The last time Elaine attended Trimble Dimensions was 4 years ago back in 2018! Wow it seems like SUCH a long time ago… before covid hit and everything slid to a halt in 2020. It was awesome to be able to get back to normality with an incredible 5,750 attendees from 75 countries, the Trimble community gathered in The Venetian Resort, Las Vegas! 

Ps how COOL was the hotel?!

Attending the Trimble conference is a great way to catch up with past and present clients, and find out about all of their new exciting ventures. Elaine has worked with lots of Trimble staff worldwide holding consultancy sessions, and as part of the GKiS initiative. That, plus having a few Trimble resellers as regular students in the Geospatial Marketing Academy which is run by Elaine. So it really does mean a lot to catch up with these amaze-ball geospatial folk!

This years event had a huge focus around the NEW ‘Trimble Construction One’ which they launched at the Conference. This new system helps you Plan, Do and Manage all sorts of construction projects, it drives efficiency and productivity at each stage of the project lifecycle. This means everything (data) is in ONE place… can be used by a range of stakeholders. 

This is an exciting partnership between Trimble Universe and Microsoft Azure…

The big guns are teaming up 

Another incredible experience from the show was having the honour of listening to Steve Wozniak who is the co-founder of Apple! Please tell us you’ve heard of this man…

“Social Media and Surveying”

On the Tuesday, Elaine, Robert Martin, PS (Surveying with Robert), Trent Keenan (Dimaondback Land Surveying) and Michael Dix (Trimble Marketing Communications) took to the stage to present a panel discussion about Social Media and Surveying.

Topics included the current best practices for major social media platforms Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. 

The panelists talked about the benefits and ROI of using these platforms, and showed how you can post great content using the employees you already have, and when to leverage 3rd party resources. Other topics will include what not to post, and what not to do on social media. Finally we talked about social media ads, and when you should use them effectively. 

There was a fabulous turnout, but we are a bit upset that Elaine’s selfie was all blurry but here we are haha

Get Kids into Survey

⚠️ NEWS UPDATE ⚠️ As many of you know, Elaine’s on a serious mission to Get Kids into Survey! That being said, she has to up her game! To go BIG or go home!

Get Kids into Survey is a Brand that she set up in 2017 with the aim to educate the next generation on the geospatial industry. GKiS have grown huge amounts and have over 100 stakeholders to thank.

Over the next year we’ve set ourselves 2 BIG goals…

✅ Goal 1: Franchise the Get Kids into Survey Model into EVERY COUNTRY  

Why?

We have only scratched the surface and if you know Elaine, she can’t just do that! We need to do MORE! By franchising the model we can get the name of Survey into more countries quicker thus speeding up the process! 

We want SURVEYING terms and jargon into every child’s lingo! Yep you read right!

✅ Goal 2: is to get Get Kids into Survey into Minecraft yes sir re! 

At Intergeo Elaine spoke with several contacts to help nudge us forwards in our mission. Getting on Intergeo TV gave us that boost (https://lnkd.in/eWiAr2ZU) so did the talk at Dimensions to help work Elaine’s network of contacts.

She MAY have met with a senior member of Microsoft and have started the BALL “get the pun” rolling with them!! Ekkkkk

Geoholics Roadshow

One to check out… an unscripted educational chat with a few geospatial pals. Myself and Trent Keenan (Diamondback Land Surveyors) can be heard at 01:31 to 20:34 on Day 1’s Geoholics Roadshow podcast.

Well worth a listen as we announce some exciting and secretive news shhhh 

Connections

Elaine was thrilled to see all her lovely clients, GKiS sponsors, GKiS Brand Ambassadors and meeting “finally” with online friends! Trent Keenan  Peta Cox  William Wing RLS  Kent Groh  Ben Shinabery Nolan Mark, PS and many others! Elaine loved spending time with you all! 

Check out these pictures from a catchup going around the Las Vegas version of the London Eye haha!

Get Kids into Survey- Here’s what our team do! 

Put very simply- we produce material for you! 

