadbandStat, and it's an idea of tracking where broadband is.

46:38We've all heard of broadband. It's that irritating thing you don't have when you don't have your signal.

46:43So, the idea is that in utilities, it's put there to create the data.

46:48So, you know that commercial, have you seen this one, "Can you hear me now?"

46:53"Can you hear me now?"

46:54"Can you hear me now?"

46:56What is that guy doing?

46:58He's collecting GIS data.

47:01So guess how the telephone companies figure out where to put the cell tower, based on coverage.

47:08So your cell tower coverage, good or bad, is probably some part in GIS and the connection you have.

47:14That's what that person's actually doing, is collecting GIS data, and that actually is the way it goes down.

47:20It's used in transportation for routing, it's for doing traffic signaling...

47:26...for planning future roads and load balances.

47:28It's used in science, this is probably the biggest area for us, for looking at underground water tables...

47:36...looking at the water and air quality...

47:39...to monitor things like global warming.

47:41It's used to do census and demographic analysis and counts.

47:46It's used for exploration. Think about this, it's a solar system, it's a series of bodies, it's a series of geographies.

47:56The globe is a geography, the planet is a geography.

47:58So they actually are mapping the solar system.

48:00So when they were looking at the Mars lunar roving and they had all the maps and stuff like that...

48:04...they used GIS to look at these types of applications.

48:09So, I'm going to pass this here, so hopefully what I've left with you so far is, there's a little bit difference...

48:15...of what I hope you thought GIS was and what it could do than when you first walked in here.

48:20And we didn't mean it to solve all your problems, but the idea is to communicate GIS to people in much simpler terms.

48:26To put it in a context that they'll understand, first, in their day-to-day life, and then begin to bring it into their work life.

48:32So I'm going to pass this over to my old friend, Bill Davenhall.

48:36Bill's been with the company since 1997, and he heads up our health vertical; I head up the government vertical for Esri.

48:45Bill has a degree from...medical behavioral science. What I understand from talking to Bill is he was the first person...

48:50...to ever get a degree in that.

48:52If you ever want to see Bill's famous information, Bill has a TEDMED talk, and it's taken the world by storm.

49:00Go to TEDMED and look that up.

49:03But he's got 31 years' experience, he's an author and speaker. We do a lot of the same types of things...

49:09...so I'm going to pass it over to Bill.

49:19Thanks, Chris.

49:20And I'm sorry I was late coming in, I'm sure Chris just took right over.

49:26You know I'm a little upset about one thing you said.

49:28I could understand why you may not want people talking about their children, but their grandchildren?

49:33I can't believe you went over the cliff on that. You know?

49:37How many people have grandchildren?

49:39Meet me in the hall afterwards; I've got photos.

49:42I'll be going out the other door.

49:46So, you know, Chris and I have a lot of fun doing this, and I would say, you know, someone asked me one time...

49:51...could I imagine what hell would be like?

49:53And I said yes, it would be in a stuck elevator with this guy talking about GIS.

50:00You can imagine his enthusiasm about this. What? You think you could last an hour, or what?

50:06So part of the success of this technology is really moving to that, one of the slides he had near the end...

50:13...that it's about the understanding of the data that you're putting on these maps that is really critical.

50:18So, there's a lot of imagination that can be brought to bear in that, that we have to sort of every once in a while dust off...

50:25...and realize that there's somebody out there who's going to be like me, who's really not a GIS technician.

50:31I mean, I really don't care how pretty a map looks.

50:36I mean, you know, when I was looking for gold, at one time when I was a kid, you know, I needed one of those maps...

50:42...that just had, you know, on the back of a napkin, that said go to the tree and go left and right and put a big X there.

50:48Right? And so I was into, how to...you know, simplicity.

50:52And I didn't really know things about cartography; I mean, you know, now I'm richly blessed with understanding...

50:58...all these fine details of how people use this technology.

51:01So, my role here this morning is to really take the edge off this technology and sort of straighten it up a little bit...

51:11...and remind people who pay for this technology, and pay for your organizations to invest in it...

51:17...what really has to come out at the end.

51:19It can be a useful tool, yes, it can help your business run smarter; but at the end of the day...

