Esri Celebrates National Geographic's Geography Awareness Week

REDLANDS, Calif., Nov. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Esri—in partnership with the City of Redlands, California; University of Redlands; Colton-Redlands-Yucaipa- Regional Occupational Program (ROP); and Inland Valley Newspapers Group—will host a series of activities that will educate about the importance and value of geographic information systems (GIS). The events are part of National Geographic's Geography Awareness Week, which celebrates geography worldwide and will take place November 11–17, 2012.

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"We've lined up fun, informative activities for all ages," says Jacqueline Gimenez, Global Marketing Programs manager at Esri. "This is the most comprehensive set of geography-related events organized for the City of Redlands since GIS Day began in 1999. Our goal is to show how geography and GIS improve the community and impact citizens' daily lives."

The week's events will kick off on Tuesday, November 13, at 5:30 p.m., with a presentation by former National Geographic chief cartographer and current Esri staffer Allen Carroll at the Redlands Forum on the Esri campus. He'll share his experiences creating story maps and discuss the value of using maps and GIS to tell stories.

Celebrating GIS Day on Wednesday, November 14, Esri and its partners will provide interactive demonstrations, engaging presentations, and a special reception at the Redlands A. K. Smiley Library from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. This free event will be open to everyone.

GIS Day is an opportunity for Redlands residents to understand how GIS is used within their community. Several representatives from the five local hosts will give presentations on how their respective groups use GIS to improve the community. Student GIS projects will be featured, allowing a glimpse into how this technology will be used by future GIS professionals.

As a special treat, there will be interactive opportunities at the reception for children to learn about the importance of geography. Esri staff will read geography-related stories to children inside the library during two story times.

To round out the events, historical maps from the University of Redlands library collection will be displayed at the university and at the Smiley Library throughout the week.

To learn more about the Redlands events, visit gisday.com/redlands.

About Esri
Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

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SOURCE Esri