Background:

We created our first poster so that surveyors could go home and teach their kids what they do at work, not in just any way, but in a fun interactive way! This took off and Elaine Ball (our co-founder) ended up with a hefty postage bill after sending hundreds around the world. This was the start of an amazing venture which founded the ‘Get Kids into Survey’ initiative.

Since then we have created 20 geospatial themed exploration posters, each with a complimentary Q&A section, lesson plan and worksheets. These are available for FREE on the website HERE.

According to RICS, ‘85% of UK surveyors have problems recruiting due to the lack of qualified applicants’. Just look on the TSA website to see how many Surveyor Vacancies there are. The same trend shows worldwide!

We have found this to be a worldwide trend, with a lowered geospatial university intake, and an ageing demographic. If there are not enough new geospatial experts coming up into the sector then who will take over?! 

This led us to the world without surveyors scenario, which was played upon in our GeoSquad Comic Book that was launched last year…

“Join Maddison, Miles. Setsuko and Kwame on a time-splitting adventure to a future on the brink of total chaos – a future without geo surveyors!

Taking control of four hi-tech mechs, the team tackles landslides, runaway trains, Antarctic squid, an urban inferno, and an evil businessman who seems to want to get rid of geo surveyors for good! Will the squad save their crumbling city – and then the world? There’s only one way to find out!

Read the first chapter of the GeoSquad comic now and discover Middletown 2049, the surveyor-less city”

Available to purchase from our website *here*!

The process:

The first stage in the process at Get Kids into Survey is gaining funding from industry in order to create these fantastic educational resources. Since 2017 we have had over 100 companies and organisations support us financially, thus helping us promote the industry worldwide as we are able to supply this for free. Making it easily accessible for ALL!

Now our 20 posters have been finalised we are beginning to run out of some of our originals… this means we require some more support in order to re-print and therefore distribute some more posters out. There are NEW funding options which can be found on our ‘Get Involved’ page HERE.

We have a great support network which include a primary school teacher Matt who helps to write the resource content so it aligns with some of the UK curriculum. Plus our designer Marek who we couldn’t live without!! He creates our iconic cartoon creations!

Now you are wondering who distributes these materials to the next generation?

That is where our SUPER Brand Ambassadors come in. Our Brand Ambassadors have the aim of spreading the word of the ‘Get Kids into Survey’ Initiative in their local area by attending careers fairs, school classrooms & conferences. We love sharing what our Ambassadors get up to on social media so make sure you follow us especially on LinkedIn.

By going into schools we are working through the ‘bottom up’ technique. ‘A bottom-up approach is a way of making corporate decisions that starts from the bottom of the hierarchy, rather than at the top’.

This is opposed to the top down method which is an approach ‘where an executive decision maker or other top person makes the decisions of how something should be done. This approach is disseminated under their authority to lower levels in the hierarchy’.

By going from the bottom up we can get a feel for what the children are thinking and really get involved. This means we need lots of volunteers so we can spread far and wide! If this sounds like something you’d be interested in you can learn more about becoming a Brand Ambassador HERE, once you fill in the form you’ll gain instant access to our outreach presentation.

The actual distribution of these posters is done with a HUGE thanks to our 3 distributors from each continent. They package and post out orders that come in through the website for our posters. They also store the stacks of posters that get printed until they are ordered… without them we would struggle to keep the posters free.

HOW do we educate the next generation?

GKiS focuses more on the lower age groups because it was found that by the age of 7 children already have an idea of what they’d like to do; “There are only “minimal changes” in attitudes towards career options between the ages of seven and 17, says the report produced jointly by the OECD and Education and Employers” (Link to article). This is alarming because surveying is not a very well known profession amongst adults let alone children. So ensuring we spread awareness of the industry at a young age will give a higher chance of them asking questions and recognising what this career involves!

As previously mentioned for this we require the Brand Ambassadors to go into schools and talk openly about what they get up to in their job. But it is also a parents responsibility to enlighten their children on the possible career choices at hand, by not steering them into a typical doctor, teacher, vet stereotype.

