Exploring GIS

I’ve been exploring the world of GIS for a few months now, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say I’ve been taking notes in a similar manner to this dog drinking from a hose:

I feel impelled to share some of those notes and resources I’ve found as I believe they would be helpful for someone like me a few months ago to provide a bunch of jumping off points for further insight and learning.

So here are a couple of lists to get the ball rolling.

First up, a few of the resources I’ve started frequenting:

And a few of the things I’ve been browsing to expand the list of sites in my RSS reader and GIS Resources note, and to generally learn more stuff:

gischat on Twitter
/r/GIS on Reddit
GIS StackExchange
websites of companies mentioned in blog posts / podcasts
job boards for “GIS” and “geospatial” job posts

If you browse the gischat hashtag on Twitter (particularly on Wednesdays) you’ll find plenty of tweets and profiles to peruse along with links to people’s personal sites and their employer’s sites, where you’ll find portfolios and projects to read about.

I’ve found that the /r/GIS subreddit has a lot of threads about starting a career in GIS and career progression in GIS, which is personally very interesting as I’m looking to pivot into GIS.

The GIS StackExchange is interesting to browse, but I only tend to visit when I have something specific to search for (for example, what is the UK’s typical coordinate reference system).

Browsing the websites of companies and job posts on job boards is good for getting some insight into the industry, or rather the industries, to see what “doing GIS” consists of and contributes towards.