In this Pathfinder episode, we speak with Dianne Haley about her career in the Geospatial Industry. Dianne joins us from her home in Calgary, Alberta and shares her wisdom, gained over a 40 year career, on how to be successful to find, or even create, champions for your GIS program. Dianne is a advocate for the growth of the industry and has been involved with URISA, and their leadership academy, since 1990. Watch this episode to find out why a GIS is more than "Google Maps on steroids."
Jump to a section:
Quick Clip | What is GIS? | Education | Passion | Action | Tenacity | Humility | Contact
LESSONS LEARNED
As Dianne has traveled along this career path, she has learned a few lessons that she shares with our Pathfinder community.
1) The Geospatial industry is diverse and it is exciting to get exposed to many business problems and find creative was for GIS to solve them.
2) A GIS program is built on a solid data foundation so feed the GIS hungry systems with good data and make sure to do the hard work to build and maintain a solid data foundation.
3) Have your customers involved in the development process and get them to present the art of what is possible. This will help you find your champions,
P.A.T.H.
Passion - Dianne's passion for the industry is rooted in being able to support other business units and deliver solutions that help them meet their goals. She loved to see them get excited about it. .
Action - She turned this passion into action by listening to people, working with them to come up with a solution, having them get involved in the development, and to get them onside to become part of the marketing of the solution.
Tenacity - Her career achievements, at times, were not easy and she was tenacious in communicating to her team that everyone needs to be able to sell ideas and market concepts. She aligned her group to senior management and the problems they were facing. She recognized that the brick walls you face are rarely technology based and to figure out the inner workings of the organization.
Humility - This journey has taught Dianne that you can't do it all on your own and as you get further removed from the technology you have to let the team take it and run with it .