51:24...this has got to have some sort of practical implication to it.

51:29So, if you look at these kinds of things, these are what I would call, you don't normally have the obvious...

51:35...conclusion that GIS was involved in these.

51:38Some of these have been helped by, what I would call the adoption recently of our whole cellular technology...

51:44...and the fact that location is now with us.

51:47It's always with us.

51:49And we're now going to be wanting more of this location awareness than ever before.

51:55You know, getting accurate travel directions, I think we all use the Internet for that and use GIS.

52:01How about identifying epidemics?

52:04You know, it's only recently that the public really got engaged with the H1, really beginning to understand...

52:09...how this could evolve.

52:12Yet, we were not well served by GIS when it came time to try to find a place where you could get your family an H1 shot...

52:18...that was available that day, that hour, when you had time to do it, and it was not very convenient.

52:24So we ended up throwing away 70 million doses of vaccine this year because people didn't go get their shots...

52:30...and I would say a lot of that could be contributed to the lack of appropriate information...

52:35...right time, right place kind of thing.

52:38How about obtaining a business license?

52:40Chris talked about that.

52:41But there's all sorts of licenses that are obtained.

52:44He's talking about business licenses.

52:45What about professional licenses?

52:47Nurses, doctors, health care workers.

52:49All these people have board certifications that they go through in which an address is collected.

52:54This is what provides most of the base information upon which we make policy decisions about things like health.

53:02Determining where to build a store.

53:04You know, while this sounds relatively new, it's always been done in the store location business to use...

53:13...some sort of geographic information to help people understand that.

53:17How about buying homeowner's insurance?

53:20You know, when you go on that phone and do that, you don't, you know, while you're talking...

53:26...someone is inputting your address of the property, and this is why they're able to give you a quote right on the phone.

53:32They know how far it is to the nearest fire hydrant, they know the whole complete history, their loss history...

53:37...other people's loss history in that neighborhood, and this is why they're able to give you a quote.

53:41And if you live in a bad part of town and you're asking for automobile coverage for theft, you know...

53:46...you're going to get a rate that reflects exactly what happened in a very small geographic area.

53:54So, one of the things I always like to do is really explain to people how this technology really works.

53:59How do you get a dot on a map?

54:02I mean, you know, we all do this, and we sort of assume that we understand what we're doing...

54:07...but I like to really go over this, because at the end of the day people really don't understand how this happens.

54:12So I'd like to tell you there's three ways this can happen.

54:15The first way is that we use this thing with an address.

54:21We essentially have a system in this country, as we have like in 27 countries, where we have taken street addresses...

54:27...and we have built what's called schemas, and we basically say, we know where the beginning of the street is...

54:33...the end of the street, and it has an address range.

54:35And so when you put your specific address in it, it finds it and says, oh, well, that's about...

54:40...50 percent between number 1 and number 2.

54:43In other words, one end of the block and the other end of the block.

54:46So if you're at the other end of the block, and you have 100, you know, it goes 1 and to 100, and you come in and...

54:51...you have 50 East Chestnut Street, well, that's where it's going to say that's 50 percent along that continuum.

54:56This is where this point is going to be.

54:58Our technology up to date has been like this, where we have approximated where that specific location is.

55:04So in this case I said, 380 New York Street, that's Esri's address, it found us in the middle of the block.

55:10Now, when Google started to appear and started to show us our houses and show us our rooftops...

55:16...and we put in the address, it often put the little cursor on the wrong house, right?

55:21We say, well, that's not our house.

55:23Well, part of the problem at that point was they were still using this particular type of technology...

55:28...which is still in use today, to approximate where that is.

55:31So, that explains why sometimes the dot isn't on your rooftop.

55:35Now, these are getting much more sophisticated because the underlying data, which we happened in the industry...

55:40...called spatial data infrastructure - that's a big word, right - it simply means that as the postal department...

55:48...as the census department gets more refined and wanting more specific geographic information, they refine this...

55:54...so at some point in time, it can be rooftop accuracy.

55:58And you'll start to see this in the advertising of the companies who provide this data.

56:01"We have rooftop accuracy."

56:03So if you use sites like zillow.com - you ever use Zillow, the real estate one? - this is what you're talking about.

