GITA Revamps Web Presence, Membership Structure

According to Bob Samborski, GITA‟s Executive Director, “When the decision was made last April to discontinue the format of the annual conference, there were implications for just about everything we do. We emerged from a very challenging period with a new approach to providing educational resources to geospatial professionals.”

The corporate membership structure has undergone a complete overhaul, one that “reflects the types of educational benefits and business opportunities that are most important to our members,” says Samborski. “We want our members to value their business relationship with us,” he said.

In addition, emphasis is being placed on improving benefits for individual members of the association. “Through many conversations, interviews and email survey responses, our members told us what they expect from GITA,” Samborski said. “As a result of all this excellent input, we have completely retooled our approach to providing value to our individual members, beginning with a new website and „Members Only‟ section.”

Members can access presentations and papers from previous annual Geospatial Solutions Conferences and GIS for Oil & Gas Conferences, the complete collection of ITAG (Industry Trends Analysis Group) Reports, papers from the new Geospatial Thought Leader Series, all the GECCo (Geospatially Enabling Community Collaboration) presentations and reports, and every issue of the weekly GITA News Hub newsletter since its inception in April 2011.

Individual GITA membership qualifies for points toward GISP certification and the association maintains a record of members‟ attendance and speaking commitments at GITA conferences and events for submission with GISP applications or renewals. Records are available upon request.