We are working our way up- there are two more wonderful ladies helping to get the Geospatial industry recognised. Firstly Alison Watson MBE who heads Class Of Your Own who are the ‘award-winning creators of the Design Engineer Construct! Learning Programme’. Secondly Alex McKee who has set up Geospatial UK! The website aims to help students find out more about the sector, including what skills they could learn and what jobs they could get.

Both of these initiatives are worth taking a look at as they continue through the ages up to university level. They too have seen a drop in university applicants which in turn is leading to less skilled workers. Although with the implementation of the new apprentice programmes and T-levels (UK) there are more opportunities to begin an exciting career. TOGETHER we will teach the next generation how amazing the world of geospatial is… with endless opportunities!

What do we NOT do?

Here’s some common things that we get asked that we DO NOT do here at GKiS

*Cross* GKiS arranges school visits for professionals to attend.

*tick* Our Brand Ambassadors are available to do school visits, check out our map to see who is local to you. They are loaded with a presentation plus they might bring in some of their equipment to demonstrate to your kids!

*cross* GKiS print unlimited posters worldwide

*tick* We produce the amount of geospatial posters that we gain funding for, thank you to our amazing sponsors. However, once the initial print run has been completed we require more funding to get more stock, this means we are starting to run out of some designs! Each poster can be printed in either the UK (for EU distribution), USA (for distribution around the Americas), and Australia (for distribution around Oceania).

*cross* GKiS make a profit on the sponsorship money collected

*tick* GKiS reinvest all funds received because they go into designing, printing, and dispatching of the resources. Don’t forget the staffing costs too to be able to run this initiative.

*cross* Getting involved in the GKiS initiative will cost money

*tick* Getting involved in the GKiS initiative comes with a range of options! Firstly, if you aren’t able to financially support us but would love to get stuck in with outreach and spreading the world about the geospatial profession… becoming a Brand Ambassador might be for you (completely free, we work on a volunteer basis). GKiS requires funding so we are greatly appreciative of any sponsorship option that a company chooses to support. We have just updated our ‘Get Involved’ page to accommodate our recent package options, catering for all budgets. Thank you 🙂

We Need You!

Our campaign is currently focussing on the ‘Homework Projects’. Our Homework Projects are based around a certain geospatial theme (usually on one of our posters), that take a deeper dive into the subjects/skills required in the geospatial industry. These are much more in depth than our posters so great if the children wish to learn a few more surveying terms and knowledge!

School teachers can set this in class and are also great for parents to use as extra curricular study.

We are hoping to find sponsors for all 20 of our Homework Project titles, which will heavily feature your company character and equipment throughout. These can be tailored towards what your company do in the surveying industry. Can you help to provide free educational resources to the next generation? If that’s a big fat YES then you can check out more info here (plus other options including poster reprints) and email erin@getkidsintosurvey.com

It would be great to have you involved in the Get Kids into Survey initiative! You’d even get your very own company character!

WOW WOW WOW what a week!!!

What started off a little manic due to a cancelled flight to Germany, ended very successfully. We will start off by introducing our Founder Elaine’s TV interview which explains all of the latest Get Kids into Survey efforts:

Elaine not only appeared on TV, but was also interviewed for various podcasts and YouTube content which we will share once they go live!

Meanwhile Erin and Elly were busy on the GKiS stand that Intergeo kindly supplied. We stocked up on hundreds of posters and leaflets, yet we still managed to nearly run out at the end of day 2! Oh so popular! We had a couple of board games made in English and German which are super fun and might be making a comeback in 2024 *watch out*.

It was great to meet some of our international Brand Ambassadors since this is the first time many of us had travelled since covid struck. Our Brand Ambassadors play a key role in going into schools and teaching about surveying, often taking some of their equipment in to share… demonstrating what an interesting career choice surveying can be.

This month is the turn of our ‘Homework Project‘ campaign. Our Homework Projects are based around a certain geospatial theme (usually on one of our posters), that take a deeper dive into the subjects/skills required in the geospatial industry. These are much more in depth than our posters so great if the children wish to learn a few more surveying terms and knowledge!

School teachers can set this in class and are also great for parents to use as extra curricular study.