56:09You're watching them get more precise about this.

56:14So there's another way to get a dot on a map.

56:16So I'm going to use a health example here.

56:18That's a trap for catching mosquitoes.

56:24And so, during the West Nile virus, well, it still exists in this country, but when it first started...

56:30...this is the way that the public health department went out and sampled geographic areas to determine whether...

56:37...the insects that they collected in that trap carried the West Nile virus.

56:41So they would collect all the...it's got a light in it and the mosquitoes are attracted to it, then they take a sample from that.

56:48They put them in a blender, they mix that up, and then they sample it and they sort of identify what the virus is...

56:57...and that's when they start to report it.

56:59And after you do this, 10,000 different traps across the country, you begin to develop a pattern.

57:06And so in this particular case the worker there has a handheld device that has a built-in GPS.

57:12So, they had to do this very accurately because it makes a lot of difference in tracking that West Nile virus if you're...

57:19...you know 100 feet one way to the, you know, left or to the right.

57:24So it started to improve this accuracy.

57:26By simply using the orbiting satellite that provides the GPS, they were able to accurately then put...

57:34...a dot on a map and represent it in their analysis.

57:37So that's the other way you can get a dot.

57:38You can use some sort of portable device, like a cell phone now is actually giving you that precise location.

57:44So when you hit that little thing on your 3GS, it gives you the location of where I am now, it's in part...

57:50...the same kind of technology they're using here.

57:53And then the final way to get these kind of images going is, think about this as a moving, it's a moving shape.

58:01And because we have satellite imagery, we can define that shape in terms of pixels...

58:06...that represent latitude and longitude.

58:08And as that moves over a land mass, we also have the pixelation of the land mass under it.

58:14So the example on the left is, in the forest fires in California, you could lay down the smoke plumes...

58:21...that come off the mountains, and lay it on top of demographic data that could calculate the number of children...

58:28...that were going to be breathing smoke over the next two weeks as a result of this.

58:32And you see there's some numbers in there, and it says the places that had the most smoke, it's not necessarily...

58:37...who had the most smoke, it's who had the most smoke in which it was going to be breathed in by children?

58:42And you found one area has two million people, and another area has thousands.

58:47So you actually then can send notices to all the hospitals, to all the physicians, to all the schools...

58:53...who lie under that smoke plume, that they're going to experience problems.

58:57So, we created these shapes by actually that pixelization that happens at the satellite imagery level...

59:04...and referencing it to the underlying data, it's either land mass or something else that we want to peg that picture to.

59:12And that's how these images are actually created.

59:15This is how we get information that, relatively speaking, 10 years [ago] didn't exist.

59:20We had no way to represent it.

59:31Now, this is a concept you see a lot used when people talk about GIS.

59:35It has to do with layers. Right?

59:37So everybody in this room has a job; even if you're retired you have a job.

59:43It's going to have something to do with a layer of data.

59:46Don't care what it is.

59:47So if you're retired and you went to Radio Shack and you gave them that ZIP Code data, you represent a data layer.

59:54And so, everything we possibly can do on this planet has a representation that's going to end up being a data layer.

1:00:00And you suddenly see, it depends on what you're talking about here.

1:00:04You know, we can have administrative boundaries.

1:00:06We can have, look at that one called population attributes.

1:00:10And it sort of looks like one of those heat maps, right?

1:00:14Well, what it can do is you've now taken some specific data, you've created another piece of data...

1:00:19...combined two pieces, and now you've called something an index, and you describe the shape of that index.

1:00:24That's one of those irregularly shaped things that you then start to use as data and then we visualize by putting it on a map.

1:00:35So now there's other kinds of layers you can create.

1:00:38So, the first slide happened to do with the outside world.

1:00:41Now we move inside.

1:00:43And we suddenly realize this can represent data inside a building.

1:00:47So, in this room we're sitting, there are electrical lines behind the walls you can't see; there's pipes in the floors...

1:00:52...you can't see; you know, there's ventilation that you can't see, right?

1:00:57But it all can be represented through engineering technology, right?

1:01:01But it all is about the relationship, the A to B.

