Spatial Isn’t Special
I was reading Paul’s blog post last week wondering if he had been putting the Jedi Mind Trick on me the last couple years. I’d like to think that my mind is stronger than that and began to reflect on why I was drawn to WeoGeo after working as a consultant all these years. In the first 10+ years of being a GIS consultant, things were really steady. Our clients didn’t change much (mostly DoD), our billing rates increased over the years as these clients saw value in our implementing professional GIS systems and we never felt like we had too much or too little work. Pure bliss…
Life before Google was easy for GIS professionals
Then came that fateful day in 2004 when Google bought Keyhole. Most of us GIS folks knew who Keyhole was. We’d seen their demo at tradeshows and conferences and thought, “If I only had money I’d so implement that”. But along came Google, who unlike the rest of us has money. They bought Keyhole and soon Google Earth was a household name. In fact, now when we were sitting next to someone on the airplane, we could now utter the phrase, “Like Google Earth” when describing what we do.
But that wasn’t all, we had one more surprise. Google had bought a company out of Australia in 2004, but not too many of us knew about it or cared. That small company was brought on to revolutionize how spatial data was shared (yes even more than Google Earth). Google Maps was everything us GIS pros wanted in our GIS web apps. Unlike our slow ArcIMS or WMS based solutions, this tool was slippy. Users weren’t interrupted as the page had to load and unlike what we were doing (and are still doing) it was intuitive. We all knew right now our existing web maps were broken and we’d have to change.
And change it did, I recall getting calls from so many more companies and organizations than before. They all wanted the same thing, their data on Google Maps. Of course these projects were all that simple, but the end result was the old points on a map routine (with some Google Chart API if you were lucky). It wasn’t so much that they didn’t get geospatial; it was that they didn’t view it as special. And wasn’t this what we’ve been fighting for all these years? Don’t lock the GIS crew in a back room; bring them up in the front so everyone can benefit from GIS. Except one thing, most consultants were built around delivering custom GIS solutions to clients who paid good money for it. These new GIS users didn’t want custom and they didn’t want to pay much.
On top of all it, big A&E firms started to squeeze out the small boutique consulting shops who used to provide much of the GIS support to government clients. Without these contracts, these firms had to look for work where they could find it, providing pushpins on maps showing tabular information. You went from average billing rate of over $100 to just over $50 ($75 if you were lucky). You still could find work at the higher rates, but that was usually far in between. To make up for the lower revenue, consultants started taking on more jobs. Working twice as hard for the same revenue as before, but happy to be working with JavaScript APIs rather than VB6 and Java.
So what happened? Wasn’t the “spatial isn’t special” supposed to free us all and make us more money? Now of course there are some of us still making a good living doing what we are doing, but when something becomes a commodity our standard of living (coding?) decreases. That isn’t to say that we should be wishing for the days integrating MapObjects onto FoxPro. No clearly that wasn’t as fun as you remembered. What GIS consultants did in the past to justify such higher billing rates is to bring something else to the table, something of value that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Converting shapefiles to KML or geocoding addresses from Microsoft Excel onto Google Maps isn’t special, nor are most of the other “GIS” applications being developed today. This means those consultants who either don’t have existing contracts or can’t provide value added services are left to the mercy of the market that doesn’t put much value on spatial analysis. And if you aren’t special, your revenue will be squeezed and you’ll be working very hard with little reward. Don Meltz sums it up very well when he describes GIS Analysts like word processors of the 70s and 80s. When everyone is using spatial technology, how can you be special?
Trackbacks
- The Once and Future Map: The Destiny of GIS | Off the Map - Official Blog of FortiusOne
- What Is This “GIS” Of Which You Speak? « GeoMusings
- To What End, GIS? : GIS Lounge - Geographic Information Systems
- Spatial is Special, Spatial IT is Not « Fiducial Marks – Paul Bissett, WeoGeo CEO
- Spatial is Special – There’s a (M)App for That « Fiducial Marks – Paul Bissett, WeoGeo CEO
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You put that all together nicely James. So the moral of the story is be careful what you ask for? It is nice to see the tool applied and actually rewarding to see my nine year old use parts of the tool.
Well, now I’m depressed.
First, I have found that overall consulting is down because higher level GIS (i.e. those that want to do more with their geographic data than just map it out and/or have some basic spatial analysis) is still predominately used by government agencies. Almost all governmental agencies have tightened their budgets which means contractual and professional services line items monies are way down. I would love to see some facts on this so we can shake out what’s really going on beyond anecdotal evidence.
Second, it’s my opinion that the widespread availability of Google Earth/Maps/MapQuest, etc. etc. has made GIS even more special. These first exposures to what you can do with geographic data is only serving to whet people’s appetites for what more can be done beyond just viewing your data and overlaying geographic data.
I originally had a huge response to put here but then thought better about it and put it on my own blog (trust me that’s where you want it). I think your post is very thought provoking and is what GIS folks need to start dealing with. Time to wake up and smell the coffee.
I’ll probably get my head handed to me for saying so, but I think this is a good thing. It’s seems to me that this is just a part of the natural process of discipline development: weeding out the hacks. Not too long ago, you could get hired as a GIS professional just because you were able to slap together a pretty .kmz (hell – I’m sure you still can get hired for this). Come to think of it, I seem to recall getting a job once simply because I knew what GIS was.
Okay – so now the field is maturing. Now – to stay competitive – you have to bring to the table more skills (or, better yet, more talent) than are possessed by the average teenager. Why is this a bad thing? Why aren’t we viewing this as a golden opportunity (or economic imperative, if you prefer) to take GIS to the next step? Now that ‘anybody can do it’, shouldn’t we be looking toward doing more?
If spatial is no longer being viewed as ‘special’, shouldn’t we be focusing our energy on putting the ‘special’ back into it?
I just worry what these monkeys will do after they graduate from opening apple containers.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090902122448.htm
Well spoken.
So in summary – at a time when the world has the most powerful tools to actually engage world problems and put these tools to the test for all they are capable of, we have lost our inspiration, dreams and neurons to figure out the correct path forward…
Too many people are setting the GIS bar too low.
Excellent points. I think a lot of this can be due to the fact that many of us focused on how cool it was to get data up on the web without realizing that what organizations often need is information they can use to make better decisions. A classic example of where we as a community have failed is the high-resolution remote sensing sector. Organizations are inundated with high-resolution satellite imagery, aerial imagery, and LiDAR, yet few of these organizations are able to generate a solid return on their investment due to the fact that there are so few companies with the inherent capabilities to actually turn the data into information that helps the end user make better decisions, and do this without breaking the bank. Think of all the city’s that have high resolution imagery. Now survey those and ask them how many know, with a great degree of certainly, how much impervious surface they have or how much green space is available for planting trees. Sure, you can see this on the imagery, but its not until you take the time to extract the information from the imagery that people can begin to make wise decisions. This type of work is special.
I have to agree about the declining revenues, but it is hard to separate the tide going out for the entire economy from the bell curve of a particular GIS technology. We have globalization of development as well as a crashing world economy to deal with all at the same time that the technology is rapidly leaving the desktop => Ajax => CLR plugins.
It may be just the perfect storm situation for GIS developers (I don’t know about Analysts), but it also means jumping from one iceburg to the next in a shifting technology ice pack. You just have to carefully pick out the next technology to invest your time.
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