Call for GPN Professional Education Content

The Geospatial Professional Network is well-known in the GIS Community for being comprehensive, vendor-neutral, and providing valuable educational opportunities to support geospatial professionals at all stages of their careers. Aside from conference presentations at GIS-Pro and academies, GPN provides fact sheets, newsletter articles, podcasts, webinars, workshops, and special publications. In addition to education and reference resources, these programs offer you the opportunity to volunteer and share your experience and expertise with others.

If you are looking to present at the annual GIS-Pro conference or a specialty conference, please use the forms found on each event page.

(Note that all options earn authors ample contributions points toward GISP certification and renewal!)

GPN's Professional Education Committee (PEC) is soliciting proposals for new education content in many areas in a variety of content forms, listed below. Please use the form linked at the bottom of the page to contact us if you have knowledge or experience to share with the GIS Community.

Guide to Developing GPN Education Material & Content

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Topic Areas

We are always accepting proposals on geospatial professional and technology topics. We are especially interested in:

• What’s next? Stories and use cases from the cutting edge
• Digging deeper into GIS management topics for GIS in public and private organizations including governance funding & resources, return on investment case studies, and data. How do you improve the status of GIS professionals in organizations and compensation and classification studies?
• How are you solving problems and challenges with automation, programming, and creative use of tools?
• Legal, policy, regulatory, and ethical issues impacting the GIS profession
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion topics using GIS to support underserved communities or address social equity and injustice
• Using geospatial applications to support sustainability and resiliency including managing climate change, green infrastructure, vertical farming, and wildlife management
• Stories about data and applications using: imagery, elevation, temperature, hydrography, transportation, utilities
• GIS applications and use cases for emergency management, public health, elections, and for elected officials
• How are you using free and open source geospatial tools and data?
• Trends in information technology and how they affect GIS included cloud infrastructure, service-oriented architecture, distributed systems, internet of things (IoT), integrating GIS with enterprise systems, alternate reality, virtual reality, and cybersecurity
• Applications of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning techniques

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Content Delivery Options

There are several content delivery options. Newsletter articles and webinars are great options for case studies. Fact sheets and workshops are great options for deeper dives with multiple examples. While some ideas may make a great workshop from the start, it is also possible to scaffold content by starting with a fact sheet, then delivering a webinar, then creating a workshop. 

Exciting Update! GPN recently launched a learning management system that not only will host proceedings, publications, and webinar recordings, but will also offer online courses, workshops and more. These on-demand opportunities will allow learners to consume educational content on their own time and earn education points toward GISP certification or renewal.

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Geospatial Fact Sheets are generally one to five page documents with a specific focus or purpose. Examples include GIS Data Layers for Next Generation 9-1-1 and Broadband Data and Mapping. Fact sheets are commonly written by individuals or small groups and are reviewed by subject matter experts before publication.

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GIS Professional newsletter articles are generally one to four page articles (sometimes longer!) educating and informing on a specific topic or practice. Beyond technical concepts, they often discuss professional development and strategy. Articles are commonly written by one or two individuals and are reviewed by the GIS Professional Content workgroup and staff before publication. The GIS Professional is published every other month.

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Podcasts are presented as a 30 to 60 minute recorded event. Events are usually a small panel discussion or a conversation between an interviewer and an interviewee. Topics range from professional and career development to unique perspectives on GIS to themes common in the GIS community like data organization and management. Archived GPN- Directions magazine podcasts are available. Pitch us your ideas!

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Webinars are live presentations or panel discussions usually 30 to 60 minutes long on a particular project, use case, or topic. Examples include presentations from Exemplary Systems in Government (ESIG) award winners like the Restaurant Inspection Scores Dashboard and government GIS Platforms and Applications; technical topics like Demystifying the Use of Machine Learning in the Geospatial World and Digging A Little Deeper into ETL for Next Generation 9-1-1 GIS Data; informative sessions like Preparing Geospatial Professionals for All Things Broadband; and panels like Next Level Leadership: Transitioning from Minion to Manager.

Send in a title and abstract for consideration to get the process started. Participants often agree to record the session for posting to GPN's YouTube Channel and the GPN Learning Annex (where a certificate can be earned). 

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GPN Quick Takes are lightning style talks on GPN’s Learning Annex that focus on bite-sized information on any geospatial related topic. They are suited for content that can be covered in as little as 1 minute up to 15 minutes and are less formal than a webinar or lecture series. They can also serve to get people inspired to learn more about a topic.

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Workshops

GPN Certified Workshops (whole or half-day; in-person, virtual, and/or on-demand) are usually delivered as a class at a conference or online setting and consist of course material in the form of PowerPoint slides with breakout discussions, activities, or exercises. Approximately 6.5 hours of material are required to fill a full-day session; 3-3.5 hours of material for a half-day session. The best workshops include activities and case studies. Consider incorporating team activities and discussion, peer to peer sharing and other ways to promote active learning. Consider designing your material to align with specific levels of experience, such as beginner or advanced. If your ideas and passions are for shorter engagements, long presentations, or panel discussions, consider proposing a webinar or conference session.

Get the workshop process started by submitting a proposal. The Professional Education Committee will review, provide feedback, and have someone guide you through the process. All GPN workshops are peer reviewed. First time workshops have a longer review period than existing workshops.

For delivery at GIS-Pro (usually in October), we need proposals for new Certified Workshops in February and a substantial draft of the workshop and activities in April. Please submit workshop proposals below. 

(Alternatively, to submit a regular presentation proposal or session for GIS-Pro, please review the details and submit by May 5. The Call for Proposals is posted here.) 

Workshop Criteria: Proposers and instructors must be GPN members. If accepted, a workshop must be presented with a minimum of two instructors. The workbook may not be copyrighted by the author or contain proprietary materials which may preclude GPN's use of the workbook/workshop at other GPN conferences. All proposals must include specific Learning Outcomes, which describe what the learner will be able to do upon successful completion of a unit of study. Outcomes use active verbs, are measurable, and are often stated as “Upon completion, the student should know…”. Properly stated outcomes define assessment questions allowing the learner’s knowledge to be tested or measured.

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Special Publications: GPN also offers ways for longer form written content and reference materials to reach the GIS Community. Examples include Redistricting: A Guide for the GIS Community and Model GIS Job Descriptions. Contact us to discuss your ideas and agree on a plan and timeline. All special publications are peer reviewed.

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Ready to propose content? Submit via this form. If you would like to discuss proposal types, process steps, or have other questions, please let us know by message to Danielle Giza.