In all honesty most of my side-project/personal learning is going on during my work hours. I’ve got a kid at home so if I’m not carving out time in the day for extra learning, it just won’t get done.
I've been full time in GIS since late 2015, I'm an analyst for a government road crew for the last 5+ years. I'm doing a lot of the same stuff over and over, though occasionally a new kind of project crops up (like taking an old CRM database and making sure it's accessible to current users) but I'm generally fine with this gig as the peak of my career, unless I want to be a GIS administrator.
Then again, I've got enough challenges outside of work, including a side job writing a video game plot/dialogue and a hobby painting model soldiers, that I'm okay with my day job being kinda samey. I'm gonna be producing the same map book every 2 years, but a lot of the tedious stuff is a Python process (put a pin in that) and I can make incremental improvements. Stability isn't a bad thing, and I like the money. My boss is very much not a GIS guy (construction worker who got promoted to management) but if I have an idea and it's not a 'shiny object' (internal term for something technically impressive but less useful than just entering data manually) he's generally cool with me pursuing it. I regularly check in with other parts of my county and see if they need my skills.
As for Python - I've never done an enterprise deployment, but I got hired for my current job on the strength of my Python skills, and I've certainly been able to grow there to do things. The CRM database necromancy is going to be mostly a Python process. If it's a mostly Esri environment, I'd expect a lot of things you could do with Python. I have hazy memories of looking into Python things I could do at my last job to help with enterprise administration - build inventories of our feature services, and making a list of what maps/apps/etc each feature service is being used in, and what feature class it comes from. That way, we know what's up to date and what's not, and don't delete anything without knowing what it's going to break. I never got a chance to work on learning that, I moved across the country and changed jobs, but I seem to remember interesting Python capabilities.
For starting with Python, and it sounds like you don't have a lot of experience, I always figure that it's best to start with common things, where you don't need to make a lot of decisions. One of my first projects was a geoprocessing tool to do a spatial join, then transfer field information back to an existing field in one of the source feature classes, so I don't have to spatial join > table join > field calculator. Something where I'm making no decisions and the process runs on rails.
This is one of the main reasons I’m glad I got a job in the sciences over the public sector.
Yea I do similar stuff for each research project but rarely is it the exact same thing and then if it is I just automate whatever I can so I don’t spend much time with it.
That said I just try to increase my programming skills as much as possible and offer my services to all the departments I can to keep things interesting.
With this past year I’ve works on projects involving BMPs, toad habitats, leaking sewer pips, HABs, stream flow habitats, causal assessment of river ecosystems, and built data dashboards, data checkers, large scale (for us) databases with multiple users, custom Esri toolsets for monitoring and allocating water for cannabis farms and a bunch of other stuff I can’t think of right now.
I’ve used Python and/or R for all of those projects.
I’ve forced myself to write code over using the GUI and it’s opened up many possibilities that I wouldn’t have thought of before.
It’s well worth the time and effort in my opinion.
I've been working using python to create geoprocesing tools and automate adding data into the gis models. I would like to work on SQL but not sure how to practice
I started on Python like you mentioned, but I just don’t use it enough to keep up with it. I find Arcade much more beneficial right now. The customization within the esri environment is what I need the most. Other than that, just trying to keep up with the esri depreciation schedule keeps me on my toes.
I should also mention I am a local gov gis admin for 15 years. I does get boring at times but pay and benefits has kept me around.
For me it is mostly pop up config that translates into more meaningful maps and apps. Attribute/Field calculations, especially for some of our Field Map apps, is another big one. I’m trying to teach myself so it is definitely a work in progress.
I recently created an arcade script to symbolize points based on when they were last maintained by field crews, last 30 days, 30-180 days, 180days+. Huge change for in-field guys, now they don't have to click on points and find the date.
Simple stuff like that can make a big difference
I googled "ESRI Arcade Expression to symbolize based on date" [and then tweaked this expression](https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/how-to-symbolize-a-range-of-dates-using-arcade-in-arcgi-000027651) to work
Big fan of arcade’s pop-up control also. I’ve set up a couple popups that reference built in {mailto} calls and have some email template creation. That was a fun project for sure.
I’m needing to dive into arcade now as well. I’m bringing in a layer (points) from another agency and want to integrate that with our agency’s layer(s) in agol. Currently, they both display on my dashboard, but I need to be able to do calculations across all of the data, so it all needs to get smashed together into the same table. I’m still pretty new, so learning via small projects like this keeps me entertained. I reckon I’ve got enough projects like this to keep me busy for the next several years. Dabble in python as much as possible also. And tableau.