We are hoping to find sponsors for all 20 of our Homework Project titles, which will heavily feature your company character and equipment throughout. These can be tailored towards what your company do in the surveying industry. Can you help to provide free educational resources to the next generation? If that’s a big fat YES then you can check out more info here or email Erin on erin@getkidsintosurvey.com

Let’s learn some more about our latest sponsors of the ‘Civil Engineering’ poster re-prints! Introducing Impulse Radar:

A bit about your company?

ImpulseRadar develops and builds ground penetrating radar (GPR) instruments and related software, enabling people and organisations to investigate and map subsurface features and structures non-invasively. We provide mapping and geospatial solutions for underground utility assets and infrastructure, cultural resources, and transportation infrastructure. Rather than simply being a manufacturer of GPR, we categorise ourselves as a geomatics company focusing on subsurface imaging and mapping solutions using GPR as the core technology.

Why are you supporting the Get Kids into Survey initiative?

This initiative is a great way to provide early exposure and education to help young people gain a better idea and understanding of different career options. The modern survey and geospatial industry offer exciting opportunities that may otherwise be missed, so we support introducing kids to these early.

Key piece of advice for someone wanting to get into the geospatial industry?

Prepare yourself technically, professionally, and personally. Learn the key fundamentals for your area of interest. Remember that technology develops fast, so stay on top of key industry developments via blogs, online magazines, social media, and following technology manufacturers. While you cannot be expected to start with every skill needed, there are plenty of resources to help you improve, especially via industry associations. If newly graduated, emphasise relevant course work and boost your skills with free online courses. Be curious and open-minded to new opportunities, and show a genuine interest in the industry.

Introducing Jose Alejo our latest Brand Ambassador from Mexico! 

“I’m from Venezuela, but I’ve been living in Mexico since 2012.
I’m a Civil Engineer with 15 years of experience in land development and surveying industry.
I work as Land Surveyor / Project Manager in COSIG, a Geospatial Services Company.
We are part of the College of Surveying and Hydraulic Engineers of Guanajuato, Mexico.

I want to be a GKiS ambassador because I have realized that geospatial measurement professionals are not well recognized throughout Latin America.
I have had the opportunity to work in rural areas where they do not even identify what a topographer does, so I want to contribute my grain of sand in the task of informing the new generations about the importance of our work and how they can see surveying as a profession that can give them job recognition and help them achieve their dreams working in places they can’t even imagine.

As a GKiS ambassador, I initially plan to visit some schools near our office to give children a first contact with the technology that we handle every day.
It would be interesting to show them the presentations that you have designed explaining or relating them to local construction projects.

I am a lover of photography and technology in general. I love working with educational organizations in the implementation of collaboration based cloud tools.

Even though I like to explore the outdoors, I identify more with Kwane. I like to spend time at home relaxing, reading a book or listening to some good music.

It would be interesting to see some Mexican Mayan archaeology or in Machu Picchu. Perhaps a kind of exploration in the Amazon jungle cataloging sites of interest and mapping the places where certain endangered species live.

I am sure that if our children saw firsthand how interesting the world of reality capture could become, they would not only see in their future the possibility of being a doctor or a lawyer, but they would also dream of working in large infrastructure projects surveying or providing geometric control of such works”

Introducing Abby Raynor our latest Brand Ambassador from South Yorkshire, UK!

Where did you study? I am currently in assessment stage with SAVA expected to complete by the end of the year.

What are the requirements to be a surveyor in your area? RICS registration, once completed SAVA I will be assocRICS.

How did you get into surveying? Love for property, and a long career within estate agency. 

How long have you been in the industry? I currently work as an estate agent, managing a small independent branch, I have been working as an estate agent for 8 years. 

Are you part of any associations or organisations you would like us to mention? I am part of RICS as a student member. 

Why do you want to be a GKiS Brand Ambassador? As I look back over my career development and how I ended up where I am, it is so important to educate the next generation on not only surveying and the fun elements of working in the industry but also the endless opportunities that they can be faced with, exploring different avenues of interest and opening young minds to the world. I have done a few careers fairs and school careers events and enjoy giving something back to my local communities. it is also a great way to get involved with the local schools and their annual events etc.

