You're listening to episode 758 of A VerySpatial podcasts. April 6th, 2025. Hello and welcome to a very spatial podcast. I'm Jesse. I'm Sue. I am Barb, and this is Frank. In today's housekeeping there the top 100 GS blogs on the web 2025 has been released and very spatial is on there. So congratulations to us, but also a wide range of GIS blogs. It was exciting to see because. It is an impressive list that ranges different countries, different types of GIS and news.
So it was good to see this 'cause I don't think we even saw a list this extensive five or 10 years ago. Well, I think it's just in generally indicative of, of the utility power recognition of GIS, that there are a lot of people that are doing stuff and there's a lot of great stuff to still explore and learn and, and experiment around with and all that sort of stuff. So I think, I think it's just all good, positive onto the news. Couple of quick things.
First. GISP, the GIS professional certification run of course by GIS Certification Institute has or is rolling out the pre GISP program. And so this is for those people who have not met all of the requirements for GISP and you know, the x number of years of work, X number of years of education, credit, X number of years of. The other thing, I'll be reminded of all of this in like a month and a half when I have to up mine.
But it's good because it means that those students who have been studying GIS can get the G-I-S-P-E, which is what the pre GISP exam is going to give you. The emerging GIS professional, GISP. And so, yeah, so. Basically we've talked about GISP, some of us are GSPs. We are supportive of the idea of the GISP and it's good that we're making this something that more people can kind of get into earlier in their careers as opposed to waiting until they've been in in situ for four or five years.
So I like the designation emerging. GIS professionals, so GSPE the first round. By the time I think you listened to this, the first round of registration will be over with, because that deadline is April 7th. For the exam. Huh? For the exam? Exam. For the exam, right. So when you have taken an exam. So that first group for pre GSP testing will be April 21st through 28th this year.
And again, the registration deadline was, april 7th, but if you head over to their Westpac, you could see the next round as well. Yeah. I, I like this for, for two very, like, solid reasons. One is it makes something that seems like it's in the, the way future when you're talking to someone. Have some solid steps. So when you're talking to people about keeping track and making a portfolio and working towards their GISP for young people, this gives them some, some solid. Steps towards it.
And then along with that, I think that it's going to really help students and young people emerging professionals to show their dedication to the profession and also be more likely that they'll get support to pay for and complete their work towards A-G-I-S-P. So I'm glad this is available. And I think this somewhat mimics the professional engineering approach.
They have a, it's more formalized and it has more steps, but there's a, the p the professional engineering exam, there's a pre-exam you can take whenever you basically finish from college that puts you on there. And I cannot remember what it's called 'cause. I just had friends that were engineers in college and went through it.
But it allows you to say, okay, I'm on this track and, and part of PE is you have to have X number of years and I was six or 10, or whatever the heck it is of actual engineering experience before you're allowed to sit for it. So I think that I. They're kind of somewhat mimicking that a bit to say there's a pre-stage that's important to recognize that yes, you're a professional, yes, you're doing things, and then there's the official, you have certification.
And I think that's a good positive step for the industry as a whole. And just a note that it is not free. There is a cost associated. So if you're planning ahead I believe it's $125 for the exam. So just know that as you're. You're setting things up. The other item in the news this week is that Apple is adding indigenous lands and places place names to Australia and New Zealand and Apple maps. That's kind of it.
Just nice to see with all of the other things going on in the US that other countries at least are, are not. Doing backwards things. Well, companies with our names operate in other countries. Yes. Or at least Yes. Doing that. Yeah. So not, not doing backwards things with their map data. Yeah. I, I liked when they were talking about dual language labels place names and also things that people use today, like protected areas. And I'd be interested to see where they're getting their data from.
'cause I was looking at the native Lands map, the really innovative BA map that came out of. A few years ago, I think that was Native Lands Canada. Is that the ca? Yeah. Well, the thing that, it's kind of interesting to me that technology allows us to have localized depictions. So to say, well, in this country this is important, and whereas in this country it's this is not nearly as important.
That's something we all kind of know, but I think it's something that when it's on a broad platform like Apple Maps or Google Maps or something like that, it's good for the general public to recognize that, you know, you can have a more localized depiction of geography. The downside, of course, is that you can use it for it's hard for me not to edit editorialize here. Things that seem a bit silly, like renaming, golfs.
So it's got a double-edged sword, but I think it's good that, that we get to let people know that this is a capability of the technology that we have. And I think that's awesome. And conversely, I expect there are gonna be a lot of people asking, well, why don't we have that available for X? True. And, you know, some of that sometimes is the, the footwork necessary for it. So it is good to, to raise those questions about it. And that's it for the news. And onto the web corner.
It is Citizen Science Month. So this year for 2025 citizen Science Month is focusing on 1 million acts of science. And that's very broad. So within that, I, you know, include the spatial because, you know, citizen science is. A lot of times location based. It's what it has made it possible on this worldwide scale. So if you haven't checked out activities near you or ones you can do online, you might want to look at the size starter website or work on your badge.
