February 25, 2013

Indeed the budget cuts may run deep as time passes and for many in business, the topic of sequestration is on the mind – no doubt this will also be discussed by many this week at the Esri FEDUC. Harris has recent;y polled Americans on their thoughts regarding budget spending and budget cuts and to no surprise, the poll finds that only rather small minorities of the public want to cut most of the biggest federal government programs. Perhaps the biggest surprise that I see in this is the huge number of those surveyed who favor cuts in spending and funding for business!

Some highlights of the findings… Only 12% of the public want to see a cut in Social Security payments

The end of Feb is here and that means the Esri conference season is kicking off… this week the Redlands crew rolls out the annual lovefest for Federal GIS users via the Esri federal User Conference. Those interested can follow updates from the conference on Twitter via via @EsriFederalGovt and #FedGIS. Esri is once again also hyping the “Who is GIS?” fun with their popular trading cards and also has a web service where you can go and see just who is GIS – see http://www.esri.com/special/whoisgis/index.html

Some interesting updates on Twitter from the event:

@gisjourno – Arlington National Cemetery wins Making a Difference Award at #FedGIS in Washington, DC. Read why: http://esriurl.com/5771

@ajturner – over-arching theme of #FedGIS so far is “Collaboration” with GIS for solving important problems. Reminds me of http://heorb.it/collaborativeanalysis …

@GISpathway – See patterns real time + illuminate where tweets are happening than normal (Sandy-power outage) #FedGIS pic.twitter.com/zx29ZHQ8NS

@jsteffenson – Jack engaging Jerry Johnston, Dan Cotter and Kshemendra Paul at morning Senior Executive breakfast. #fedgis #esri pic.twitter.com/W0wyn2p3nK

@martenhogeweg – Interested in joining the SDI SIG at #FedGIS? be there or join remotely: http://esriurl.com/sdisig