Hello people who find this blog through googling something about GIS, click on my interesting tweets, or being sent here through the geo-reddit, or stackoverflows.
I have some news. I think this will be the last post to GISDoctor.com. 99% sure.
GISDoctor.com started seven years ago. As I was finishing my Ph.D. in geography from the University of Connecticut, my former boss at the Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) gave me a hosting plan and BenjaminSpaulding.com as a graduation gift. Soon after I was getting my personal site running and one of my coworkers at MAGIC was joking around and calling me the GIS Doctor and the name kinda stuck. I registered the domain and started blogging.
After a 151 posts, the most popular post is still my ArcGIS Sucks piece, which has so many deep roots in the internets and message boards that many, many keyword searches return the post – that has no technical value – just a lot of people bitching in the comments. Also, lots of coworkers over the years have found my blog through that post, which has led to some awkward conversations in the office.
I am not out of geo, spatial, or the GIS fields. I just feel that now is the time to move my writing and ideas over to my personal website, BenjaminSpaulding.com and to let GISDoctor.com ride out into the sunset. I have been hesitant in the past to post about non-spatial topics, but moving away from GISDoctor.com will allow me to visit other areas of technical interest.
My career has moved this way as well. It’s been many, many years since I have been a “GIS Specialist”. For the last few years I have managed a technical team that solves many data and spatial problems, and fewer and fewer are based in the traditional GIS space. Today, I would be considered a data scientist/data manager/spatial scientist and I want the blog moving forward will reflect that. I feel I that I can reach a larger audience focusing on the science and analysis of “where”, without having to worry about explaining what GIS stands for in my website name or twitter handle.
For the next few months I will keep the content on GISDoctor.com as I migrate it to BenjaminSpaulding.com. I hope to have BenjaminSpaulding.com in a blog format within the next week (maybe two, don’t hold your breath). I’ll probably keep GISDoctor.com up for the foreseeable future, but I’ll just redirect it to the new site.
This should be fun. Thanks for all the clicks.
Also, I switched my twitter handle from @GISDoctor to @theBenSpaulding. Follow me, if you twitter.