PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
May 2015
355
PROFESSIONAL
INSIGHT
Thierry Gregorius is the Principal Strategic
Consultant at Exprodat. The interview below was
taken from his personal blog, Georeferenced —
A blog on all things Geo, Data, Web.
THIERRY GREGORIUS
I N T E R V I E W
Make up your mind: Geospatial vs X
The geospatial profession cuts across many disciplines, so
you first need to decide what your professional identity is.
If you are committed to a geospatial career you are basically
making a choice not to be a geographer, geoscientist,
engineer, computer scientist, urban planner or whatever
else you might be mistaken for. If you want to be one of those
things, go study their subjects and enter their professions
proper – it’s much harder to get there via the geospatial
route. Of course you can also be a bit of both, and such a
combination is highly valuable. But the career of a geologist
who has GIS skills will probably look very different to the
career of a GIS professional who also knows about geology.
In fact, as a geospatial professional you need to know
about many other things too, being both a generalist and
a specialist. You’ll work with many disciplines, providing
input and joining things up. So you need to be clear: Are you
a geospatial professional, or a professional in another field
who also has some geospatial knowledge? The difference
can be huge.
Build a technical foundation early in your career
Geospatial is a technical profession. Whether you want to
be a guru analyst, champion account manager or visionary
CEO, in the geospatial domain you will have little success
and credibility without a solid grounding in its technical
aspects. So resist the temptation of going into managerial or
commercial positions too soon. Clients can spot bullshitters
a mile off, and so can your staff (but they may be cruel
enough not to tell you). Get as much work under your
belt as possible, looking for a diverse range of technical
responsibilities. It may not pay big bucks now but it’s a
long-term career investment that will pay dividends later.
Geospatial careers:
12 things I’ve
learned… so far
Besides, once you reach that coveted leadership position
you may well find all that glitters is not gold. Doing stuff
is often more satisfying than talking about stuff. But, just
like teenagers wanting to be adults and adults wanting to
be young, you may only learn this the hard way.
Build a unique skillset
You can’t be all things to all people. This is especially
true in the geospatial domain where many ‘geospatial’
skills overlap with those of other disciplines. If you dilute
yourself too much as a geospatial professional you’ll end up
becoming the Swiss army knife that people only use when
there’s nothing better to hand. Also, it’s not enough to be
good at “programming” or “making maps”. These days, any
five-year old can do that. Ask yourself, what is unique to
you? Where can you make a difference? This could initially
be a single skill (say, geoprocessing for environmental
workflows), later growing to become a unique combination
of skills. The list is potentially endless, hence the need to
focus.
Focus
The geospatial arena is very broad and cuts across all
industries, so it’s very easy to go off in different directions.
This brings with it a lot of opportunities – and distractions.
Make conscious choices at every step. Ask yourself: What
skills am I learning to apply here? What goal will this help
me achieve? What development gaps am I plugging? Don’t
just fall into things unless serendipity is your chosen life
philosophy.
Depth vs breadth
As in all technical professions you will, at some point, face
an important decision between depth or breadth. Do you
