Hello All,

Thanks to all who responded to my informal survey on workplaces of those
who use GIS and read the GIS-L and GRASS-L BBs.  Responses are still 
dribbling in, but the trends are clear, and over 90% of the responses came
within the first day or two, so here is my tabulation and analysis.

Federal, State, Local Government:	34%

Educational Institution:		39%

Private Corporation:			14%

Consulting:				 5%

Full-Time Students:			 8%	

	
	The total number of responses to my query was 86.  Considering that     there are about 1450 un-concealed subscribers to the GIS-L list alone, this
is not a very robust sample.  Of course, many of those subscribers may not
actually read their mail.  

	Some further remarks:

Only six responses were from outside of the USA, four of them from Canada.  All
but two of them were in educational institutions.

I'm not sure what the significance of these figures is, if there is any.  Certainly, it's an unscientific survey.  Does the response reflect a bias towards those who are really active in GIS, or towards those with easy access to the Internet?  Are the two closely related?  My gut feeling is that there are a lot of 
private firms, consultants, that use GIS, but on a small, rather superficial 
scale, i.e. mostly for producing nice maps.  These firms are most likely to have
PC applications, and are far less likely to be on-line.  

So in the end, these findings reinforce my own prejudice, that big GIS is 
something that happens mostly in universities and goverment agencies.  Kind of
makes sense, given that that is where long range planning tends to go on.

My motive for this survey, since some people inquired about it, is to learn a 
bit more about the market for GIS professionals.  At one time, when I was job
searching, I was very frustrated about finding work in the field.  I did not
want to work for a goverment agency [I have done that, and it isn't for me.]
and I did not want to be an academic.  My search of the private sector found
relatively few firms that do GIS in a big way.  

I live in the northeast, and that was a big factor.  I won't move to Colorado orFlorida, where there seem to be lots of firms.  Most of the firms also seemed to
be very oriented towards production, that is, data conversion on a large scale.
Very different from project oriented research, or specialized database building.I'm an engineer, so I could have gone to work for a firm that does municipal 
infrastructure GIS, but it didn't appeal to me. Obviously not to most of the 
respondents to this survey either.

So long.

  

garyo@hydroqual.com

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An engineer?  I had grown up among engineers, and I could
remember the engineers of the twenties very well indeed:
their open shining intellects, their free and gentle humor,
their agility and breadth of thought, the ease with which
they shifted from one engineering field to another, and, 
for that matter, from technology to social concerns and art.
Then, too, they personified good manners and delicacy of taste;
well-bred speech that flowed evenly and was free of uncultured
words;  one of them might play a musical instrument, another
dabble in painting; and their faces always bore a spiritual
imprint.

	                            from The Gulag Archipelago
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