1:01:04So, somebody sitting in the second row, we can start to measure the distance to the back corner.

1:01:10And we can start to do all kinds of measurements and rules.

1:01:12And you begin to see that, inside a building, GIS is just as important as that external world where we're...

1:01:18...looking at rocks, trees, sky, and ground, right?

1:01:22So, in my business area, which is health, we have hospitals that are using this to examine where they locate patients...

1:01:28...where nursing stations are, how diseases move through the hospital from person to person.

1:01:34So, you know, you can have these infections that end up killing hospital patients because physicians and nurses...

1:01:40...at particular nursing stations didn't wash their hands.

1:01:44Right? And this whole disease called MRSA is spread.

1:01:47So, our technology of GIS is being used to do some relatively very important kinds of jobs...

1:01:53...and you don't even know it's happening.

1:01:55But, it's represented through a layer of data in which you can think of every possible thing - the employment files...

1:02:00...they know the nurses, where the nurses came from and their training, they know the hours they've worked...

1:02:06...they know how many patients they had at a particular time.

1:02:09You begin to see that that information database is all internal, and then they're applying it to...

1:02:15...some sort of problem they're trying to solve.

1:02:20Now this one is about, you know, things that now concern me as a person.

1:02:26I'm now interested in things like, well, I know where I live and work and play, and now I want to know about...

1:02:31...something like morbidity rates in my community.

1:02:34I want to know about the quality of my life.

1:02:36And we now know that there's data that's being created about those things.

1:02:41And it's going to be focused through the lens, really, of geography.

1:02:45And it's going to become very specific.

1:02:47So we take a look at now person, place, and time.

1:02:50We can add the element of time, so we can look at neighborhoods as they changed, and how you...

1:02:55...move through those neighborhoods in time.

1:02:58And in the case of public health you're looking at the quality of your life as you move through these areas.

1:03:07Okay, so this I'd like to just sort of have you think about.

1:03:11This is why I am attracted to this technology.

1:03:17It's really straightforward.

1:03:18I mean, this probably is the reason why you like Google today...

1:03:22...or you like Google-like types of GIS...

1:03:25...is that you love this opportunity to rapidly scale from very finite areas to very broad areas...

1:03:33...and move back/forth seamlessly and never have to worry about scale.

1:03:38Never have to worry about, you know, do things fit at these boundaries?

1:03:43That's what we all want.

1:03:44So, we get really intrigued when we go to any of these websites now.

1:03:48We love to push that little wheel in and out, in and out, take a look at our neighbors, take a look at our relatives...

1:03:55...people we met on the street, you know, or maybe at this conference, where they live, what kind of neighborhoods.

1:04:00This is what attracts us to it.

1:04:02As a human being we love this kind of scalability, right?

1:04:07And we want to see it all, and then we want to see it very specifically.

1:04:11And you got to keep remembering that as you develop your approach to GIS, is that this is what people really want at the end.

1:04:18They want this ability, and there's no information that's not included in that.

1:04:25Whatever business you're in, whatever your profession is, you want the same kind of thing...

1:04:30...when you start to analyze your situations.

1:04:35So, this is a slide that sort of tries to tell you that if you're in this room, the people at the bottom of that chart...

1:04:44...know the very most about this technology.

1:04:47And the people up at the upper end, they know the least.

1:04:52And so you can decide where, you know, what piece of that you're interested in, and it'll pretty much tell you...

1:04:57...your level of maturity, or your organization's maturity, in the use of this technology.

1:05:02So I represent a lot of people up there at the upper end, and they're very immature in their utilization...

1:05:08...and understanding of this technology.

1:05:10It's not that they're dense; it may be that their organizations have not been able to rationalize the expenditure...

1:05:17...for this technology, and rationalize the staffing that Chris pointed out is so important, right, that's needed.

1:05:23They certainly have the data.

1:05:25So you can begin to see that this is transformational.

1:05:29You know, the people who will help the people up in the upper right are the people in the lower left.

1:05:35Right? So sometimes I'll find that the organization in a country that helps the health ministry catch the wave...

1:05:43...on this technology is the land management, the forestry, people who have vast, have 40 years of experience...

