Visionary Marketing spoke with Catherine Crook ­– senior GIS program manager for Hexvarium – to discuss the use of geographic information systems or GIS and its impact on communication networks and the world. We touch on her day-to-day obligations as a senior gas program manager. The software is used for tracking systems, the issue of climate change, and more. Catherine provides a very insightful view on the emerging GIS that is becoming an autonomous type of tracking space. However, there is a need for students to understand and find an interest in what GIS really is. A day in the life of a GIS program manager Could you describe your day-to-day obligations as a senior gas program manager? Hexvarium is a startup that is pushing GIS into a broadband space. As a program manager, my job is to interface with clients. Manage a team of analysts who must get the deliverables to where they need to be. I also must make sure our development team is involved in all the nuances that are happening in what the customers are requesting. Because it’s a new way of looking at and navigating the broadband space, a lot of customers have never seen this type of application. Most of my time is spent training as well as making sure all components are where they need to be. The purpose of my job is to be the glue. To make sure that when we deploy something, everyone really understands the reason why we are deploying it the way we are. Which skills do you regularly use for your job? Things have changed a lot as I have navigated through my career. My job is now to implement systems that correlate directly and involve the GIS space. My background was mostly in the GIS analyst component, but my skill set would be more of a project manager. As a start-up, we were tracking hardly anything. I’ve implemented a lot of work-order tracking, systems tracking, and a JIRA ticketing system. There are all these different things in place now that we’re able to go back and grab. We can compare today to six months ago, and today to last week. That helps us navigate changes moving forward. I think understanding the GIS space is my regular skill. At the same time being able to project manage that GIS space seems to be the most dominant skill in these early stages of a startup. Which software do you use to implement those tracking systems? Previously, I’ve made my own tracking system. I’ve coded and made my own, and that’s been in SharePoint. That was a tracking system where if anybody wanted anything, it would come in as a ticket and then we would deploy it after it came in and there were criteria you had to follow. In the startup world, we don’t necessarily use SharePoint. I’ve then developed a work-order system so that a template environment must be adhered to for asks, and then that gets placed in a Slack channel. It’s like we’re building the plane while flying it. Most days if I have some time, I build a documentation or tracking system while I’m still in the air. It’s way better than it was six months ago. We can now grab things and understand landscapes better than we ever could before, but it’s going to take another year or so for us to be standardized in the ticketing and tracking space. How does the use of GIS influence fiber-optic communication networks? When we come to the broadband space, an Internet space that is not on the landscape. It’s considered a newer utility. If you don’t have electricity or water, those are life-changing spaces. If you don’t have broadband, they don’t really consider that life-changing. It’s changing more as we navigate through this because is the only way I can speak to you in France. We are heavily dependent on broadband, for me and you to have this conversation with no squiggly line saying that there’s a problem in the flow of information between us...