The geospatial industry needs to stop going to geospatial conferences. FULL EFFIN' STOP We’ve reached the point where half of us are just 3 raccoons in a group chat trying to seem like a global industry. Every event is the same effin orbit: satellite companies talking to satellite companies, GIS vendors talking to GIS vendors, everyone saying “AI-enabled geospatial insights” like they’re casting a corporate spell from a dying mall food court. And somewhere in the middle of it all is the annual ritual sacrifice of personality in pursuit of NGA dollars. Entire companies sanding themselves down into beige compliance pudding because they think sounding operationally sterile is a strategy. Nobody can say anything interesting. Nobody can take a stance. Every deck looks like it was written by a defense contractor microwave manual. The result? A sector terrified of being memorable, or as unique as we can be. Meanwhile, the actual centers of gravity, insurance, finance, logistics, climate adaptation, utilities, banking, supply chains, infrastructure, defense, operational risk, are somewhere else entirely. Not in Northern GD Virginia And most geospatial people never go there . Because too much of this industry is still addicted to being “the geospatial industry” instead of becoming indispensable inside other industries. Nobody outside our bubble gives a flying F about: * your sensor stack * your tile server * your ontology debate • your annual standards panel attended by 14 exhausted men named Chris, all with the same goatee, who argue about what pinecone was used to brew the IPA at the two-ticket drink social. They care about operational pain. Can you reduce uncertainty? Can you price risk? Can you help move money? Can you identify failing infrastructure? Can you explain why one neighborhood collapses while another survives? That’s the real game. Geography is not a vertical. It’s an underlying condition of reality. Running through every GD industry on the planet. And the people winning right now are not the ones screaming GeoAI the loudest on LinkedIn. They’re the translators. The ones embedding themselves into climate, capital markets, insurance, adaptation, resilience, and operations. Because the future of geospatial will not be decided at a geospatial conference. It’ll be decided in rooms where nobody knows what a shapefile is. #geospatial #confernce #ESRIUC
Let's face it, if we are to move forward in this game, we shouldn't be talking geospatial. We need to be the ones quietly solving problems in insurance, infrastructure, logistics, finance, and risk, where geography is part of the workflow, not the headline. Most executives I know and deal with don’t care about GIS terminology. They care whether you can help them make faster, smarter, lower-risk decisions - User conferences need to be better tailored to get this message across!
Is it possible for a post to have too many facts and too much truth? This cuts to the core and is spot on. 💯
Love your passion- always! 2 quick points: (1) Haven't we always been the translators though, except now it's more amplified because AI makes geospatial way more accessible (and understandable) to the customer AND there's more and more examples out there to inspire them? (2) Not everyone is moving at the same speed. There's a spectrum of customers, appetites for innovation, comfort with AI, etc. Nothing new here, it's never been about geospatial before and it's not about geospatial now, it's about the customer journey.
Tee Barr - Someone finally said it. A lot of this industry has turned into the same people flying to the same conferences every year, hearing the same panels, recycling the same conversations, and catching up with the same friends. Fun? Absolutely. Productive? Debatable. When everyone depends on the same customer base, there’s very little incentive to actually change the model. At some point its more like an annual reunion tour held 15 times a year.
Couldn't agree more... However, I still enjoy the community of a geo conference. And I'll admit, without apology, that "doing business" isn't the main reason I go to conferences and trade shows.
legit, being in geo only rooms is limiting. sometimes I think geo people really love the smell of their own farts. 😇
So.... we're still going to "do lunch" in San Diego? 😉
You want to make these events more interesting? Replace all these panels filled with CEOs, CTOs etc, etc talking about all the “cool things” they’re doing and fill it with the actual users of the data these companies are producing. Have them sit in the front row and ask the analyst questions on what is their biggest hurdle. Build around that. If you ask an analyst of consumer data their thoughts, you’re going to get it. Just be prepared to hear that your data is junk.
I respectfully have to disagree - conferences are about people and connections. This makes it sound like one big conglomerate conspiracy.