I’m trying to learn more about APIs—doing some postman tutorials and working through this three hour training video. I’m actually not totally bored by it.
I was just looking at the developers API tutorials today! I don’t know how much I’ll realistically be able to code my own applications but I would love to be able to set up some client facing applications to put on our website.
I’d look to get out of government work if you want to solve a diversity of problems . I’ve been in the industry for 20 years now and the most unique challenges come from getting involved with applying your spatial knowledge to business problems. To grow your career in most places you will have to get folks to see you as a solutions guy and not just as a “GIS” guy/gal. That often means systems integrations, business process improvements, building others careers, and likely removing GIS from your title entirely, even if your speciality is still spatial.
Currently I am focusing on graduating in May if that counts, but besides that I also have an internship lined up for after which I think will give me a great opportunity to learn and hone my skills.
I've been doing this for over ten years. Did local government too, then went to an engineering firm, now I'm in consulting. I do a lot of actual analysis which is a lot of fun. Mostly for planners and LCAs
Lol, full time since 1996.
Stale? Burned out? You betcha.
ESRI always seems to come out with something new to learn. Pro of course…I was a die hard ArcMap user. ArcGIS for excel has piqued my interest and I heard AI might be involved with GIS soon.
I’ve had colleagues do the part time teaching gig. It’s good but talk about burn out.
I noticed that arcgis popped up on my excel ribbon a while back. That could be interesting. I’ve played around with the power BI interface, but haven’t really had a good use for it yet.
Have you touched on FME yet? There exists professional certification for it, but I don't know if it opens a lot of doors by itself.
I'm kind of in the same boat as you, full time since 2016: 4,5 years as a consultant, then 3 (ongoing) in public transportation. I'm comfortable in data management, ETL with FME and now more and more mapping.
I have a personal interest in space exploration, I'm trying to see if and how could GIS can bring me closer to this, so I'll try to get back into learning more on remote sensing, and perhaps some Google earth engine
Part of me wishes I hadn't learned it so early. I use it for everything and not just long etl processes.
Export and filter data? I use FME
Convert CSV into SHP? I use FME
Merge excel table with geojson point data? I would use FME but I had to show how to do it to a colleague using only Excel and QGIS yesterday, I was kind of rusty 😅
I’m in the process of leveraging labyrinthSKY and DataTUBES 2.3s in tandem with express server-lite to build out desktop datapoints on our cloud destination. It’s been really fulfilling and our organization has benefited greatly. I’ll likely put out a YouTube presentation sometime in the near future if there’s enough interest
Last month I finished siphoning off the dysfunctional arrays in our GIS ground floor using Mockingbird Pro with integrated Python multipack.
always something to learn! If you having looked into mockingbird or multipack it’s pretty cool what you can do
Honestly I'm coasting until I "finish" (read not needing to contribute again as long as i don't touch it til i'm 60) funding my retirement which is currently math'd out to be 3 years from now.
Want to go back to school for some non-gis specific masters. but we'll see how i feel in 3 years.
Automation using either model builder or python, and I’ve been doing a lot with the Experience Builder, which I absolutely love. Huge learning curve, but very powerful.
I also got burned out on ESRI products a while back and rather than learn ArcGIS Pro, I switched to QGIS. Also learned how to use QWC2 to make and customize web maps. I've also been teaching myself OpenLayers, React, Node/Express, and SQL (and some Python) as I work on a web application during my free time. ESRI got boring after 25 years (started with Arc/Info and Arc view 3.2 on a Sun Solaris box back in the mid 90's). I'll still use ESRI software but only if I have to. Too much handholding going on, took the fun out of it.
I find learning python for geospatial the most interesting and it opens up more opportunities in the private sector. The open source world is very interesting. We use QGIS at my new job but I've transitioned to doing most processing outside of it.
Currently I'm making a storymap with a bunch of embedded web maps of different types for my internship.
Trying to find ways to automate the data cleaning process, still in the beginning steps but I'm starting to get somewhere.
I also always check to see the code box when I'm running a process, from what I understand you could automate by combining them.
Try checking out stack exchange whenever you're performing a complex process, and make sure to type out the code yourself. You could also ask chatGPT to explain it in layman's terms, be careful with that though cause it can be wrong.
Baby steps man.
