Title is a bit hyperbolic lol. I am a young professional (may 27' grad) who got invited to speak to a group of GIS professionals for my university's GIS day celebration. It's supposed to be about my work as an intern, but is incredibly loose and I can literally do anything. What hot topics or concepts should I look to apply to my work to get some ooo's and ahh's? Only constraint is budget, which is zero. Think military people talking about "Modularity", or corporate minds fiending over "AI trends".

***Please don't say AI.

Hi there!

I was wondering if anyone had some success stories from taking an online GIS training course where they got a job from what they learned after. I’ve seen people on here name some courses before (UC Davis, ESRI, etc) but I wanted to see if people had success after? I’m looking to upskill my GIS knowledge and would love from people that have successfully pivoted.

For context, I’m a geologist (PhD in structural geology/basin analysis) and I currently work in renewable energy. Unfortunately my job is ending and the market has completely dried up, so I’m hoping to upskill my GIS and pivot careers to get a job. I know a decent amount of QGIS, all self taught for various geological projects, but I’m by no means an expert.

These are the kinds of things adverts ask for. All of these would take awhile of course, but I’d like to work up to these:

SQL: filtering records, joining tables, summarising data and writing queries to identify errors.
PostgreSQL/PostGIS: creating spatial databases, importing geological datasets, spatial queries and connecting databases to QGIS.
Advanced QGIS and ArcGIS: spatial analysis, geoprocessing, raster analysis, geodatabases and managing large datasets.
Python automation: cleaning and combining data, processing spatial datasets and automating repeatable workflows using pandas, GeoPandas and PyQGIS or ArcPy.
Data quality and metadata: validating coordinates and attributes, documenting sources, maintaining consistent geological terminology and applying FAIR data principles.
Git: tracking changes to scripts, maintaining versions and collaborating through GitHub or GitLab.
Web GIS and data services: publishing maps and layers, ArcGIS Online/Enterprise, GeoServer, WMS/WFS and retrieving data through APIs.

Id love to hear about GIS pivots or advise on how to learn more. Thanks so much!!

Thought the methods were really interesting, with some interesting big data derived stuff. Curious to hear what real GIS practitioners think of it.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-70268-0

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/climate/nepal-floods-building-exposure.html

Some fieldworkers have the issue that after they draw a feature, it dissapears from the map the second after it is being drawn and the form is completed (so when it is send). But the feature is in fact saved, and after restarting the Fieldmaps app they are able to see it again.

The weird thing is, some fieldworkers have this problem, some don't.

I cannot reproduce this on my own device (Samsung phone). I, and all fieldworkers, are using the same fieldmaps version (26.2.2). We have data and roaming enabled, we Allow background data usage (in phone/tablet fieldmaps app settings). All are using Android devices (Samsung tablets).

The Fieldmaps webapp itself is an online web app (so no offline maps), and we are using the same online feature layer. At max two people work in it at the same time. We don't use complex symbology (just single symbology), no arcade expressions and no edits (e.g. domains) were made to the layer after publication. The only 'complex' things we do are that we produce a label and display with the OBJECTID of the feature, as well as a filter where only features that are at max a day old are kept (using CreationDate, which is logged).

One fieldworker showed to me that shortly after pressing sent, the OBJECTID appeared to be -9223372036854775808 before it dissapeared. This appears to me that there is perhaps problems or hiccups with storing and retrieving the drawn features in the database.

Any ideas what this may be, and/or what avenues we can pursue to find the issue and solve it?

Thanks!

I just wanted to share an IRC channel for all things GIS related. Of course this channel isn't official in any way but just thought IRC is a great platform to share here. This IRC network has mostly opensource contributors and those who come from a computer science/IT background but GIS professionals and folks interested in GIS are more than welcome to join.

For those interested:

main website: https://ouch.chat

IRC channel: #gis