For a little fun, we tossed about a dozen, short questions at some Geo technology professionals – below is our Q&A with industry expert Gretchen Peterson of Fort Collins, Colorado – enjoy!
Q: What’s Your "Official" job Title?
A: GIS Consultant, Author
Q: If you could give yourself a cool, new job title what would it be (and why – optional)?
A: Ugh, can’t think of anything for this…
Q: What’s the best part of your job?
A: Strategy: coming up with new ways to help clients and new ways to make other geoprofessional’s lives easier.
Q: Where did you go to school and if you could go back to College and do your education all over once again where would you go and what would you study?
A: Cornell University, I would go there and study the same material again in a heartbeat.
Q: What’s your favorite social networking resource and why?
A: Twitter because it has an amazing community of geoprofessionals out there that help each other out and have fun too.
Q: What’s the last event or conference you went to and how was it? And.. if you could only go to one event this year what would it be?
A: Ignite Spatial NoCo – it was very good. That’s the event I would choose to go to again this year if I could only go to one, which is probably pretty realistic since I don’t have a lot of free time to go to events.
Q: What kind of mobile handset(s) do you use?
A: None
Q: What’s your favorite gadget or piece of hardware?
A: Does a legal pad or dollar-store spiral notebook count? Love those.
Q: Is there a mobile app or 2 that you simply couldn’t live without?
A: Nope.
Q: What are you reading right now if I was to look on your coffee table or side table?
A: Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton &Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1
Q: What/Where is the coolest Geo/Techproject/job you’ve worked on?
A: I was a research biology intern in college. I banded common tern babies on a little island. Driving a boat, soaking up the sun, and doing hard work was great. Once, though, I slipped on a mucky rock while trying to climb back in my boat and my helper that day didn’t notice. I got sucked under a bit, hit my head, but managed to get back up. I think I could have drowned. But when I reappeared, the helper simply looked at me and said, “where’ve you been?” as I stood there covered in water and muck. Every day there was a new story to tell with that job and that’s just one of them.
Q: Favorite sports team?
A: Ugh, sports…
Lightning round: (simply pick one)
Twitter or facebook? twitter
Google or Bing? google
Blogger or WordPress? wordpress
Coffee or Tea? tea
Budweiser or Fat Tire? Fat tire
Laptop/netbook or Tablet? laptop
Gretchen N. Peterson writes on the subjects of GIS analysis, cartography and ethics. Ms. Peterson is the owner of the geospatial analysis firm PetersonGIS. You can follow her on Twitter @PetersonGIS