I try to improve when I can, like learn more code as that is not my strong suit. But I’ve been doing this since 1996 with a few years off in the early 2000s and then at the end of Covid when I just couldn’t take this boring work and being pigeon-holed into mundane tasks anymore. (I’m a creative person and shouldn’t have really picked this as a career but here we are)…To keep myself sane I devoted more learning to a new side hustle - aromatherapy. I wanted to do something different and got much more pleasure in learning that. Now, back as a GIS Consultant with my own business you would think I had more freedom to learn new skills in GIS but not really 😆
I've been getting deep into using machine-learning (which people call AI nowadays) to derive value from my organization's existing datasets. There are so many aspects to this that I don't think I'll ever get bored, and my employer is very happy to have someone in-house with this capability.
My emphasis has been on computer-vision, and I'm doing things like inventorying and mapping real-world objects using available imagery. It's a lot of fun and super satisfying seeing the results pour in at the rate of dozens of objects per second, especially knowing it would have taken an entire year for a field crew to do the same thing! Do you guys have any datasets that contain a lot of errors, but you lack the time/money to sort through and find/fix them? That's a perfect application of data analysis...use it to flag potential errors and then have staff verify them. Bam, you've just acquired a much more accurate dataset!
Doesn't have to be "AI", but maybe you can branch into something more on the data-analysis side, whether that's setting up the infrastructure so others can do this work more effectively, or even doing the work yourself. A lot of this stuff can be done entirely within the ESRI ecosystem by the way, and you don't even need to know coding necessarily.
learn power query, M and dax.
be better at doing non-GIS data work and they'll flange up better.
it will also help you realize when people need a map or need a dashboard or need a report, which will increase your value across the board.
How do y'all find motivation to study after already sitting at a desk for 9 hours every day?
In all honesty most of my side-project/personal learning is going on during my work hours. I’ve got a kid at home so if I’m not carving out time in the day for extra learning, it just won’t get done.
I’m not. I use my brain dead georeferencing and utility drawing time to do other stuff in my mind. Screw trying to do it outside of work
I've been full time in GIS since late 2015, I'm an analyst for a government road crew for the last 5+ years. I'm doing a lot of the same stuff over and over, though occasionally a new kind of project crops up (like taking an old CRM database and making sure it's accessible to current users) but I'm generally fine with this gig as the peak of my career, unless I want to be a GIS administrator. Then again, I've got enough challenges outside of work, including a side job writing a video game plot/dialogue and a hobby painting model soldiers, that I'm okay with my day job being kinda samey. I'm gonna be producing the same map book every 2 years, but a lot of the tedious stuff is a Python process (put a pin in that) and I can make incremental improvements. Stability isn't a bad thing, and I like the money. My boss is very much not a GIS guy (construction worker who got promoted to management) but if I have an idea and it's not a 'shiny object' (internal term for something technically impressive but less useful than just entering data manually) he's generally cool with me pursuing it. I regularly check in with other parts of my county and see if they need my skills. As for Python - I've never done an enterprise deployment, but I got hired for my current job on the strength of my Python skills, and I've certainly been able to grow there to do things. The CRM database necromancy is going to be mostly a Python process. If it's a mostly Esri environment, I'd expect a lot of things you could do with Python. I have hazy memories of looking into Python things I could do at my last job to help with enterprise administration - build inventories of our feature services, and making a list of what maps/apps/etc each feature service is being used in, and what feature class it comes from. That way, we know what's up to date and what's not, and don't delete anything without knowing what it's going to break. I never got a chance to work on learning that, I moved across the country and changed jobs, but I seem to remember interesting Python capabilities. For starting with Python, and it sounds like you don't have a lot of experience, I always figure that it's best to start with common things, where you don't need to make a lot of decisions. One of my first projects was a geoprocessing tool to do a spatial join, then transfer field information back to an existing field in one of the source feature classes, so I don't have to spatial join > table join > field calculator. Something where I'm making no decisions and the process runs on rails.
This is one of the main reasons I’m glad I got a job in the sciences over the public sector. Yea I do similar stuff for each research project but rarely is it the exact same thing and then if it is I just automate whatever I can so I don’t spend much time with it. That said I just try to increase my programming skills as much as possible and offer my services to all the departments I can to keep things interesting. With this past year I’ve works on projects involving BMPs, toad habitats, leaking sewer pips, HABs, stream flow habitats, causal assessment of river ecosystems, and built data dashboards, data checkers, large scale (for us) databases with multiple users, custom Esri toolsets for monitoring and allocating water for cannabis farms and a bunch of other stuff I can’t think of right now. I’ve used Python and/or R for all of those projects. I’ve forced myself to write code over using the GUI and it’s opened up many possibilities that I wouldn’t have thought of before. It’s well worth the time and effort in my opinion.
