At Gateway Mapping Inc. (GMI), we enjoy participating in the GIS community at-large, and our staff are members of local and state-level GIS user groups. Our peers recognize that GMI staff are experts in the GIS field, and we have had many opportunities to help other GIS users grow and develop their skills. One skillset where GMI staff are widely considered experts is in the use of Python programming, particularly using Esri’s arcpy site package. Our peers know that we are very effective at using the Python scripting language to help our clients by automating tedious GIS tasks, and because of this we have been given many opportunities to teach Python workshops at the state and local level.

The State of Utah’s official professional GIS organization, the Utah Geographic Information Council (UGIC), holds an annual conference and has given GMI the opportunity to lead full-day Python training classes every year since 2011. We have had opportunities to show how to use Python to automate GIS tasks, build maps, publish web services, and even interact with ArcGIS Online using Esri’s Python API. This trend has been mutually beneficial to GIS users across the state and GMI. The resulting collaboration and knowledge-sharing has helped us hone our Python skills to the point where GMI has truly become one of the best resources in the State for GIS automation.