Geodeveloper – A declaration.

For a while now, there has seemed to be an increase in the use of the prefix geo. I remember being a bit annoyed about it – I’d be reading some random news article and the author would talk about “geoblocking” or “geofencing” or – help us – “geolocation”. I realised my annoyance stemmed from the fact that the terms were often used in the wrong context, or that the author seemed to misunderstand their definitions.

That’s different now. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been learning how to use ESRI’s GeoEvent Extension for ArcGIS for Server (could that name be any longer?). I’m learning how to set up a geofence to geoblock end users based on their geolocation (ha!).

While I will elaborate more on my adventures with GeoEvent in another post, a couple of other things have happened over the past two months which have led me to rethink my stance on what I do. The nature of my work as a GIS Technician on the Enterprise GIS team requires me to be good at a number of different things, including things which aren’t strictly GIS. That’s fine – I love doing it, and I enjoy determining what the best combination of technologies would be to solve a particular problem.

However, there is one particular aspect of my work which is a continuous challenge, which constantly forces me to adapt, learn, research, and improve my skills in it everyday, because there is always something new. Programming. Specifically, programming for GIS, although lately I have been stepping outside of that arena as part of a side project.

It’s where I’m focussing my efforts whenever I have “free” time. All the GIS work I do, my studies at UNISA in preparation for Honours, my MOOCs – it’s all for one thing: to be a geodeveloper.

Geodeveloper (n): A developer who specialises in, and focuses on, programming specifically for use within the GIS/Geoinformatics field.

GIS, geocomputation, geospatial, geoinformatics, geo-what?

Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I actually do, or what I’m “called”.

I’ve struggled with this since university. In 1st year, whenever introductions were made and I said I was studying Applied Geoinformatics, I would get this response:

When I tried to explain it, I’d always make it worse somehow, so then I’d get this face:

One time, when I told someone that, she asked what it was called in Afrikaans. Saying “Toegepaste Geoinformatika” did not help matters at all. It also did not help that 11 of us started; we were down to 6 after 2 weeks of Computer Science, 5 by the end of the year, and 2 in third year.

The GIS field has changed a lot over the last few years, and rapidly as well. I started out as a GIS intern, then a GIS Operator, when all I was doing was data capture and ad hoc map production. I then started identifying as a GIS Technician once I started doing analysis and more advanced cartography.

After a few months of that, and once the programming snake bit me (Python joke! Or not?), I started identifying as a GIS Developer. Every desktop GIS task I was assigned, I found a way to work some programming into it. I barely use the desktop interface anymore, everything I do is now done from Visual Studio, or at least from ArcCatalog where I don’t have to deal with the drama in ArcMap.

This issue is quite big, especially in a field that is rapidly evolving. Caitlin at GIS Lounge mentioned it:

Q. What do you do?

A. I work in GIS

Q. Um, GIS? What’s that?

A. It stands for Geographic Information Systems.

Q. Um, what’s that?

A. Oh, it’s sort of like Google Maps.

She had a survey form at the bottom of the article, so you can fill in what you call yourself. I was going to fill it in, when I realised I actually can’t sum up what I do in one word. James Fee mentioned this in his first newsletter late last year:

“What do you do?” Remember this question? I used to get it all the time and it was so hard to explain. I’d go into maps, databases and then the Internet. People sort of nod and seem to agree they understand just so you’ll stop talking about intersecting polygons and buffering the result. Then when Google Earth exploded on the scene, I’d used to just always say, “You know, like Google Earth…” and the other person would get all excited and say they looked up their hometown and saw their elementary school and how awesome it was that Google could find it.

I came across Geocomputation recently, which defines itself as “The Art and Science of Solving Complex Spatial Problems with Computers”. I then thought about identifying as a Geocomputation Specialist, but that didn’t seem right either.

Finally, I turned to what probably should have been my first port of call: Wikipedia.

Geoinformatics is the science and the technology which develops and uses information science infrastructure to address the problems of geography, geosciences and related branches of engineering…combines geospatial analysis and modeling, development of geospatial databases, information systems design, human-computer interaction and both wired and wireless networking technologies. Geoinformatics uses geocomputation and geovisualization for analyzing geoinformation.

Geoinformatics Specialist!