1:05:51...in collecting data and making it useful and building GIS systems.

1:05:57So, as Chris has really pointed out pretty profoundly, there's a lot of benefits of using this GIS.

1:06:04There's not just one simple thing that it does.

1:06:07And it's far beyond just creating maps.

1:06:11There are many people who are using this technology every day that never produce a map.

1:06:16But it's part of the underlying infrastructure of their decision-making process.

1:06:20That's what they really wanted.

1:06:22They didn't necessarily want a map at the end.

1:06:24So, you want to sort of disabuse yourself that, when you think of GIS, it's always about a map.

1:06:30It's not.

1:06:31But yes, we are, we want these maps, when you do produce them, to be richly blessed, that they actually...

1:06:36...help people understand and communicate what you're trying to get across.

1:06:42Now, Esri has a lot of great resources and I would say...

1:06:46Oh, where's that slide?

1:06:48Oh, so this is like why is GIS important?

1:06:51This is sort of like a sales pitch that you will use when you go talk to upper management.

1:06:55Now many of you may be upper management, right, so this isn't like a trick question.

1:07:00But if you're going to try to acquire more resources to do this kind of work and move in this direction, this is what people...

1:07:08...this is what people who supply the money to create the opportunities want to hear from you.

1:07:14They want you to say, well, this will integrate different types of data.

1:07:18They like that. Improve the accuracy of the information.

1:07:22And depends on what industry you're on.

1:07:23I mean, you know, if you're talking to a hospital clinician about accuracy, they're very concerned about accuracy.

1:07:31They're down to two digits, you know, two places to the right of the decimal point. Right?

1:07:36And you know so you have to sort of understand what's expected in that place.

1:07:41Accelerates our understanding of situations.

1:07:44This is why situational awareness is so popular across all industries.

1:07:49People are beginning to understand, they just can't...they're impatient, they're not going to wait very long...

1:07:54...to have a correct assessment of what's going around them.

1:07:57Increases the intrinsic value of all our information.

1:08:01So a lot of people pay for a lot of information.

1:08:03And the worst thing you can always say is you never used it, right?

1:08:06I mean this is a disaster; if you're going to go get more resources, and they say, well, what are you doing...

1:08:10...with all the data that we have?

1:08:11And they say, well, not very much.

1:08:14So, intrinsically you have to sell the notion that you're sitting on a pile of gold here that you haven't exploited.

1:08:20And then it creates actionable intelligence.

1:08:21We're actually going to do things with this knowledge we're going to gain from these information systems.

1:08:27We're going to take some sort of action, whether it's intervening in some sort of transaction that's happening...

1:08:33...or anticipating some action that's going to happen in the future.

1:08:37Okay, so to the resources.

1:08:39We have a lot of resources at Esri.

1:08:42In fact, I would say we are probably a bigger educational organization than we are a software development organization.

1:08:49Helping people understand not just how to use the technology but what it means and how you leverage this...

1:08:56...to get to that actionable kind of information phase is what Esri spends a lot of internal resources on, and each one...

1:09:02...of us who work there are tasked with the responsibility of writing hundreds of thousands of words...

1:09:08...every year about this, to try to make it more clear, improve the vision that people would have of this technology.

1:09:15So, these are some of the sites, I mean, these are the kinds of things we do.

1:09:18We have newsletters, we have educational training, and we have many, many events.

1:09:24In fact I learned this week we have 1,500 events a year that our events people manage.

1:09:30So it's a tremendous amount of activity that Esri spends in that.

1:09:35We publish a lot of books.

1:09:37Many of the authors are internal authors like Chris and I who will write books.

1:09:41We have about 40 people who are domain specialists...

1:09:45...across all industries, who have experience in these industries and are able to write valuable kinds of documents.

1:09:54These are all meant to help you and your management understand the value of this technology and get utility out of it.

1:10:01Next. We also have a big online presence.

1:10:04This is getting bigger, in which most of our resources are now available online.

1:10:09You can even get chapters of books now, online.

1:10:13Next. Well, that's the last slide.

1:10:17Thanks for being patient with us and spending some time with us.

1:10:21We hope that your conference is going well and that you're still having fun.

1:10:26Thank you very much.