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ESRI UC 2019! This was an exciting trip, as I haven't been to this conference in five years.  It was fun to see how much it has grown. After checking in, I stopped by the bookstore to look at the swag.  I learned we are now map ninjas.                                   Barf                               Monday is the notorious Plenary Session.  ALL. DAY.  Everyone sitting in the same room, listening to presenters from all over the world, show off what they've made, intermixed with upcoming release news from ESRI staff. The man, the myth, the legend. The founder, Jack Dangermond, spoke a lot.  He announced the theme: GIS as a nervous system.  He said his favorite thing is story maps.  To date, there are over 1 million story maps, with over 3000 new story maps created every day. Very cool.  I have made so many story maps, but haven't seen them used too often. Estimated around 20,000 attendees. Jack promised no earthquakes during the conf

In preparation for the upcoming UGIC Conference, I've been thinking about how awesome of a conference this is.  It is a conference for GIS professionals in the state of Utah.  UGIC stands for Utah Geographic Information Council. The first UGIC Conference I attended was held in Cedar City.  I was a year and a half into my career.  I was instantly welcomed by the members of the UGIC Council at the time, and ran around with them for the week, attending classes and social events. I remember a bunch of us went out in the desert to Lions Head, to look at hieroglyphics.  They were amazing.  We studied them, wondering what the people that put them there wanted us to know.  One of my colleagues did the entire hike on crutches with a broken leg.  Now that's a trooper.  I remember watching the sun set into the red and green hills.  On another day, my coworker and I ditched the late afternoon classes to go to Grafton, a ghost town where we had discovered we had a common ancestor buried