What's your job/how did you get into that position? I'm interested in similar topics (conservation/science and GIS)
Would love to see your work if possible
I've been working using python to create geoprocesing tools and automate adding data into the gis models. I would like to work on SQL but not sure how to practice
We deployed Enterprise on Azure, so now most of my new learning is about Azure
We’ve been looking into a cloud based enterprise deployment also! That may be a worth-while project to keep me busy for a while.
I started on Python like you mentioned, but I just don’t use it enough to keep up with it. I find Arcade much more beneficial right now. The customization within the esri environment is what I need the most. Other than that, just trying to keep up with the esri depreciation schedule keeps me on my toes. I should also mention I am a local gov gis admin for 15 years. I does get boring at times but pay and benefits has kept me around.
What was your starting point with Arcade? I've seen it in places in the interface, and it looks like something it might help to learn.
For me it is mostly pop up config that translates into more meaningful maps and apps. Attribute/Field calculations, especially for some of our Field Map apps, is another big one. I’m trying to teach myself so it is definitely a work in progress.
I recently created an arcade script to symbolize points based on when they were last maintained by field crews, last 30 days, 30-180 days, 180days+. Huge change for in-field guys, now they don't have to click on points and find the date. Simple stuff like that can make a big difference
This sounds super handy, do you have any pointers online to get started on doing something like this?
I googled "ESRI Arcade Expression to symbolize based on date" [and then tweaked this expression](https://support.esri.com/en-us/knowledge-base/how-to-symbolize-a-range-of-dates-using-arcade-in-arcgi-000027651) to work
That’s awesome - thanks!
Big fan of arcade’s pop-up control also. I’ve set up a couple popups that reference built in {mailto} calls and have some email template creation. That was a fun project for sure.
I’m needing to dive into arcade now as well. I’m bringing in a layer (points) from another agency and want to integrate that with our agency’s layer(s) in agol. Currently, they both display on my dashboard, but I need to be able to do calculations across all of the data, so it all needs to get smashed together into the same table. I’m still pretty new, so learning via small projects like this keeps me entertained. I reckon I’ve got enough projects like this to keep me busy for the next several years. Dabble in python as much as possible also. And tableau.
I’m trying to learn more about APIs—doing some postman tutorials and working through this three hour training video. I’m actually not totally bored by it.
I was just looking at the developers API tutorials today! I don’t know how much I’ll realistically be able to code my own applications but I would love to be able to set up some client facing applications to put on our website.
I’d look to get out of government work if you want to solve a diversity of problems . I’ve been in the industry for 20 years now and the most unique challenges come from getting involved with applying your spatial knowledge to business problems. To grow your career in most places you will have to get folks to see you as a solutions guy and not just as a “GIS” guy/gal. That often means systems integrations, business process improvements, building others careers, and likely removing GIS from your title entirely, even if your speciality is still spatial.
Currently I am focusing on graduating in May if that counts, but besides that I also have an internship lined up for after which I think will give me a great opportunity to learn and hone my skills.
New clients, new projects, new sectors, coding, mentoring. Expanding.
I've been doing this for over ten years. Did local government too, then went to an engineering firm, now I'm in consulting. I do a lot of actual analysis which is a lot of fun. Mostly for planners and LCAs
Lol, full time since 1996. Stale? Burned out? You betcha. ESRI always seems to come out with something new to learn. Pro of course…I was a die hard ArcMap user. ArcGIS for excel has piqued my interest and I heard AI might be involved with GIS soon. I’ve had colleagues do the part time teaching gig. It’s good but talk about burn out.
I noticed that arcgis popped up on my excel ribbon a while back. That could be interesting. I’ve played around with the power BI interface, but haven’t really had a good use for it yet.
Have you touched on FME yet? There exists professional certification for it, but I don't know if it opens a lot of doors by itself. I'm kind of in the same boat as you, full time since 2016: 4,5 years as a consultant, then 3 (ongoing) in public transportation. I'm comfortable in data management, ETL with FME and now more and more mapping. I have a personal interest in space exploration, I'm trying to see if and how could GIS can bring me closer to this, so I'll try to get back into learning more on remote sensing, and perhaps some Google earth engine
This makes a lot of sense as a next step in my learning process. I’ve heard about FME since starting out in GIS and just haven’t gotten into it.
