Azrael Montoya
amontoya@foghornnews.com
Participants in the 19th annual Coastal Bend GIS Day discovered a world of possibilities.
“If you’re into electronics and building stuff, this is the field for you,” Del Mar College GIS major Tori Atokuk-Vitz said at the event, held Nov. 15 at the Center for Economic Development.
Leonel Deleon, a GIS major at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, said that with an array of skills, geospatial technology is in everything.
The community came together at the event to get hands-on experience with drones, learn mapping, and more about applications in GIS technology.
“GIS in a sense is like a Swiss Army knife,” Deleon said.
For companies, GIS is in demand.
“Technology is catching up to what people want and feeding their needs,” said Del Mar Geospatial Faculty Professor J. J. Nelson. “The location of anything is becoming everything.”
Learning GIS makes a person more marketable and provides one of the fastest growing professional workforce opportunities.
A&M-Corpus Christi graduate Bryan Gillis, who now works for the Conrad Blucher Institute, said, “GIS is the technology that maintains the world’s progress.”
“GIS is a field that demands the nation’s youth,” Gillis added.
GIS is fast growing and provides many opportunities. Garrett Klepake, a technical drafting technology major at Del Mar, explained his perspective on technology and GIS.
“It’s a common sense to be in a field with technology because technology is becoming important in every life,” Klepake said.
Other experiences abounded plentifully at the event.
A&M-Corpus Christi GIS Major Jose Pilarte-Congo explained his journey towards GIS.
“For me it was not knowing what I wanted to do and my fascination for geography and technology and my dad’s influence that got me into the field,” he said.
Dani Mladenka, also a student at A&M-CC, loves people.
“I loved maps, traveling, people and cultural locations,” she said.
The ever-expanding field of GIS was not lost on Nelson.
“Holy smokes, what can’t you do with GIS?” Nelson said.
