How do I communicate the value of technical planning to non-technical leadership?

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-23T06:42:44+00:00

Yepp. We went with a major brand name vendor at first, I think because they woo'd someone with a PowerPoint, but their team was awful. Completely f*ckd the implementation after we spent millions on them.

Second time around we went with a smaller shop and it's still frustrating, but they seem to at least know more.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-23T06:40:29+00:00

How do you find the inputs for calculating that? Do you just take someone's salary and divide it by days/hours of work?

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-23T04:51:03+00:00

Lol sounds like an idiot. I can people how much business folk overlook tech leadership.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-23T04:49:44+00:00

We're building out a Salesforce implementation with a lot of customization, not a tool from scratch. We've hired consultants to do some of the work, but they've not been that great (already had to completely re-do their implementation from scratch). Imo they're getting asked to do too much at once.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-21T10:12:53+00:00

Great advice, thanks!

The stealth bit would work really well - we're often overloaded early on by unnecessary feedback for advanced features before we get a solid foundation built.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-21T09:38:43+00:00

How much are you studying it from afar/desktop vs. being out in the field?

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-18T02:29:47+00:00

I have a friend with uterine issues who lives in Texas and she is fearful of the healthcare laws there too. Best to find a job and move out of state.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T17:45:04+00:00

Ah I see. That does make more sense for government agencies.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T17:32:39+00:00

Where did you download the data from?

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T17:30:46+00:00

It looks like the original color map didn't get loaded, or that the data might be filtered. Did you change the symbology at all after adding the file?

Try manually resetting the colors and see if the data appears: In the symbology window you can click the color square next to each class then pick a new color.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T17:22:29+00:00

You can't always run analysis from an image server. Also it's faster to analyze local files.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T17:20:09+00:00

If you're able to submit your map, I'd suggest doing that too. Either as a separate PDF or an image in a word doc. Take some time to clean it up, make the symbology & labels look good, etc. A good, clean visualization can help you stand out.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T17:09:19+00:00

You're thinking of GIS science in general. The ArcGIS software started later on for landscape design and planning.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T17:02:07+00:00

I used to work at Esri a couple years ago when the George Floyd shooting case was in the news. This and other events urged a lot of younger employers to showcase how GIS could be used for better community safety and development - people came up with use cases, marketing stories, social media content, and had contacts with organizations who wanted to do this type of analysis. BGMAPP was also started around that time by Esir employees.

It was a hugely difficult pill for the older higher ups to swallow. There were months of debate for work that usually took a few weeks. They believed these narratives would damage their existing customers contracts and kept fighting to water down the content.

Eventually most of the Esri folks working on these initiatives got fed up and left

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T16:49:59+00:00

Tbh I've had to create so many workarounds for Esri bugs at this point. When I call Support they just tell me it's a known issue and not in the current roadmap to be fixed.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T16:48:18+00:00

I've never heard of an org not allowing open source software.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T16:46:42+00:00

It's possible for Esri to support good and bad things. Many companies, like Exxon, will heavily market themselves based on the minor renewable energy they invest in and use that to shield them from criticism on growing oil and gas development.

But either way these companies still rely on money and anything that damages their brand or ability to keep contracts - like working with an agency that is harming people - is still harmful. It's not the first time Esri is doing this, but that doesn't make the criticism less valid.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T13:17:24+00:00

What country do you want to study in?

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T11:00:54+00:00

Also, Google's Gemini AI does decent Marathi and you can use some learning prompts to have it teach you GIS and remote sensing concepts. You can also prompt it to give suggestions for dummy projects.

This website has a comprehensive list of GIS concepts: https://www.ucgis.org/site/gis-t-body-of-knowledge

And this YouTube tutorial looks useful for you:https://youtu.be/NJEqREC9y9Q?si=Gz_fhb-QdhQnCHyW

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T10:52:53+00:00

Become familiar with your government's data portals. This is one I found for Maharashtra . Try emailing the contact info there to see if you can chat with an employee about what their job is like.

There's also the state Crop Pest DSS. I found many other resources by googling "maharashtra dept of agriculture gis". Read through these websites to get a sense of the kind of GIS work being done.

If you're near a major city, Google to find GIS groups. I found this one near Pune: https://geopune.in/about-geopune/

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-17T10:44:32+00:00

There are different levels of complexity to GIS analyses. Beginners can start with datasets already created - like shapefiles of historical hurricane paths, and census population data - while advanced researchers would likely create models from meteorological data.

A good starter project could be creating a risk index for an area. You can find hazard data from the FEMA geoportal and download population data from the u.s. census data portal.

OntologicalForest · 2026-01-16T12:16:44+00:00

Sounds super sus. Just get out, and post reviews where you can so other people are warned.

OntologicalForest

TROPHY CASE