For citizen science, all of April, I. I think it's important to recognize that a lot of the history of science has been done by citizens, by amateur astronomers, for example am amateur. It's an important thing. Now, there are situations where it can be problematic, let's just say that for example. And I'm sure that if we ask Jesse to give a, a, a lecture on why this is a problem amateur archeology it could be quite a lengthy little lecture, but.
The point is, is that one of the great things about things like Citizen Science Month is that citizens have an important role to play within scientific development. But we've moved since it has been 150 years of professionalization of science, that we've moved to a situation where a directed, guided, controlled implementation of that is. You know, far as we know the most powerful way we can do this. So I really encourage everyone to get out there that have an interest in it.
One, you learn a lot. Two, you get to have some fun, and three, you can really improve. What we as humans know about the world around us. And that's just like a win-win all the way around to my mind, if you're in the us there's a tie into America two 50 for this summer, so they're focusing on the, in innovativeness of citizen sciences.
Going back to the history of Benjamin Franklin, who I feel like he invented everything and precluding, apparently I've been going big role in citizen science, so I'm happy to be joined by. By Blake Sinnitt. Yes. Thanks for joining us today. Absolutely. And tell us a little bit about EagleView. Yeah, so we're an ortho and oblique company. All that means is you get, ortho, gives you your top down roof outline. Oblique gives you underneath your roof line. It's fantastic for assessment.
GIS 9 1 1 specifically being able to see how tall a structure is. Get that Z value height. Figure out what a structure even is because if you only get the top down, you have no idea what's going on underneath that roof line. We patented the measurable oblique back in the nineties at some point, so we serve it out to you on our platform, allowing you to overlay your GIS data. So when you can add your GIS to your, to your imagery, it really makes it more powerful.
And then we can integrate with 200 and some odd companies so you can give it to people in a way that makes sense. It's a part of their workflow. So, of course. At the North Carolina GIS conference. So clearly there's some folks here who are interested in EagleView and some of these products. So can you tell us a little bit about some of your existing clients that are utilizing it and how they're they're using it currently? Yeah, so I mean, right outta the gate we have Mecklenburg.
So having Charlotte as a customer in. North Carolina is kind of a big deal. We are all over the state. Unfortunately, I'm fairly new to covering North Carolina, so I can't tell you the full extent. I know we cover, I believe about 60 to 70% of the counties in the state. What are they using it for? Oh, I mean, Charlotte. So we'll go with Charlotte then. Yeah. They're using 9 1 1 GIS assessment.
They use it to figure out how much land they are being, they're being charged for just for a landscaping company, for mowing. You can just send it. They're using it for, oh goodness, like their HR departments are using it for walk around, just to show people the, if you have like a new person coming on, they're gonna have an outdoor like pattern to walk around. They can use it for that. They're pushing it out to the public, so through parcel viewers, things like that.
So you, you're getting funding that way because assessment you can, where you, they're doing change finder, align them to find change that they haven't assessed yet. So you have unassessed change being found, which brings money back into the. Into the department. So they're, they're utilizing it in a bunch of ways to try to just get as much value outta that at that product as they can. Of course, we're in spring in the next few hours at least.
And that means we're not that far from, of course, a lot of issues with weather. And of course a lot of people rely on EagleView technologies for looking at pre and post for a lot of these events. So do you have any. Examples of how people are utilizing some of these products for response to these type of issues.
Yeah, so exa perfect example is, I mean, we'd have, we, if you're under contract with us, we have DRP flights, which is hurricane season has since passed, but obviously North Carolina got hit pretty hard this year. We flew for all of our customers that struggled with it. So being able to go out, fly, figure out the a OI that was affected, fly it. Usually we can get you that imagery within 72 hours. If it's not free, it's at cost at the worst case scenario.
And being able to help them figure out what was affected properties that need to be reassessed as zero so people aren't being taxed for these things that don't exist. And just figuring out, working with the state departments, figuring out how to rebuild these areas better than they were before, or try to move on from things like this. Is there anything else you want to kind of highlight about EagleView and the products you guys are, are talking about while you're here at the conference?
I think mostly probably, I mean, the most exciting thing we have right now is we have a one inch ortho oblique. So, I mean, especially for public works guys, if you try and do a little more work in the office, try to save time, people aren't getting any nicer, so trying to avoid the public it's a great way to. Great way to try to get a little more, get a little more done in the office. But yeah, we're always happy to work with anyone.
We're always happy to try to figure out what works best for you and we're happy to talk to you and how can find people find out more about EagleView? Eagleview.com is just go to our website. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I'm happy to be laughed at by today, by Jay Young, who is with Rock Technologies. Thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. So, tell us a little bit about Rock. Yeah, so Rock what our sole focus is, we. Take RJs Enterprise to the cloud.