Why is it important for kids to know about surveying and the wider geospatial industry? It is important for children to understand as much as possible not only about surveying and the industry, but to understand about environmental impacts and how the world is moving and evolving be int he future of building properties, or the way in which we are using the earth. Influencing the next generation is what is so important. 

What are you going to do as an ambassador for GKiS? As a brand ambassador I would like to get involved in local schools and give something back to my community, also offer free advice to parents and carers of the children regarding property, the housing market and whatever I can. I am a passionate individual who would enjoy giving something back. 

What are your hobbies? Hobbies are something of the past now I am a parent however what I enjoy doing in my free time is exploring the world with my 3 year old, and I also enjoy Formula 1. 

If you/your company had a GKiS character, what would it be? A ROBOT. 

What resource would you like to see next from GKiS? I would be happy with some bright coloured visual aids.

A Bit About Outreach by our fabulous Brand Ambassador Dylan Pugh!

“Hi my name is Dylan, I’m an Apprentice Civil Engineering Surveyor with Alun Griffiths. I started as an apprentice aged 16, currently19 (Nearly 20), but I have been carrying out surveys and going out to sites since I was 14/15 and younger with my Dad. I’ve been doing careers events, school presentations and helping with school visits to sites for Griffiths. Telling students my journey so far in the industry which involves promoting drones and flying them, working on a variety of different projects with Sea Defense, Link Roads, Retaining walls, ducting and currently on major projects as a Section Engineer looking at major earthworks, cuttings, bridges, roundabouts, underpasses and ecology on site. As well as learning and using 3D GPS Machine Control on the excavators and dozers allowing us to have better accuracy and reducing the human error and time when doing profiles and batter rails.”

Here’s a link to a video of Dylan doing a talk in Narbeth Primary school for the company Griffiths.

Could you tell us a bit more about how you go about preparing for the school visits and careers fairs? 

I ask what age group I’m doing it for as if it’s primary school kids then I’ll make my presentation more simple and add a bit of humour to it to make it fun for them but to learn as well. For GCSE or Comprehensive school kids I try to make it more in depth as this affects where they go to study in college, careers, what GCSE subjects they pick etc. 

At Careers Fairs I try to show off what you can do in Engineering Surveying to attract people to the stall. Previously I showed a 3d model and video from a drone of a Quarry, explaining how it took only 25 mins to complete it using the robotic Total Station and Dumpy!

Do the kids get involved and ask lots of questions? 

Yes they do, as I love my work and Engineering Surveying with a passion, so they ask me about my experiences, advice and why I picked this line of work. In my talks I start and end with any questions to see what they want answered and to know.

Do you find doing outreach rewarding? 

Yes, I enjoy outreach events as it’s rewarding helping people and I do enjoy talking about what’s in the industry and what is on the goal line. As I want to be the best I can be and go beyond like the likes of Thomas Telford and Isambard Kingdom Brunnel. I aim to make a change to the industry and push it so doing the outreach makes me feel like I’m getting closer to that goal and helping the industry to get better. Promoting people who could change the industry too and make a difference together.

What would you say to other professionals if they are asked to do a presentation- what is your advice to them on carrying out outreach? 

The best advice I can give is to speak from the heart and show your passion to the industry as that goes a long way and shows you enjoy your work, that it’s not a chore. Don’t sugar coat anything thinking that you can as they are only kids. Tell the truth and share your experiences, I’m only 20 and I knew at age 13 I wanted to go into this industry! Kids in comprehensive schools are smart and they know what’s out there because of their experiences, internet, the news and talking to people. You always get good and bad days but that’s life itself, you’ll get more good days in a place you enjoy going to and enjoy working… So finding something that connects to your interests/passion is a priority.

Some of our main achievements to date!!

In the space of only a few months, 2 of these statistics need to be updated 🤯 but we shall save that for the 2022 infographic ey!

We can’t believe the amount of support we are getting recently, with more Brand Ambassadors signing up each month, more sponsors wanting to do their bit for the industry, plus new opportunities which you will hear about very shortly 🤫

View our Infographic: GKIS Infographic