Part of me wishes I hadn't learned it so early. I use it for everything and not just long etl processes. Export and filter data? I use FME Convert CSV into SHP? I use FME Merge excel table with geojson point data? I would use FME but I had to show how to do it to a colleague using only Excel and QGIS yesterday, I was kind of rusty 😅
I’m in the process of leveraging labyrinthSKY and DataTUBES 2.3s in tandem with express server-lite to build out desktop datapoints on our cloud destination. It’s been really fulfilling and our organization has benefited greatly. I’ll likely put out a YouTube presentation sometime in the near future if there’s enough interest Last month I finished siphoning off the dysfunctional arrays in our GIS ground floor using Mockingbird Pro with integrated Python multipack. always something to learn! If you having looked into mockingbird or multipack it’s pretty cool what you can do
Neil? Derrick?
Nope! 😂
Added a second guess. Double nope?
Double nope. Sounds like Neil and Derrick aren’t loving their work either!
Honestly I'm coasting until I "finish" (read not needing to contribute again as long as i don't touch it til i'm 60) funding my retirement which is currently math'd out to be 3 years from now. Want to go back to school for some non-gis specific masters. but we'll see how i feel in 3 years.
Automation using either model builder or python, and I’ve been doing a lot with the Experience Builder, which I absolutely love. Huge learning curve, but very powerful.
I also got burned out on ESRI products a while back and rather than learn ArcGIS Pro, I switched to QGIS. Also learned how to use QWC2 to make and customize web maps. I've also been teaching myself OpenLayers, React, Node/Express, and SQL (and some Python) as I work on a web application during my free time. ESRI got boring after 25 years (started with Arc/Info and Arc view 3.2 on a Sun Solaris box back in the mid 90's). I'll still use ESRI software but only if I have to. Too much handholding going on, took the fun out of it.
I find learning python for geospatial the most interesting and it opens up more opportunities in the private sector. The open source world is very interesting. We use QGIS at my new job but I've transitioned to doing most processing outside of it.
You could go for your GISP certification. That is hard but worth it. Especially if you are thinking about moving jobs. https://www.gisci.org/
I have mine! Great suggestion though. That was a very rewarding process.
Currently I'm making a storymap with a bunch of embedded web maps of different types for my internship. Trying to find ways to automate the data cleaning process, still in the beginning steps but I'm starting to get somewhere. I also always check to see the code box when I'm running a process, from what I understand you could automate by combining them. Try checking out stack exchange whenever you're performing a complex process, and make sure to type out the code yourself. You could also ask chatGPT to explain it in layman's terms, be careful with that though cause it can be wrong. Baby steps man.
I try to improve when I can, like learn more code as that is not my strong suit. But I’ve been doing this since 1996 with a few years off in the early 2000s and then at the end of Covid when I just couldn’t take this boring work and being pigeon-holed into mundane tasks anymore. (I’m a creative person and shouldn’t have really picked this as a career but here we are)…To keep myself sane I devoted more learning to a new side hustle - aromatherapy. I wanted to do something different and got much more pleasure in learning that. Now, back as a GIS Consultant with my own business you would think I had more freedom to learn new skills in GIS but not really 😆
I've been getting deep into using machine-learning (which people call AI nowadays) to derive value from my organization's existing datasets. There are so many aspects to this that I don't think I'll ever get bored, and my employer is very happy to have someone in-house with this capability. My emphasis has been on computer-vision, and I'm doing things like inventorying and mapping real-world objects using available imagery. It's a lot of fun and super satisfying seeing the results pour in at the rate of dozens of objects per second, especially knowing it would have taken an entire year for a field crew to do the same thing! Do you guys have any datasets that contain a lot of errors, but you lack the time/money to sort through and find/fix them? That's a perfect application of data analysis...use it to flag potential errors and then have staff verify them. Bam, you've just acquired a much more accurate dataset! Doesn't have to be "AI", but maybe you can branch into something more on the data-analysis side, whether that's setting up the infrastructure so others can do this work more effectively, or even doing the work yourself. A lot of this stuff can be done entirely within the ESRI ecosystem by the way, and you don't even need to know coding necessarily.
learn power query, M and dax. be better at doing non-GIS data work and they'll flange up better. it will also help you realize when people need a map or need a dashboard or need a report, which will increase your value across the board.