UC Insider contributor and ESRI user Sabrina Szeto is a Geomatics Engineer (E.I.T) for Worley Parsons Geomatics in Calgary, Canada, and attended the UC last summer.

When times are tough and work isn't available, it's actually the best time to take advantage of investigating new tools and implementing them into an organization's workflow. After all, to be competitive, you should be well up to speed with the latest technologies, innovations, and trends.

It's easy to become complacent with current workflows, but just like new software updates, it's important to improve those workflows, introduce new technology,  implement more efficient processes, and just keep searching for ways to make an operation run better, smoother, more effectively, and with bigger returns.
 
Here are some of the main reasons I attended UC last year.

• Meeting fellow ESRI users in person instead of on a Web forum = more effective communication.
• UC lectures and talks are inspiring, hopefully motivating individuals to make the extra effort in their organization to be the first to advocate using the use new tools showcased at UC.
• It's interesting and helpful to see the ESRI applications across a wide range of industries, businesses, and organizations.
• It's a fun getaway with the added bonus of enriching your knowledge!

Sabrina’s organization uses GIS to organize spatial data for pipeline design, performing design analysis and ensuring that one-source data is available to the organization, clients, and third parties; this avoids multiple copies of the same data.