Tag Archives: mentoring

Mentoring Teaches Questioning: What’s So Great About That?

xyHt has featured many articles about mentors and mentoring before now! But— Why do we need mentors? It is definitely not because some third party randomly mandates it. Mentors and mentoring are a practical need for companies and for employees. Most often when I hear the topic of mentoring come up, it’s from employers who...

What Is Automation in GIS Mentoring?

Being asked to write about mentoring, I find myself reflecting on my years in GIS … —The multiple teams I’ve managed and the challenges along the way, plus how I approach leadership or mentoring now, and how my teams go about getting advice when no help is present. First though, what do we mean by...

Let’s Be Colleagues: New Settings for GIS Mentoring

Mentoring is a key aspect in any career; otherwise how do we learn what we need to do and how we need to work in a particular environment? Mentoring is even more important for an SME (small- to medium-sized enterprise) or freelancer. Working on your own is increasingly common in the geospatial field, with the...

Mentoring in the Age of Automation

Above: Darrell Hanners, LSI completes a topographic survey in the mountains of Caribou County, Idaho. As old-timers retire and fewer young people enter surveying, we are at a turning point where mentoring is crucial to the future of the profession, but we will need to adapt to mentor well.  Land surveying is an ever-evolving profession....

Surveying & Safety

Above image: A surveying job made comfortable: Measuring a steep terrain from a safe ground location in the treacherous mountains of beautiful northern British Columbia, Canada. The importance of protecting our lifestyle. In this article, for the sake of brevity the concepts of occupational health and safety are referred to by the word “safety.” The...

A Millennial’s View of Land Surveying

Introduction by Field Notes editor, Scott Martin. Thank you, Anthony, for stating what we all need to hear. From mentoring, to degree requirements, to continuing education, to understanding the fundamental principles of technology, you hit all the major elements of what is needed—or not needed—to “save” our noble profession. We, being licensed professionals, NCEES, NSPS, state associations,...