Intro: You ever open a map app, zoom around a bit, and think, “This is cool—I could do this for a living”? Well, guess what? You can! But if you’re dreaming of becoming a GIS Administrator, let me pop that bubble of easy-breezy cartography and introduce you to the spicy world of GIS infrastructure. Spoiler: It’s less Indiana Jones with
Category: GIS
So, you’ve decided to dive into GIS. Welcome to the realm of spatial joins, polygons that don’t behave, and shapefiles that somehow still exist in 2025. It’s exciting, overwhelming, and occasionally soul-crushing. But don’t worry—there’s a beacon in the geospatial fog, and his name is Matt Forrest. This guy? He’s the real deal. GIS pro, Field CTO at CARTO, and
So, you’ve decided to enter the magical world of GIS—Geographic Information Systems. Welcome! You’re either here because your boss threw a spreadsheet at you and said “make it a map,” or because you saw someone on TikTok making colorful maps and thought, “I could do that.” Well, buckle up, buttercup. Let me introduce you to your new best friend: QGIS.
(Yes, this 2023 YouTube video is still smarter than half your LinkedIn feed in 2025) By now you’ve probably seen every GIS tutorial this side of TikTok. Explainers in Comic Sans, videos with clickbait titles like “10 Secrets ArcGIS Pros Don’t Want You to Know.” Nonsense. Empty calories. Data visualized, yes. Brain cells? Not so much. Then there’s this gem
There are legacy systems, and then there is ArcGIS Server Manager – a user interface so anachronistic it should be on display at the Smithsonian, next to a floppy disk and a 56k modem. But just when you think you’ve seen the full extent of Esri’s commitment to web design abstinence, enter its even more arcane sibling: the ArcGIS Server
From the IT Administrator, GIS Staff, Network Engineer, Procurement Officer, and Whoever Else Isn’t Around That Day Let’s stop pretending this is a team sport. It’s not. In small utilities—and especially in local government—“IT Department” is often a fiction. It’s a polite way of saying one person who knows how to reboot things. That’s me. I’m the sysadmin, the GIS