So we're a managed service provider and we specialize in architecting an environment to go through an assessment with a client, try to architect an environment that sort of meets what they're doing, one for one, and, you know, scop in that goldilock zone, deploy it in the cloud. And then we provide ongoing managed services for them. So we kind of make RJS enterprise like a SaaS offering. So. They get to use the application, use the tools, but then they don't have to manage the backend.
We manage that cloud infrastructure and the software. So can you give us an example of a client that you, you're working with right now? Yeah, we we're working with boy mini. Yeah, city of Wilmington, they're here. City of Wilmington San Francisco Airport. We just kicked them off. Boy, there's, there's there's been a lot. I'm trying to think. Did you say snow in San Francisco? Snow? Well, SNOI don't really know what that San stands for. Oh, okay. That makes more sense.
Snow in San, that sounds like a that sounds like some sort of Sinatra song. I would've thought train, but Sure. Train. But who else? Gosh, we have there's a lot of clients in Ohio at the state level, the Montana, a lot of clients at the state level. So we, we run the gamut from, you know, large enterprise deployments at state level or, you know, fortune 100 companies all the way down to, you know, small municipalities and rural USA. So. Anything and everything in between.
So can you talk about some of the aspects of what's the first Wilmington of what they're doing with the technologies? Yeah, so with Wilmington, you know, they had a setup on premise that was I believe they're running highly available, and it was just, it was a beast for them to manage and it wasn't doing quite what they were hoping it would. And it was, it was taking more time to manage than, you know. The solution was offering any services to them.
So so we've actually been in touch with them for years. We'd done some custom application work years and years ago and we had a good relationship with them. And when we pivoted our business model, you know, about 10 years ago, they, you know, we kept in touch and they finally decided that, enough's enough, they don't wanna manage this anymore. And so they reached out, went through that whole assessment. It took, you know, it can take a little bit of time to kind of go through that.
You know, just taking a look at all their data, their workflows, their users. 'cause there's no out of the box solution when you take it to the cloud. So we wanna make sure that we're trying to, you know, do our due diligence and get them in that spot. That's not gonna be over architect. We don't over architect anything in the cloud anyway, so but yeah. Then eventually after you went through the assessment and, you know, trying to identify some of their pain points and.
Remedy those in the cloud, they were able to move forward and yeah, we started the project last year, last summer, I think. So they're just about, they're rolling. I mean, they're great, but once I hit it over, the implementation team, they, they throw me out, they leave. They don't inform me on what's going on 'cause I'll inevitably screw it up. The real question, I think is what are some of the pain points that, you know, organizations like Wilmington often are facing.
That you're trying to get them passed with? Yeah, with the, with the move to the SaaS solution. Yeah. You know every, and I hate to say it, but every organization has their own specific pain points. But overall, what we're finding is, as you know, enterprise is, it's complex and it's getting more and more complex. And the ability and the skill sets to manage these systems on premise is it's starting to out scope. Their staff and their skills.
So they're just finding that they're spending way more time trying to, you know, mess with the upgrades and, and it's just taken away what they like to do, right? They wanna do the GIS stuff. So so once you they realize that, hey, we can take this off their plate. We can take it off it's plate. We can, we'll liberate all that so they can have that time back to do the fun stuff for them. That's, it seems to be really important and they. They appreciate it and that's what they want.
And end of the day, they just wanna do GIS stuff. And looking across the table where are you guys in the, in your expectations with how things are gonna change through the rest of 11 point x and heading into 12? Oh, the version? Ooh. Good question. As far as the backend goes, I think we're just gonna.
Continue doing what we're doing are, are there any parts that you're kind of excited that are coming or parts that you're excited that, or a little bit worried about the fact that they're gonna leave for some of your customers? I. No, I'm not concerned. There we go. Okay. Man of confidence. Look at that confidence. I don't know. Is there anything else you kinda wanna highlight about rock? You know, we are yeah, we're just, this is all we do.
You know, there are a lot of organiz, there's a few other players in the man of service game and which is great. This is all we do. You know, our sole focus is, you know, we take these things to the cloud and we manage 'em. So our team is made up of. Experts in cloud GIS, security. I mean, we live, eat, breathe this stuff. So yeah, it's a passion. Is there anywhere that people can go to find out more about your services? Yeah. Go to rock tech. Dot net, www@dotrocktech.net.
Is that T-T-E-C-H or TEK? TECH. Okay. R-O-K-T-E-C h.net. Okay. Yeah, I forget. Thanks for today. Thank you. If you'd like us to add your event to the event corner, send us an email to podcast@veryspatial.com. If you'd like to reach us individually, I can be reached at sue@veryspatial.com. I'm barb@veryspatial.com. You can reach me atFrank@veryspatial.com. I'm available at kind of spatial, and if you wanna find any of our contact information, head over to very spatial.com/contact. As always.
We're the folks at VerySpatial. Thanks for listening. I we'll see you in a couple weeks.